Rice Whine: Sawadee Kaa

Sawadee Kaa! : family travel tales in Thailand Oct 25th - Nov 8th

A Thai tuk-tuk

It was with a tinge of sadness that we left Thailand yesterday (we are now on a very planned out tour of Myanmar). What can I say? It's a gritty, sweaty, tropical country full of friendly people and delicious food.

Our travels here were our inauguration into true "back-pack travelling" as a family. Although we had been away from home for 5 weeks we were truly on our own as a foursome in Thailand. Our boys discovered the many different tourist tracks as we made our way from mid-range hotel with pool to "back-pack guesthouse" sans A/C with shared bathroom within the first week.

The guys backpacking. Yes, Greg's backpack has wheels.

Boys taking it easy in our guesthouse room.

Lowlights: the litter, the mangy dogs, the ever-present body clammy-ness, the diesel fumes of city traffic, and witnessing the multitude of single, white, male, sex tourists with their rented Thai women sitting in silence at the breakfast table (the back-packer circuit provides a slight reprieve from this).

Highlights:

Thai food! We had heard about the amazing street food culture and was still blown away at the extravagance of the dishes! We saw and sampled curries, freshly squeezed juices and blended smoothies, noodle and other soups with all manner or garnishes, flame-broiled seafood, sushi, crepes, cream puffs and, Thomas' favourite--banana chocolate roti. And of course, a multitude of "unidentified frying objects" which we were, in the end, far to scared to try. [Cynthia writes: Needless to say, I have put on a few pounds what with snacking on every street corner.] Like many other travelers, we were compelled to take a Thai cooking class.

We are looking forward to cooking Thai for friends when we get home.

The roti stall

None of us worked up the nerve to try the crunchy insects.

Thai massage: Cynthia indulged in a full body Thai massage of the "small Thai woman hanging onto a crossbar and nearly putting all her weight on your back" type (it hurt so good!). The whole family was convinced to take in a foot massage. Thomas, unsure about the whole affair, was naturally the darling with all the Thai women. They flirted with him rather shamelessly: "handsome man....you shy?...you like foot massage?". When one of them managed to procure a half smile we heard a victorious exclamation of " I won!". (Here in Myanmar, Thomas still draws attention from the locals just like in Thailand: it's not uncommon for him to get his face stroked by complete strangers with comments of "nice baby". He tolerates it...)

The family foot massage.

Feeding animals: we bought food for ravenous pigeons and fish in the city canals, elephants at the elephant parks and at the zoo we must have dished out a whole $5 on food for elephants, giraffes, sting rays and leopards--all of which the boys fed by hand except the leopards which were fed via skewer through a chain-link fence! The Thais definitely have a different attitude towards animals and any and all acts of domestication are encouraged!

Feeding a black leopard through a chain link fence.

Feeding sting rays

They felt slimy.

No, Max is not wearing nail polish.

An animal show included bird races.

The crowd loved the show.

After the show, the boys posed with the birds.

Erawan falls: we hiked up this stunning set of waterfalls (seven tiers) and swam in their turquoise pools along the way. The natural beauty of the falls was at times overshadowed by the hordes of heavyset sunburned Russian tourists in bathing suits two sizes too small but the higher we climbed this was less a distraction!

Buddhist temples, shrines, pagodas,statues and monks. How blingy are the Buddha statues, how meek and mild are the monks with their shaved heads and flowing orange robes.