Night on the Town

We are incredibly lucky in our life here in Thailand and in our beautiful daughters.

The cherry on top of all of it is that we also have the option of enjoying downtown Bangkok kid free.  After our debacle last weekend and in anticipation of a bunch of travel that will keep us apart in the future, Jeff and I decided to spend Friday night downtown.  He also has a work friend in town, so it was a great opportunity to show him some of our favorite spots.

First stop was the Red Sky Bar.  We headed over to enjoy the post-work/pre-dinner happy hour.  The first challenge was figuring out how to cut through the mall to get to the Centara at the back.  There were signs, but after following them, we got to a dead end.  I didn't mind too much though, because I got to discover new things in my favorite mall.  They've redecorated the escalator circle too.

Eventually we figured out that we needed to walk through the parking garage to get to the Centara elevators, because, why not?  We just had to make sure not to get distracted by the half floors.

We got to the bar around 5:00pm, which turned out to be the perfect time.  We had our pick of seats and got settled with drinks before it got crowded.  The daylight view was really nice too.

We enjoyed our slightly smoggy sunset,

and then got our favorite night view with the city all lit up.

After several rounds of buy one, get one free drinks, we figured we should probably get some dinner.  Jeff wanted to go back to Neil's Tavern which is where we went for his birthday dinner when we first got here.  It's either a short taxi ride or a long walk from Red Sky.  We opted to walk and enjoy more of the city.  On the way out, Jeff got a picture of the big curve that decorates the bar.  It changes colors, and he caught it on green.

After a delicious dinner which we ate too fast to photograph, Jeff and I walked back up the street to the Oriental Residence which is right next to the main embassy building.  We had found a great last minute price on a suite there, so we could spend the night downtown.  We went onto our balcony and waved hello to the Red Sky bar which we could see was back on the green light (back and to the left).

I had checked into the hotel earlier while Jeff was at work, and it was hard for me to convince myself to leave.  The sofa was super comfy.

And then they brought me complimentary macarons.  

I was in heaven.  They even had fancy technology stuff for Jeff.  We really liked the hotel, and it's definitely one that we could go back to.  We have a lot more exploring to do though.  

When we got home the girls were happily playing.  Elena's new thing is dumping all the duplo blocks at once.

Young said both girls were happy and slept through the night.  Vivian loves having a "sleep over" with Young.  It makes it so much easier to enjoy ourselves downtown knowing that they're having just as much fun out in the burbs.  We'll definitely be doing it again soon.

Lessons Learned

Vivian had Thursday and Friday off for conferences.  The spring ones at ISB are student led, so she's been prepping for hers for the past week.  I was impressed with how organized it was.  She had a folder with her work and a check sheet on the front for a guide.  She also had an iPad and had done some recordings explaining her work with a picture of the work as a background.  It was really well done.

She was most excited to show us her science work.  They've been studying insects and each student got two mealworms to take care of.  They are keeping them in little tubes.  Vivian moved around the science area like an expert.  She got a paper plate to gently empty her mealworm onto, and then got us a magnifying glass so we could look at it more closely.  She decided he seemed thirsty and got him a piece of potato for refreshment.  It was really cute.

In addition to the two days for conferences, Vivian also had the following Monday off, which meant five days without school.  Originally, Jeff was supposed to be traveling at this time, and so I had made reservations for Young and I to take the girls back to the hotel near Hua Hin that we went to a few weeks ago.  I couldn't cancel the reservation, so we decided to go ahead and do the trip even though Jeff wasn't really excited about it.  I had also booked a taxi to take us there, because I hadn't wanted to drive, so Saturday morning we got in the taxi and headed off even though Vivi was the only one who was excited.

When we got there, they told us that they had upgraded us to the suite on the top floor.  This sounded good, and when we got up there the balcony that ran the length of the room was impressive.

Less impressive though was that the entire room was open, unlike the "junior" suite which had the bathroom between the living room and the bedroom making it easier for us to hide from Elena at bedtime.  When I called the front desk to see if we could downgrade, the lady I spoke to told us she was really sorry, but the hotel was completely booked and no other rooms were available.  That was also the reason they couldn't help us out with the fridge that didn't get cold, which meant Jeff was stuck with warm beer.  Not a good start.

