Enjoying Being Back Home in Thailand

After a summer of travel, it's lovely to just be home.  Vivian got off to a great start at school on Monday.

And here's the regular uniform on Tuesday.

She handled jet lag like a champ and really seems to be enjoying her third grade class.  

The best part of being home of course is being with Jeff.  The girls can get him to play pretty much anything at this point.  They worked together on an impressive Lego tower the other day.

I'm really glad to have him back too, and by Friday we felt like we could leave the girls for some grown up time.  There's a "German" brewery called Tawadang about ten minutes from our house that has a live music show.  Lots of people said that the beer was good, the food was fine, and the show was an experience, so we gathered up some friends and went to check it out.  I had called to make reservations, and apparently I made a good impression, because they put us right in front. 

 The food was an interesting mix of a few "German" dishes like pork knuckle that came with Thai dipping sauces,

and more standard Thai options like deep fried sea bass with sweet and spicy sauce.

It was a farang friendly sea bass though.  We got the whole fish, but the pieces were already picked off for us.  They also had sushi which no one was brave enough to try.  I missed the pretzels they have at the other beer garden down the street, but I moved passed it when I saw the beer.  They serve the beer in liter mugs! 

After a while though, people's arms were getting tired, so we ended up switching to the 3 liter dispenser with smaller mugs.  Crazy!

The show was a lot of fun too.  The opening was a mix of more traditional Thai music,

and singers doing covers of famous American and Thai songs.

They all had good voices, so we enjoyed listening to songs we knew well.  At about 8pm, the main performer came on.  She had a stage name that was something like Devine Diva, and she had the outfit and pipes to live up to it.

This is the best picture I got of her.  There were so many rhinestones and effects lights.  Major sparkle!

We followed up our Friday night out with a lazy Saturday at home.  Elena learned she liked Eggo waffles while we were in the States and is determined to fit as much in her mouth as Vivian does.

Elena is especially loving having her pony toys to play with again, since I didn't bring any of them on vacation.

On Wednesday, I left her happily playing with Young and went downtown with a bunch of my friends to celebrate a birthday with the Grand Hyatt's famous Khao Soi.  This is a chicken curry and noodle dish with legendary status among embassy employees.  I hadn't had it yet, so I was excited to see what all the fuss was about.  It was an impressive bowl of noodle and chicken goodness.

I asked for it "mai pet" (not spicy).  The waiter responded, "Nit noy?" (Just a little?).  I guess not spicy was not really an option.  Luckily, I've toughened up a bit over the past couple years, so I was able to eat the whole thing and enjoy it, even though my mouth was tingling.  I wasn't brave enough to try the spicy and pickled extras on the little plate though.  It definitely was good, and I would definitely eat it again if offered, but I don't know that I'd make a special trip downtown for it.  

We also got mango and sticky rice for dessert.  On the plate were little decorative "fruits" which are really wax filled with bean paste.  

They look pretty, but they are not to my taste.  Now the mango and sticky rice, on the other hand, I could eat that all day.

Friday was Jeff and my ten year wedding anniversary, so I was back downtown for more culinary adventures.  I had asked Jeff to take me back to a restaurant we really enjoyed called Scarlett.  Part of the appeal was the great view.

What was less appealing was that they gave me a hard time about my footwear being too flip flop like.  Jeff has his long pants, close toe shoe look down now, but I was living on the edge with my leather flip flops.  They told me I had to surrender them and take some really ugly loaner pumps.  The manager was there, and he was French.  He apologized for having to take my shoes and offered us some complimentary prosecco to smooth things over.  Prosecco accepted.  Happy anniversary to us :-) 

One of the reasons for going to Scarlett was their great ham selection, which makes Jeff happy.

My happiness came in scallop form.

We took our time and watched the city turn from day to night.  It was a lovely way to spend the evening.

We have friends who live downtown and are on R&R, so we are "keeping an eye on their apartment" aka, using it as a free place to spend the night downtown.  We got an added anniversary bonus though, because they're right next to the building that I like to call the "broken building", since it looks like it's still under construction.  Apparently it's getting ready for its grand opening as the tallest building in Bangkok and putting on a light show to get everyone's attention.  It went on for quite a while with all different combinations of lights and patterns.  This was the best shot we got.

It wasn't as loud as fireworks and just about as pretty, a great way to end our celebratory evening.

The next morning we had to figure out breakfast.  I knew there was a Chu Chocolate branch in the area, but I wasn't sure exactly where it was.  We had decided to just go home, but as we were walking out of the building Jeff spotted it across the street! He's a softy and caved on going there for breakfast even though I had agreed to go home.  I started with a shot of espresso in my Parisian hot chocolate, yum!

Of course, I had to have my favorite eggs benedict on their homemade biscuit.

Jeff didn't suffer either.

It was a big space, and it wasn't crowded at all.

It's a little dangerous that I know where it is now, but it was a nice way to end our anniversary getaway.  I can't wait for our next downtown adventure.  We have less than a year left in Thailand, and we're going to make the most of it.