Chinatown!

Mom and I went to Chinatown!

We took the family shuttle to the embassy, and then a taxi to Chinatown.  We didn't know where exactly we wanted to go in Chinatown, so when we got into the taxi I just said "Chinatown? Shopping?" and he said okay.  He dropped us off on a main street in what was clearly Chinatown (most of the signs were in Chinese), pointed ahead, and said, "Shopping."  See, no problems with communication.

We walked for a while down the main street.  The sidewalk was narrow and there were little stalls along it, so luckily we got there early when it wasn't too crowded.  The things in the store were fun to look at, but we had no idea what most of them were.

There were also LOTS of places to buy and sell gold.  There were all these long counters with people standing behind them.

We knew there were more stores on littler streets, so we took a couple detours, and then found this street that was almost like a middle eastern bazaar.  There were shops on either side with things out on the sidewalk.  You could pretty much only walk single file.  It was covered and there was a bit of air conditioning coming from some of the stores, so it wasn't too hot at all.  However, we were there early on a weekday morning.  I can't imagine how you could even walk there on a weekend afternoon.

It was a girls' shopping paradise, lots of jewelery and sparkly things.  There were all different kinds of fabrics

and places that sold every kind of bead imaginable.

We got Vivian a necklace and some stickers, and I got a shiny elephant in a really nice box frame for about $6.  After about an hour, we came to the end of the alley we had been following, and decided that we had experienced Chinatown.  Then we had to decide what to do next.  Jeff had too much work to be able to meet us for lunch, so I decided I wanted to go back to Central World mall, since it felt rushed when we went there on Thursday.

The taxi driver dropped us off at what I think is the front (although it's hard to tell with these huge malls).  There were two shrines in front, which were beautiful if weirdly juxtaposed with the mall behind them.

The first store we saw when we walked in was a Jim Thompson store.  I had never heard of this before we moved to Thailand, but it's a big deal here and with good reason.  First of all, the Jim Thompson house is a great museum.  Second, the materials and designs that are on sale in the stores are absolutely beautiful.  You can buy the fabric online, but in the stores they have purses, make up bags, shirts, baby clothes, everything.  Luckily, the next AtB trip is to the Jim Thompson outlet, so I'm waiting for that, since the stuff is NOT cheap.

After our visit to Chinatown, I was craving dumplings again.  Luckily, I have a nice Mom, and she humored me.  I picked this restaurant, since it looked like they were really serious about their dumpling making.

Sure enough, the dumplings came out yummy.

We also had blended watermelon juice again.

I think the place at Siam Paragon was better, but I got my dumpling fix, so I was happy.  We explored the mall a little bit more after lunch, but I wanted to hit the commissary before taking the shuttle back home, so we didn't stay long.  I've decided I'm going to come downtown one day and just try to explore all of Central World.  It is my favorite mall so far.

We used a foot bridge to cross the road, so that it was easier to get a taxi back to the embassy.  In the middle of the bridge, I looked down and had a moment where I realized, oh my gosh, I live in Bangkok! 

Pretty cool.

Lazy and Crazy

After our Thursday Ocean World excitement, we ended up having a pretty tame weekend.  Jeff took Friday off , which was very nice.  He and Vivi went to the pool a couple times over the weekend.

Mom, Jeff, and I spent quite a bit of time rewatching old episodes of Downton Abbey.  Turns out we'll get it on the local TV on UK schedule, so it starts tonight, yay!  We're recording it, and then it looks like I'm going to have a whole bunch of ladies over on Sunday for a viewing party.  A lot of people didn't get local cable, so they won't have it at their house.  It should be fun, but we might have to move the television into the living room to make space for everyone.

On Saturday, we tried to go to the Paulaner beer garden for lunch, but it turns out they're only opened for dinner.  Since this is our second attempt to go eat there, I'm sure our next one will be a success.  We opted for the good old Nichada Club again.  Vivi likes the pasta, and she gets to feed the lake fish afterwards, so it works.

I spent a large part of the weekend finishing up my reading for one of my classes.  I'm reading Tinkering Towards Utopia, which is a book about the history of educational reform.  It's an easy and interesting read, but it was hard to balance getting through the book with family time.  A couple times I just went to my room and closed the door, but of course Vivi came looking for me.  She was good though.  She got her iPad and lay down on the bed next to me to play quietly while I read.  It was actually kind of nice to have company.

I finished up my written response to the book this morning and then managed to catch the last part of the After the Boxes meeting on medical and travel.  I got tons more handouts and ideas.  I'll have to process it all slowly.

