Oh what have we been up to?

 

Oh where oh where have we been?

We have been counting our blessings to be able to enjoy such a wonderful life….

Many days have been spent on the beach soaking up the sun. I mentioned before that Melody Brown was coming over to help with the kids and what a help she has been. The kids are so happy to have her as much as Trent & I..

In Canada, Trent and I went out on weekly date nights that consisted of dinner & a movie… (our favorite way to spend our nights). Here in Thailand we go out for dinner & a massage, it’s great! Trent likes our new version of date nights better 🙂 … I have many funny stories from the massage parlors that I just can’t disclose on the blog, ask Trent :-).

The other night we were on the other side of the island and I stopped to take this picture of Patong Beach. Here is where the tsunami hit the hardest on Phuket. When the waves came in they did not destroy too much in terms of breaking solid structure, however the amount of water that came up on the island was what did the most damage. Stores, hotels and restaurants all had water damage and took months to clean up and almost a year to complete their renovations.

 

Trent and I took Em & East to a show a place called Phuket FantaSea “the most touristy thing you could do on this island” Thank goodness for Melody, Everett stayed home with her because the show started at 9:00pm. Phuket FantaSea is an amusement park in a way; it has lots of games and food to keep you entertained as you walk around.

We ate at the buffet and we were overwhelmed by the size of the buffet hall. The arcitechure of the building on the outside was stunning; my pictures don’t do it justice.

It held around 4000 people and the hall was at least the size of the round up centre that holds the ventures at the stampede.

Trent and I thought the food was ok but the kids could not get enough of the sushi (they love sushi)… so it was worth it in the end.

 

 

 

Em & East played a few games around the park and won some stuffed toys.

The best game was the wind tunnel; they went in to this tunnel and had to put ten balloons in a bag, they had great team work and far exceeded the amount. They had a lot of fun…

 

The kids fed these fish in the pond; I have to say it was pretty gross. The fish were all piling on top of each other and pretty much flipping them selves out of the water splashing everyone. The kids thought it was wild.

 

Here is an elephant made of all Pepsi cans, it was pretty cool! Any guesses on how many cans it took to build this elephant?

We feed elephants everywhere we go. It is funny to watch people who have never been around these amazing animals and watch their behaviours for their first encounter with them.(like we were a few months ago) People are timid and scared to get to close and don’t know how to act or walk around them. Our kids are now immuned to the WOW factor and just walk right up to these enormous animals; wrestle with their trunks, put bananas on their heads so the elephants grab them… it’s great.

I was talking to Ginger and we laughed because when we come back to Calgary and go to the zoo (which the kids enjoyed ) they will say “the Calgary zoo is boring, what do you mean we can’t touch and ride the elephants and all the other animals”

About Phuket Fantasea…it is a theatrical production with a combination of a Vegas, circus & broadway show. It was an hour and a half of wonderful entertainment. The show was about a boy and his magical elephant and they explained the history of the highly respected elephant. The kids really loved the show, the singing and the costumes were beautiful. The theatre was over the top and was a real treat.

The kids had a chance to see a baby tiger and feed him a bottle right before we went into the show, Trent was more amazed than the kids I think. We also had our picture with some woman in traditional Thai dress and a warrior that Easton loved. (the warrior was pretty scary I thought)

The kids were fast asleep by the time we made it home. The theatre is 40min from our house and the show ended at 10:30pm.

Emma says about Phuket Fantasea:” it was really really neat because of all the people all dressed up, I really liked it. The fish were really crazy they were gobbling all the food and going on top of each other”.

Last Sunday we headed back to Friendship beach, a hangout for expacts… We had a great time. I put a picture on the blog last time showing a boat stuck in the sand at low tide. Here is a picture with the tide back in, it’s amazing how the water moves like that.

 

Here at the beach Emma & Melody went on a seashell hunt. They went down the beach for about half and hour and collected over 350 seashells. A few they picked up had little creatures in them and they saw many walking seashells… Em thought that was pretty neat.

Trent and I went to an “Abalone farm. Prior to this visit I had never heard of an abalone before. The Abalone are farmed in three stages and are considered a delicacy. The price of abalone is very expensive I read somewhere from $74/kg. Trent and I each had one and the taste was a mix of a mussel & a scallop, not something I would want all the time. It cost over $2.75/abalone for us to try…

So if you ever wondered how many people you could fit into the cab of a small truck we found the answer… This is a sight we see daily when we are driving around in a day. I wonder what they think of a family of white people driving beside them wanting to take their picture? CRAZY!!!!

We went to the zoo again so Melody could experience what we have talked about. The trainers let the boys sit on the tiger all by themselves, I was quite nervous about this. Easton of course held a few snakes…

The best part of the day was Melody volunteered for the elephant show the elephants walked over top of her & checked out her buttocks… she said all she prayed for was that one of them did not poop or pee on her (they pee like a waterfall and their droppings are like a very large coconut) neither happened.