Vivian really wanted to go to the pool to try out her new inner tube and go down the water slide, so I left Elena with Jeff, and took Vivi down for some pool time.  She had fun on the slide, and then floated around making up games.

When we had come for Chinese New Year, there were lots of English speaking kids, but March and April are the summer break for Thai schools, so all the kids there this time were Thai and didn't speak English.  Vivi shared some smiles, but couldn't really find anyone to play with, and in the kids club, the movie was in Thai with English subtitles.  Vivian, being the reader she is, thought the subtitles were a fun challenge, and took the whole thing in stride, but I felt bad.

As the night wore on, it went from bad to worse.  Elena wouldn't go to sleep and wailed at the top of her lungs.  Jeff tried to put on a good face, but I could tell that the crying and warm beer were not making him happy.  The tipping point came in the middle of the night, when Vivian woke up crying.  She's had a cold, and she was so congested that she couldn't clear her throat.  She cried, she gagged, she ran to the bathroom thinking she was going to throw up. Elena woke up and cried because Vivian was crying.  It was bad.

We got the girls settled, and everyone but me fell back asleep.  Both the girls were whimpering in their sleep, and it was the saddest little sound.  At that point, I decided we needed to go home the next morning, and not try to push through to the second night we had planned.  I was really regretting taking the taxi, because it meant that getting home was going to be a problem.  I was already upset about the taxi, because when I had called and asked how much the trip was she had told me it would be 3000, but then when we got there, she said, oh no, 3000 each way.  Well, our favorite van driver had told me it would 6700 roundtrip for the van.  I figured his vehicle was twice as big, so it cost twice as much; turns out I was wrong.  I decided since the price was pretty much the same, I would send the van driver a text (it was 2:00am at this point) to see if he could pick us up the next morning.  He forever cemented his place in my heart as the best driver ever when he responded five minutes later with an okay.

When everyone woke up the next morning, and I told them we were going home I could tell Jeff was relieved.  Vivian was a little disappointed, but quickly got over it when she realized she could play with her friends at home.  We all spread out comfortably in the van for the ride home, and I knew I had made the right call.  It was not a fun experience, but I learned a lot from my mistakes.  The most important takeaway was that I need to stop stressing about planning activities for Vivian when she doesn't have school.  She's perfectly capable of keeping herself busy, and hotels with a baby are stressful!  I realized that when Vivian was one she had only ever stayed in one hotel for one night.  Elena, on the other hand, has already stayed in six different hotels.  Our life here is already a vacation, so we don't have to leave our house often, and when we do, we're going to have Young come with us, so that it can be a vacation for me and Jeff as well as for the girls.

Beauty and the Beast

The travel company of Beauty and the Beast came to Bangkok, and I thought it would be perfect for Vivian's first full length musical experience.

I think it was actually the first professional musical I ever saw (Mom, feel free to weigh in).  I still remember going with my high school drama class to see a preview in New York before it opened.  

As Vivian and I were sitting and listening to the opening announcements (please silence your cell phones, no photography), they mentioned that this was the 20 year anniversary of the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast.  Doing the math in my head, I realized that, yeah, that high school trip was twenty years ago.  I could never have imagined then that twenty years later I would be sitting with my six year old daughter watching the same musical in Bangkok, Thailand.

As with any experience we've had in Thailand, there were some quirks to it.  It began with getting to the theater which is, of course, in a mall.  Everything in Bangkok is in these giant mall complexes, and, on the weekends, that is where Thais go to hang out.  This makes the parking ridiculous.  I've written in other blogs about trying to go to our local mall on a weekend afternoon (major traffic jam in the parking lot, Jeff dropped me off) and about getting to Siam Paragon early enough to get a parking spot, only to find myself double parked in when I was ready to leave.  When Thais double park you in, they kindly leave their car in neutral so that you can push it out of the way.  Unfortunately, they'll do a whole row that way, so you really have to start pushing at the back of the row.  I don't like to push cars in the best of circumstances, but I definitely didn't want to do it dressed up and keeping an eye on Vivian.  Final decision, call our favorite taxi guy.  He usually takes Jeff to the airport for trips.  He's honest and uses the meter, which is rare, and so far he's shown up every time.

