Brunchtastic

I'm on my two week break between quarters, and so, of course, I've been planning outings with friends.  The problem with busy friends is that I can't get everyone together on the same day, so I ended up with two brunch dates this week, instead of the one I had originally intended to have, not that I'm complaining ;-)

My first brunch was local.  A friend of mine wanted to try a place called Waft Me, which is on our main street out here, Chaengwattana.  It's mostly a waffle place, although they had a full menu of other food as well.  When you're presented with a menu full of delicious, design your own waffle decadence though, it seems wrong not to get a waffle.

For about $5, you get to pick from the following:

One waffle, one ice cream, one sauce, and two toppings.  I got plain waffle, strawberry cheesecake ice cream, raspberry sauce, and strawberries and bananas on top.  Oh. My. Goodness.  It was so good, I almost forgot to take a picture before eating the whole thing.

My chocolate addict friend got the chocolate waffle, which you can see in the picture.  Everyone's looked delicious.  The marshmallows on this one cracked me up.

Vivian loves waffles (and ice cream and candy), so I have promised to take her soon.  In the meantime, I took her to the middle school production of Into the Woods.

It was the junior version, which turned out to be an abridged first act.  The kids did a really good job, and Vivian loved it.  When we got home, we were thinking about watching the full Broadway version, but then Amazon recommended the movie version of Pirates of Penzance.  This show has a special place in my heart, because I was in it in college.  I put it on out of nostalgia, but, much to my delight, Vivian got really into it and watched the whole thing.  I am a very proud mommy.  Even Elena stayed still long enough to eat some popcorn and check out the operatics.  

If Vivian is interested in something, then Elena is interested too.  This can annoy Vivian at times, but she's a good sport about it, and I find it super cute.

Today, I went to my second brunch of the week.  This time it was at Roast, which is downtown.  There are two branches of this restaurant.  One is at Em Quartier, a shopping center on Sukhumvit near the Phrom Phong BTS stop.  That's the one we went to.  There's another one at a shopping center a bit farther down Sukhumvit called The Commons.  Em Quartier has an interesting layout, including a wall of plants and waterfalls accented by peacock statues adorned with flowering tails.

The menu at Roast is extensive, and pretty much everything sounded delicious.  I was torn between the regular eggs benedict, and the eggs benedict with a crab cake.  Luckily, I got one and my friend got the other, so I could taste both.

Turns out if you gain a crab cake, you lose an egg.  The crab cake tasted pretty good, but overall, I would say I prefer the eggs benedict at Chu's.  

There were three of us, and we were torn about several other menu items, so we ordered a bunch of stuff to share including corn and zucchini fritters (more batter than corn or zucchini, but they came with avocado and tzatziki, both of which were delicious),

and fried chicken which had been soaked in buttermilk and hot sauce.

Since Roast is known for its coffee, and since we weren't being decadent enough.  I also got a coffee shake.

That was the only meal I had for the day, but wow, it was quite a meal.  We have a three day weekend now, and the plan is family time and recovering from binge eating.

Downtown Time and Wrapping Up the Basketball Season

This past week has been a bit crazy.  Jeff's office was hosting a conference, and he was at work more than he was at home.  He stayed downtown a couple nights, and I was sending him pictures of the girls, since he was missing them.

Vivian at Tuesday night basketball practice,

and Elena, being Elena.

He asked me to come and join him for at least one of the evening outings, and so I picked the one that included some of my favorite things, Centara, Red Sky, and Din Tai Fung.  The plan was to take people for drinks at Red Sky bar first, and then have dinner at Din Tai Fung.  I figured if that's where everyone was hanging out, we should stay at the Centara Grand at Central World.

I drove down with a friend, and when I went to check in, they told me that they were going to upgrade us to a suite, sweet!  It was huge.  There was a big living area, complete with table and chairs.

The bedroom was also big, with lots of windows.

Even the tub in the bathroom was next to floor to ceiling windows, but I couldn't get a picture of that because there was too much glare.  The room was on the 43rd floor, and the view was great, but it was even better on the 55th floor where we met everyone for drinks at Red Sky.

