April 2012

It has been a while since writing on my blog.  


In February, my parents and sister's family came to visit.  We also went for a weekend break to Hua Hin to visit them.


In March, a couple of Mort's friends stayed with us on a stop over for a few nights to explore Bangkok.


April means Easter holidays, or over here Songkran holidays.  I had 2 weeks off work so Mort and I went to Krabi for 10 nights. Here is a movie clip of some of our photos. We did have a day of celebrating Songkran water fights, but unfortunately we couldn't take any photos as we were either wet or under threat of having water thrown at us at any moment!

Christmas Day the Thai way!

As you can all probably imagine, Christmas does not feel the same over here! For one the religion widely practised here is Buddhism so Christmas has a different emphasis, also apart from Mort's aunt and uncle we have no other family members to visit, thirdly they don't do Christmas dinners like England, fourthly the weather! My list could go on but I'm sure you get the idea!!

So this year for Christmas we spent the day with Mort's aunt and uncle. They came to our hotel where we had a buffet, which included turkey but the potatoes weren't exactly roast potatoes. Mort loved the buffet as they had put out more dishes than usual and therefore included large oysters.

As part of the entertainment they had a singer, saxaphonist and a guitarist, a person dressed up in a bunny costume (I can hear children crying out 'where's santa? It's not Easter!') and 2 balloon sculpturists (!?!?!). The balloonists were fabulous. They would do whatever you asked for, sure beats the poodles in England!!

After our lunch we took a drive to the Crocodile Farm.

It was good seeing the crocodiles but they keep other animals and the conditions are poor and sad so I didn't take any photos of them. To round off Christmas day we went to Mort's aunt's for Thai food. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year. xxx

Quick photos

Sorry but you'll have to look sideways!

Koh Samet - Take two!

So, I was getting a bit bored having so much time away from work due to the threatening flood situation, which never materialised where I live. So we decided to take a short break for 2 nights to Koh Samet again. It is very much a beach holiday. We didn't really go exploring on the island, which isn't very big and just has other beaches and view points.

Here are a few photos.

Sunrise at 6 am

An exploring yellow ant!

View of a quiet bay just round the corner from where we were staying.





A wonderful short break and top up of my fading tan!

Koh Chang

We arrived in Koh Chang at 4pm after an 8 hour journey by taxi, coach and ferry. After finding accommodation and having something to eat we went to watch the sunset.

We went to have a drink at the hotel we stayed at on our honeymoon and happened to have some unexpected visitors close by!

We then returned to where we were staying to have a drink and watch the sea.

On Monday (and Tuesday!) we went on a trip to Khlong Plu waterfall.



Spot the rainbow.


On our return we stopped off at the toilets where I found this flying object crawling along with a dead spider!

We decided to take a detour on our way home and check out Lonely Beach.

Another evening, another sunset ...

On Wednesday I decided that maybe I should at least do a bit of cooking while in Thailand and what would be better than a Thai Cooking Class?? So, here are some of the photos...



We made 6 dishes and got to eat all of them! Yummy!





On Thursday we went on a boat trip to 4 islands to do a bit of snorkelling. We saw lots of amazing marine life but unfortunately it was all underwater and we don't have an underwater camera...yet!



My highlight was when a school of pipe fish (I think that is what they were) swam right in front of me :)



... yet another!

Photo update!

So...in my last blog I had difficulty uploading. Here are some pictures in Ocean World.







Fantasia Water Park, top of Bang Kapi Mall

Bowling at Ekamai Cineplex

Me joining in the running race at Central World, Siam

Sunset, taken from our hotel swimming pool

The next 4 weeks...

Well we have now been living in Bangkok for officially 2 months and 2 days!

I have nearly completed my first term of teaching, had an observation, written settling in reports and led a class assembly! Phew!

Apart from working, I have been doing many other activities to fill my free time, including visiting Ayutthia (which now has extremely bad flooding), Ocean World and Fantasia water park.
This is Ayutthia before it got even worse. As you can see, you can only see the top floor of the house, the bottom is under water.


Mort and I went to Ocean World, at the bottom of Siam Paragon shopping mall (http://www.siamoceanworld.co.th/). It was fantastic, plus I got us money off as I work in Thailand, ching, ching!!! Included in our entrance fee we got a behind the scenes tour above the big fish tank, a ride on the glass bottom boat, 4D movie, drink and popcorn, souvenir and happy feet (feet get eaten by fish!). There were lots of wonderful and exotic sea creatures.