The elephants also paint a picture during the show and last time I missed the bid on one. This time I was not going to miss the opportunity and I bought three paintings, each painted by an elephant. I know for sure I have one of a kind art for the kids 🙂 In Calgary the elephants paints pictures and they are sold for hundreds.

Easton this day wanted his picture taken with everything; it was his day to be in front of the camera. He makes me laugh so much.

Emma says about the zoo: “the guy at the alligator show, he stuck his head in the alligator. And at the elephant show we fed the elephants and we got three paintings the elephant’s painted”.

 

 

 

 

 

We have been going to a tailor for Trent, he has had a few custom-made shirts made for him and the quality is great and they fit Trent perfectly.

Rogue is the tailor and he is a great guy. Here he is measuring Trent up for a suit and it was so funny because he thinks Trent is so big and he could barely reach around Trent to grab the tape measure.

Obviously Trent is quite large compared to a Thai and it is a topic of conversation; what makes a Thai man so small and a western men so large. I welcome your take on it!

Rogue laughs because he needs to use literally double the material for Trent’s shirts and suit than he would need for his personal clothes.

 

Off for an adventure with the kids again. Everett the poor kid is at home sleeping and we are checking things out, next year he will be bigger to join on our adventure quests. We took the kids on quads on trails through the jungle, high above the island for some beautiful views. The kids thought this was the best thing ever. Emma came with me, East with Trent.

Our guide was named Yaya and was from Phi Phi island (tsunami hit the worst there) Yaya stopped to ask me if I was ok and I said fine, he said ladies are all “ooo and eee and girly” Then later on when we were stopped he said to Trent “she is really good” I kept saying to Emma, it’s great to be one of the boys not a whiney girl 🙂 …

Em & I raced Trent & East and well what can I say we REALLY left them in our dust… Emma loved that… she would yell GIRLS RULE!!!! she is growing up way to fast.

Emma says “it was really fun, because we went over hills and mommy daddy went really fast. It was fun going over lots of hills and stopping to see the beaches, it was amazing”.

We all really liked quading except for my quad stalled everyting I touched the brake. It was interesting coming down hills… welcome to Thailand… 🙂

Took a visit to the seashell museum. We were amazed at all the thousands of shells on display. One of our favorites was this Giant Clam that weighs over 500lbs. The selection of shells here were amazing, I could have spent hours here looking and reading about all the different kinds of shells and how they use one another to protect ocean creatures.

So many things have became normal to us that we have forgot how different our cultures are at times. I was looking for a cultural point for this blog which was staring me in the face.

Here in Thailand ones head is the most sacrad part of your body, you never touch a persons head and not usually a childs. You never wave to a child with your fingers pointing up you always point your fingers down and wave with your palm facing down.

Before you enter a store you always take off your shoes, not the grocery store or restaurant but almost all other stores. That is why almost everyone wears flip flops, and they are cheap.

Now I could not resist showing everyone what they are missing out on here in Thailand… a squat toilet… this is quite clean actually, you can not flush an paper products down one of these, you put your toilet paper in the basket if a basket is provided, but most likely not because no toilet paper is ever in one of these.

It has to be an emergency to use on of these. Krista Koole/ Friesen could never use one of these 🙂

You will notice the bucket of water to the side of the toilet… when you are finished your business you take the bowl out of the bucket of water and dump a bowl full of water down the squat. Nice and primitive…

Emma is becoming a pro standing like a boy.

 

 

I know I have been saying I would send a picture of our car, well here it is a Honda Jazz. We are definitely cozy in this car… I MISS my truck 🙂

Here is a funny sign on the side of the road. What this means is that on even days you have to park on the opposite side of the road. You better know the date when you are driving around or you get a big ticket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is Chinese New Years and there is a huge market at the temple five minutes from our house. It is like the stampede in the way; there is games, shops and concerts happening day and night. The food is very interesting and local.

Here you see a cart with a wide selection of yummy cockroaches, grasshoppers, magots and ??? others all prepared differently for your personal tasting pleasure. You pick what you want and you get a bag full for only 10bt. We passed on it but all the Thai’s walking around with bags full seemed tobe enjoying them.

Here are my handsome little army men. We went to the market and found some great deals on some kids clothes for the boys. Emma is in the in between stages so I found a few things.

The boys shirts say Army full time. The swirl character on the shirt means full time in thai. Even matching flip flops… I could eat them up!

The kids are doing great but sure miss Monty. There are alot of dogs here in Thailand so he is a constant reminder.

We are on the count down to coming home, making sure we do not miss anything we want to do. Trent and I are going to go away next week again, we were just on Phi Phi island but that is a blog all by itself, I will start working on now.

All our love to all, keep in touch.

xoxoxoxo Love Jody, Trent & munchkins