We had fun chatting with everyone, but we were really bummed to discover that Red Sky isn't doing a buy one get one free happy hour anymore.  Luckily, when I checked into the hotel, I got vouchers for free tapas and sangria at Centara's new restaurant Uno Mas, which is on the 54th floor.  Jeff and I told the group we would meet them for dinner and went down to check it out.

The decor had a really nice blue theme.  The main dining room was open air though, and the fans weren't on because they were doing a photo shoot.

We decided that al fresco dining might work for December, but since it's May, we stuck to the air conditioned bar area.

The sangria was the same as the one at Red Sky, which is fine, since I like that one.  The tapas turned out to be yummy too, although very small.  They came around with a happy hour tray of free tapas to try.  We figured that the hotel must be pushing happy hour at Uno Mas now instead of Red Sky.  The view wasn't as good, but it was definitely nice.

We ended up being glad that the tapas were small, because there were lots of yummy dumplings at Din Tai Fung.  After dinner we invited some of our friends to come check out our cool suite.  We also know where the wine store is in Central (7th floor, past the movie theater), so we were able to stock up and host our friends properly.  It was a really fun evening downtown.  Of course, Jeff had to get up for work the next morning, and I had to get up with him and then drive back home.  That part wasn't as much fun, so I've made a mental note that weeknights downtown are not the best plan.

To keep the crazy going, we had everyone come out to Nichada that next evening and hosted a pizza pool party.  The kids thought it was great, and everyone had fun, but it was quite a fast paced week, so by the time we got to the weekend, we were all ready for some quiet family time.

This Saturday was Vivian's basketball final tournament.  It didn't start until noon though, so she came with me and Elena to music class.  I think Vivian enjoys music class as much as Elena does, so it's nice that it's on Saturdays now, and she can come sometimes.  

The basketball tournament went from 12-1:45, and it involved all the teams taking turns playing each other.  It was a fun idea, but I knew Elena wouldn't be able to last through the whole thing, so Jeff took Vivian at 12, and then he came back and got me and Elena over there around 1:00.  The Thai Craft Fair was also going on at the school, so there was lots to do, and all the food vendors were there, including Shoshanna's which has Vivian's favorite banana waffles.  I ordered one for her to have after the game, but then I saw Elena was eyeing it, so I ordered a second one.  Elena, Jeff, and I ended up sharing the first waffle while watching Vivian play.  It was a lot of fun.  At the end, she got a team photo, a medal, and a basketball.  She was very pleased.

The ball is a kids ball, so it's slightly smaller than a regulation size basketball.  We've already gotten Vivian a regular basketball, so she has generously decided that this smaller one will be for Elena.  Elena was very happy when the official games were done, and we let her run around the court bouncing and chasing the loose balls that were left out.  Vivian is paving the way for her little sister to be quite an athlete.

Today is a lazy Sunday.  Jeff and Elena are getting some Sparkle magazine reading time in.

I'm sure he'll eventually teach her all the superhero names, just like he taught Vivian, but for now, he's letting her make the reading decisions, and he knows all the My Little Ponies' names.  He's such a good dad.  His job keeps him busy, but he makes sure that his time at home counts.

Father Daughter Dance

The Girl Scouts organize a father daughter dance at one of the hotels downtown every year.  It's supposed to be a fancy evening for the girls.  Jeff was out of town last year, so he and Vivian didn't go.  He was in town this year, but still not super thrilled about going.  Obviously, he loves hanging out with Vivian, but dancing and formal parties are not really his thing.  He cleans up real good though, and he and Vivian ended up looking fantastic for their night out.

The dance started at six, and Vivian usually goes to bed at eight.  It seemed a little silly for them to spend as much time in the car as they did at the dance, so we got an Airbnb apartment downtown near the hotel and planned some other fun activities to make a full trip of it.

The apartment came with parking, so Viv and I waited in the building lobby while Jeff parked the car.

The apartment itself was perfectly serviceable.  It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a balcony, and a living room that was big enough for having friends over, which was our evening plan.

We got there around lunch time, and decided to have a fun, fancy lunch out.  The Hotel Muse was right next to our apartment, and it has a couple nice restaurants.  Their steak restaurant, Babette's,  had a good lunch deal.  For about $30 Vivian and I got a 200g Australian tenderloin steak with a side, and either an appetizer or dessert to go with it.  Jeff branched out and got beef brisket, but we all agreed that the tenderloin was better.  The Hotel Muse has some pretty dramatic decor, and the restaurant was no different.  Vivian felt like it was all very fancy, and said she was going to try and be "proper."