After that, I took Mom to the Three Mangoes for lunch.  She's been asking about it since she got here, and I think she thoroughly enjoyed the food and the experience.  We even got a piece of tiramisu to go.

When we left the house, we had to squeeze the car out between two big moving vans since both my across the street neighbor and my next door neighbor got their sea freight today.  I'm kind of jealous and kind of not, because I only want about half the stuff that's coming.  The other half is just going to be a pain to deal with.  Oh well.  It'll happen eventually.

After lunch, I had a little bit of time to get ready to tutor.  After tutoring, I had to go pick Vivi up from her play date with a new friend.  She's the daughter of a German couple, and she only speaks a little English, but she and Vivi seem to get along great.  The mom actually grew up in the States and speaks fluent English, so I was surprised when I found out she was German.  She and I have crossed paths at several of the newcomer functions and she's very nice, so I was glad that the girls got along too.  They have a house that's even bigger than ours and has its own pool, so Vivi got to go swimming again today.  She was very pleased, but it was hard to get her to leave.  When we finally got on the road, I realized we had forgotten her backpack.  I turned around to head back to her friend's house, only to see them coming towards us in their golf cart waving her backpack.  We had a good laugh about it.

We got home, had dinner, and then I wanted to take Vivian to the pharmacy.  She's had a rash on the inside of her elbow that I think is eczema, and I wanted to get something for it.  We also stopped by the grocery store, and then when I got home, I went over to a neighbor's house to work on a school magazine article with her.  I feel like our weekend was lazy and today was crazy.  Tomorrow Mom and I are going to attempt Chinatown, so I'd better call it a night.  I've got another crazy day tomorrow!

Ocean World and More!

ISB is closed today for a teacher professional day and tomorrow just because, so I knew I would have to keep Vivian busy.  Lots of friends had told us that Ocean World at the Siam Paragon Mall was awesome, so I decided today was the day to go.  Verdict: Awesome!

Vivi, my mom, and I took the family shuttle downtown.  I was going to try to walk us to the BTS station, but Vivi really wanted to take a taxi, so I caved.  She had a BIG meltdown yesterday, that was triggered by one little thing, but led to all kinds of other stuff coming out, so I decided that today was Vivi's day.  Plus, the taxi was air conditioned and cost about a dollar fifty to get us to the mall.

Unfortunately, since we were so fast, we got to the mall well before its 10 o'clock opening time.  There are two huge malls right next to each other, Siam Paragon and Central World.  In between them is a beautiful temple complex, Wat Pathum Wanaram.  We decided to walk over and explore until the mall opened.  It was very strange to walk around a temple in the middle of all the big modern buildings.

Closest to the mall was a building that was locked up, and had golden Buddhas lining the walls.  In the middle was a huge tree wrapped in shear material.  I don't know what it was all for, but it was really beautiful.  We went there to kill time, but ended up thoroughly enjoying our unexpected detour. 

By the time we got back to the mall it was almost ten.  We sat on the steps leading up to the mall with all the other people waiting for it to open, which seems to be my typical mall going experience.  I had told the taxi driver we wanted to go to Ocean World, so he dropped us off at the door right next to the entrance to it, which was really helpful because the mall was another typical labyrinth Thai mall, and if we had been on the other side of the building, we never would have found Ocean World.

I used my shiny new diplomatic resident card to get Thai price, which was still almost $40 for me, mom, and Vivi.  But, to keep things in perspective, the stores in the mall are Gucci, Prada, etc., and they have a Rolls Royce "dealership".

Ocean World was totally worth the price of admission though.  All the signs were in English, so we could see what everything was and learn about it.  The set up was really well done too.  There was a shark learning area with big projections that you could touch to select a shark, spin it around, and learn things about it.  Of course, these big screens were on the wall on the other side of a glass floor that looked down into the shark tank.  Mom and I didn't walk on it.  Vivian eventually did, but very tentatively.

I took lots of pictures of the fish, but between their movement and the lighting, only a few came out really well.

Towards the end, there was a penguin area which Mom got really excited about and an indoor playground which Vivi got really excited about.  While they were having fun, part of the giant group of Thai school children caught up with us.  We first saw them when we got to Ocean World.  There were easily a hundred little kids, somewhere around three years old.  They were all wearing uniforms, and they walked in rows with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them.  They were super cute and really well behaved, but they were excited and numerous, and therefore loud, so we tried to avoid them most of the time.

When we got to the really cool part where you walk under the tank, the school group wasn't with us, but they were close enough that their excited squeals echoed all around.  Still, lots of fun.