Of course I still had to triple confirm with him to make sure he showed up at the right house at the right time, and then I pulled up Google maps while we were driving.  With typical Thai logic, there are two malls fairly close to each other that have almost exactly the same name.  I had a bad feeling that he might try to go to the wrong one.  Sure enough, he turned right when he should have turned left.  I asked him to pull over and showed him the map.  He did an, "Ahhhh," like he finally understood why I had said the theater name ten times, instead of the mall name.  The mall is called Esplanade, but when he saw it written out in Thai, suddenly it all made sense to him, and he said, "Empanad!" Apparently, this is like how Central is actually Centon, and Thais have no idea what you're talking about if you say you're going to Central Mall.  On the flip side, we say bubble tea instead of boba tea, so the moral of the story is always triple check, because mispronunciation leads to miscommunication.

In the end, I was really glad we got the taxi though.  The parking lot was such a mess that the traffic was backed into the main street.  It was no problem for us though, because we just hopped out right in front.  That gave me and Viv time to explore the mall a little, look around the theater, and find our seats, no rush, no stress.

At first Vivian was worried the play would be scary, because there are parts of the movie she finds scary, but she quickly got into the performance and was watching intently, no fear.  It was almost as fun to watch her as it was to watch the play.  During intermission we had some interesting conversations about things like why the orchestra was in a pit and what was different between the movie and the play.  Vivian said she really liked the Beast's song which ends the first act.

By the end of the play, I could tell she was getting tired.  She moved slowly on the way out of the theater.  Luckily, getting home was easy.  I just called our taxi buddy and he came around to the front to meet us.  I had agreed to pay him an extra $10 to wait for us for three hours.  While it may seem a bit crazy to hire a taxi to take you to a play, wait for you for three hours, and then take you home, it was the best solution I could come up with to avoid the pitfalls of going to the mall on the weekend in a country where taxi drivers you wave down on the street will typically either try to cheat you or just refuse to take you where you want to go.  It ended up working out perfectly, and we made a memory that I will treasure, and I hope she does too.

Makha Bucha

Vivian has a lot of days off of school.  There are standard school holidays like teacher work days and seasonal breaks, but she also gets lots of Thai holidays I've never heard of before, case in point, Makha Bucha day this past Wednesday.  It's a Buddhist holiday celebrated during a full moon.  The observant Buddhist goes to temple at night and there is a ceremony with candles.  It's also a day when you're supposed to try to be sin free, so maybe that's why there's no work or school.

It's kind of weird to have no school on a Wednesday, so I wasn't quite sure what to do with the day.  I didn't feel like going downtown, so I thought it would be worth a shot to see if Vivian wanted a pampering day.  I told her she could have a massage, get a hair cut, and we could go out to lunch.  She thought that sounded great.

I booked us for the shortest massage I could find, and one that was only head, neck, and shoulders.  Vivian is very ticklish, so I knew she didn't want anyone going near her feet.  She was excited in the beginning, but she wanted the lady to do it very gently.  The lady giving her the massage didn't speak any English, and, even though it would seem to be common sense to take it easy on a kid, didn't seem to understand what we were asking for.  Vivian said she didn't like it when the lady pushed on her back, but it was okay when she rubbed her head.  Verdict: she doesn't want another massage.  Oh well.

After that, we went to get her hair cut which she was really excited about.  She has wanted it shorter for ages.  I told her it had to be at least long enough for a ponytail.  We compromised on shoulder length, and we're both happy with the result.  The original plan was for her to get the little braids in the front as well, but by the time we got to that point, she just couldn't sit still any longer, and said she didn't want braids after all.  It's too bad, because they look really cute and cost almost nothing, but I could tell she just needed to move.

She ran the whole way to the club for lunch and then proceeded to run around outside and feed the fish while we waited for our friends to join us.  Luckily, we were the only people there, so the kids ran around and played with just a brief break for food and drink.

The next day was a free dress day at school, but Vivian's favorite part was her hair, which she got lots of compliments on.  I almost forgot that she had a play in Thai class which parents were invited to come watch.  One of my friends sent me a reminder text, and I raced to school at the last minute.  I'm not sure if our golf cart is going to last for three years, given the speed bump abuse it's subjected to, but I made it just as Vivian was about to start.  It turns out she was the main character, an elephant.  She did a great job and here's the grin to prove it.