We had a nice table with a great view, and we were the only people sitting in our section, so it was like a private lunch.  We really enjoyed it.

After lunch, we went back to the apartment to rest for a bit, and then some of our friends came over to enjoy wine with meats and cheeses and play some board games.  We had brought Disney's Beat the Parents from home, and Vivian was so excited to have a full crew of players.  We played a couple rounds with her, before it was time to get ready for the dance.  When I asked her what her favorite part of the weekend was, she said playing board games :-)

Jeff and Vivian got ready and posed for their picture on the balcony.  We all admired them and then sent them on their way.  

Part of the reason for our friends showing up was for me to have someone to eat dinner with while Jeff and Vivian were off at the dance.  I had also bumped into another mom who was staying with her family in the same building.  We invited her to join us, so we ended up with a group of five for dinner.  We didn't go far.  Crepes and Co. is a restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it was just a few steps from the apartment building.

I was so full from our steak lunch, that I ordered a salad for dinner, but it ended up being a huge salad.  Luckily, they gave it to me with serving utensils, so I was able to share it with everyone.  I also wanted to make sure that I saved room for dessert.  They had a whole menu of different, delicious sounding crepe concoctions.  Two people at the table split a flaming crepe, but I thought I'd go local, and ordered the crepe with mangoes and coconut ice cream.  It was HUGE!

I couldn't finish the whole thing, but I enjoyed the part I ate.

After dinner, we went back to the apartment.  Jeff and Vivian were back from the dance by then, and they were hanging out and watching a movie.  We let Vivian play one more round of board games, and then put her to bed.

We still had plenty of wine and more games to play, so the adults stayed up for quite a while longer.  I haven't done a game night in a while, and it was a lot of fun.

The next day was Mother's Day.  Our plan from the start had been to go to Crepes and Co. for breakfast, so we went ahead with that even though I had gone for dinner the night before.  For breakfast, I decided to try one of their breakfast crepes.  I started eating it before I remembered to take a picture, so it's a little messy.

It was only alright.  The dessert crepe was definitely better.  Jeff got an omelet and Vivian got pancakes.  They both really liked their food, so if we go back, I'll just get something different.  We all were missing Elena, so we headed home.  She was very pleased to see us all, and I got lots of hugs as my Mother's Day present.  We spent the rest of the day just relaxing and having family time.  It was a fun weekend.

  

So many fun things to do!

We love our vacations, but daily life in Bangkok is pretty awesome too.  The weekend after spring break, the Girl Scouts had a sleepover at the aquarium downtown.  There were the usual dealing with crazy elements of a field trip, but there were a lot of cool parts too.  Our favorite part was sleeping in the glass tunnel with all the sharks and fish swimming by.

We also loved the boat with a glass cut out,

getting to eat dinner and do a craft in front of the shark tank,

and having the aquarium all to ourselves after closing.

There was enough excitement to wear the girls out, and they were actually asleep by midnight, a new record for our troop!

The following weekend I was back downtown, but this time for some grown up girl fun.  My friends and I have been talking about the Sukhothai Hotel's legendary chocolate buffet high tea for months, and that was the weekend we all had open to go experience it.  We knew we were going to have a great time when we saw the chocolate trolley.

There was also a full dessert buffet, with chocolate in pretty much everything and trays of melted dark, milk, and white chocolate for dipping or drizzling over anything that wasn't chocolate enough already.

Oh yeah, there was also a table of savories.

Actually, those were pretty good.  We decided to be responsible and start with that table.

I got a kick out of the cucumber sandwich being wrapped in a slice of cucumber.  The black thing is egg salad in a "charcoal bun." I'm not sure who thought this was a good idea, but it tasted good.  

After a quick savory course, we started attacking the dessert table.  I was kind of disappointed because the only scones they had were green tea and mango flavored.  They were this funky green color with chunks of mango in them.  I'm not really a fan of green tea flavored anything that's not actually tea, but I couldn't have high tea without scones.  Luckily, they had clotted cream and strawberry jam, so I dolloped some on, and then it all tasted pretty good.  I tried to take a picture of my first dessert plate, but there was a lot of light and reflection stuff going on, so it's a bit of a weird picture.