After our fabulous time at Ocean World, we realized we were hungry.  Luckily, the escalator brought us right up into the food court area.  Vivian opted for Subway

while Mom and I explored some of the more exotic options

We wanted to try the roast duck, so we got a little bowl with noodles to share.  It was tasty, but had lots of skin and fat.  We decided to save our appetites in hopes of finding the dumpling place my friend had told me I had to try.

We walked around the mall after lunch and had fun looking in the fancy stores.  Mom especially wanted to price check the Coach purses.  We had so much fun at the Coach store I forgot to take pictures, sorry!  Vivian decided that she needed a Coach purse, and so one of the salespeople helped outfit her with one.  He also showed her where the sunglasses were.  She proceeded to strut around the store and talk to herself in the mirrors with much disdain for those around her.  Next time pictures, I promise.  Needless to say, we didn't buy the six year old the three hundred dollar purse or sunglasses, but she certainly enjoyed trying them out.

As we were getting towards the top of the mall, I saw it, the dumpling place.  It's called Paradise Dynasty, and, as promised, the dumplings were delicious.

I've also seen these things that look like super dumplings, and I've been really curious about them.  They're apparently called "buns", so Mom and I tried the pork ones.

The insides were tasty, but there was too much dough.  It was really thick inside, with just a little pork ball and some broth.  I decided next time I would just stick with dumplings, but I'm glad that now I know what's inside these.  Since Vivian sat patiently through our dumpling/bun experiment, I caved and got her a Krispy Kreme doughnut on the way out of the mall.

For our final adventure, I wanted to go one block over to the other gargantuan mall, Central World.  They have a really big Asia Books there that has almost all its books in English.  I had also heard that they have a good kids' section.  They do :-)

Vivi's final treat was a book which she read the whole way home on the shuttle.  

Another great day in Bangkok :-)

River Taxi and Tuk Tuks

Today was my first outing with the After the Boxes group.  The plan was to take the river taxi downtown, then take tuk tuks to a shopping street called Khao San Road, have lunch, and head back home.  With that much fun planned, I had to bring Mom along :-)

A lot of the AtB ladies are here with private companies that provide vans and drivers for their employees.  They were kind enough to share these and give us driverless ones a ride to the Nonthaburi pier.  It took quite a while and there was lots of traffic, so I don't think I'll be trying it on my own any time soon.  

Once we got there, we all lined up to pay our 15 baht (45 cents) for the boat ride.  We got on at stop 31 and rode it all the way down to stop 8, so I think it was a very fair price.  The river taxi looked like this one:

Most of us thought river bus would have been a better name.

There were seats in the front part, but mom and I opted to stand towards the back, so that we had an unobstructed view over the railing.  I didn't stand too close to the railing though, because, as you can understand from looking at the picture, I had no desire to get sprayed by water from the Chao Phraya River.  

Several of the stops looked like this:

We would bounce up against the tires along the side, people would get on and off, and then our skipper would blow an ear piercing whistle to let the driver know we were good to go.

I tried to take some pictures as we were going along, but we were really too far from the shore for them to come out well.  I finally decided to hold onto my phone so it didn't fall in the water and just enjoy the breeze.

We got off at the Grand Palace stop.  Our group leaders told us we should get in tuk tuks in groups of three, and gave some of us a little card with instructions on how to get to the shopping road we were going to.  It was kind of hilarious to see a group of about 40 women get into a line of tuk tuks.  Our drivers must have thought it was funny too, because they proceeded to grin while racing each other and zooming in and out of oncoming traffic.  Luckily, everyone made it in one piece.

We walked down Khao San Road, which apparently is a mandatory stop for anyone backpacking through Thailand.  There were tons of shopping stalls set up in front of many bars.

Our guides encouraged us to come back and shop during the day, but warned that it is not a family friendly place at night.  This bar sign is one example.

If you have trouble reading the yellow sign it says: "golf bar cocktails very strong, we do not check id card & restaurant."

Needless to say, that is not where we ate lunch.  We walked down the street and around the corner to a restaurant called Shoshana, which, in another it's a small world twist, turned out to be owned by an Israeli and had the menu in English, Thai, and Hebrew.  Mom got a kick out of that.

The food was okay.  Mom and I both got "blended" mango juice.  I had a falafel pita sandwich and Mom had chicken livers.

They also had big plastic sauce bottles which cracked me up.

Unfortunately, the garlic sauce was not very garlicky.  It was more like sweet mayonnaise.  

After lunch the drivers picked us all up and got us back to Nichada.  Mom and I didn't have enough time for a nap before the tornado that is Vivian got home, so we've been struggling to stay awake tonight and will go to sleep soon.  It was a fun day though, so it's worth a bit of sleepiness.  

Safta's Here!

My mom is originally from Israel, so my daughters call her safta which is Hebrew for grandma.  Safta is a world traveler, so when I took her granddaughters and moved around the world, she quickly followed.  She's here for two weeks, and we're so happy to see her.

She got in very late Thursday/very early Friday, but was ready to go on adventures on Friday. She's been to Bangkok a couple times before, but she's never been out in the Nichada area.  I figured the golf cart trip to the mall would be a good start.   We got to the mall right when it opened, and as we were going up on the escalator I caught this picture:

This is a plastic surgery and botox clinic on the beauty services floor of the mall.  Apparently they have a morning meeting before they start sticking things in people's faces.  

Mom was impressed with the mall, and she was especially impressed with the my golf cart driving skills.  Since she liked the golf cart, we used it again in the afternoon.  We went to ISB, because on Friday the PTA sells really good popcorn, and Vivi had a play date after school with a friend, so I offered to get them an after school snack.  I bought a few bags of popcorn, put them in a large ziplock bag, and hid them in Vivi's backpack with a note saying it was for AFTER school.  When her friend's mom picked them up, she said the popcorn was still there.  The kids had a great time playing, and mom came with me to pick Vivi up, in the golf cart of course.

Like any good grandmother, Safta brought plenty of presents for her granddaughters, but the biggest hit was an Elsa costume for Vivian.

To keep with the Disney fairy tale theme, Vivi decided that Safta should watch some Once Upon a Time.  My mom has never seen the show, so we started with episode one, and she is thoroughly enjoying it.

On Saturday, we got off to a lazy start, and then Mom offered to take us to the Nichada club for lunch.  Jeff and I let her and Vivi have the seats facing the water, since we've been there, done that.

Mom and I continued the water theme for dinner.  Some of the ladies in my neighborhood organized a girls' night out for us to all take a dinner cruise on an antique rice boat down the river that runs through Bangkok.  Mom had never done anything like that, so of course, I brought her along.  We had a great night.

There were nineteen women all together, so we sat at a few different tables.  The food was served family style with lots of different dishes to share.

I got to meet some neighbors I hadn't met before, and the sights were lovely from the water.  I'm so glad that my mom was here and got to share it all :-)

Busy Week

The week started off with something fun, Young's birthday.  We share our food with Young, so while we've been here, I've been noticing what she seems to like the best.  I figured out that she likes blueberry muffins and mexipasta, so Vivi and I made blueberry muffins Sunday night for Young's birthday breakfast on Monday.

Young got up really early and went out on her birthday, but came back before Vivi headed off to school.  When I asked where she had been, she told me she went to feed the homeless out the side gate.  It made me even happier that we had done something for her.  We sang her happy birthday and we all had muffins before Vivi headed out.  For dinner, I made mexipasta and Young ate a big bowl.  Then Vivi asked her if she wanted to watch Frozen.  I told Young she didn't have to, but she was a good sport and sat through the first hour or so.  She hadn't seen it, and since Vivian has it all over her clothes, I guess she wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

In between birthday meals on Monday, I went to the first meeting of After the Boxes (AtB).  It's a group put together by the local church to help people get settled.  They have informational meetings and do outings in the area.  They gave us all a big packet of information, most of which I could have used a couple months ago.  One of the items was a map of how to drive to the mall which just felt cruel given how lost I got with Vivi.  I decided though that I would keep all the materials to have as a welcome packet for whoever I end up sponsoring next summer.

Tuesday was my first day of doing after school tutoring, and I'm really glad that I decided to do it.  I'm working with two boys on alternating days, and it's definitely keeping my skills sharp.

Wednesday I had signed up to be the first "mystery reader" for Vivian's class.  Vivi helped me pick the books.  I read them The Day the Crayons Quit and The Circus Ship.  I started to read The Interrupting Chicken, but, ironically, I was interrupted by the end of the day bell, so I left the book with Vivi's teacher so that she could finish it the next day.

Wednesday was also the day that Young made spring rolls from scratch for me.  I am so spoiled.

First, she got the dough for the outside.

Then she shredded all the veggies and cooked up the meat and garlic.

And finally she wrapped them all up and put most of them in the freezer.  But she cooked up a couple for me to try.

To add to the fun of the day, my friend who drove us to the birthday party last weekend and whose son is friends with Vivian posted this gem on Facebook.

They have a play date Friday, but they decided to wait until they're a bit older to get married.