We each took a couple runs at the desserts, but we saved the best for last, the chocolate trolley.  This was run by a man in full chef's gear with a big white hat.  He told us he was originally from Switzerland, and then he explained all of the different kinds of chocolate to us and let us try them.  It was a full on chocolate tasting!  Once we settled on our favorites, he melted them down into a cup of delicious hot chocolate.  Yum!

We had originally discussed inviting our husbands along on this decadent outing, but when they heard the words "high tea" they all turned us down.  Their loss ;-)  Jeff actually ended up showing up for a little bit though.  He was downtown with some friends of his on his own adventure that Saturday.  He went to experience the Bangkok version of Comic Con.

Some of the things were what you would expect to find at a Comic Con, like the Iron Throne,

and crazy Walking Dead fans.

Then Jeff got to the Star Wars section,

and the fact that we live in Asia began to be apparent. 

Then it got weirder.  Jeff said he thinks these ladies are famous, but he's not sure.

The weird award though, has to go to Bananas in Pajamas.  Yes, it's a real thing.

Jeff spent a few fun hours there, and then took the BTS over to where we were stuffing our faces with chocolate and caught a ride home with us.  

He kept the comic book theme going the next day, and took Vivian to see Captain America: Civil War in first class style. Yes, he has two Captain America shirts, and Vivian is wearing her Black Widow shirt which she put on at 6:00am, about the time she started asking, "Is it time to go to the movie yet?"

Don't worry, Elena gets out too.  Her new favorite thing is to come to ISB with me and have a strawberry banana smoothie while we wait for Vivi.

She has fun at home too.  She's very into lining things up.

She especially likes it when she gets everything to herself, like the TV and Vivian's basketball.

It's  good life here for all of us :-)

Legoland

Even though we were sad to leave Singapore (Vivian got in some window time before we left),

we were excited for our next adventure, Legoland, Malaysia!

Legoland is actually pretty close to Singapore.  The X factor in terms of time is how long it takes you to get through the border.  I had searched around online for driving services to get us from Singapore to Legoland and found one that included all the border fees, so it was a pretty smooth trip.  The driver picked us up at the apartment, we drove for about 30 minutes, then we got to the border.  It took about another 20-30 minutes to get through the lines on each side, and then about another 20-30 minutes to get to Legoland, easy!

I had booked us a package through the Legoland hotel that included a half-price, two day pass to both the regular park and the water park.  I knew we were going to have a good time when we walked into the lobby and there were two huge Lego play areas.  One was a pirate ship and the other was a castle.  Both were surrounded by a sea of Lego hemmed in by a circle of cushioned benches for parents to sit on.  I realized once we got home, that we had so much fun playing in these areas that we didn't take any pictures.  Whoops!

We got there in the morning, so we couldn't check into our room yet, but they had a luggage room set up, and I had already pulled out our swim gear.  We changed in the lobby bathrooms and headed over to the water park.  We didn't take pictures, but we had a lot of fun.  Elena and I hung out in the wave pool while Jeff and Vivian went on all the different water slides.  Then we all migrated down to the kiddie pool area that had sun shades over it.  Elena LOVED it.  There was also a lazy river going around the covered area, so Jeff and Vivian took a spin on that.  Since it's Legoland, there were water Legos floating around to build with and covered water tables for Lego boats and other creations.

We got a lunch of some really yummy fried seafood.  The only juice they were serving was blackberry flavored Ribena.  None of us had ever had Ribena before, so we bought one as an experiment.  Vivian decided that she loved it, so we ended up drinking a LOT of Ribena for the next two days.

After a few hours of splashing around, we went back to the hotel to see if we could get into our room.  It was ready, so we went up to check it out and change.  The hotel has three different room themes: Kingdom, Pirate, and Adventure (read ancient Egypt).  Vivian had picked the kingdom theme, and she was not disappointed in the room.  There was a bunk bed area for the kids and then a king size bed for the adults.  There were lots of fun Lego touches, and we got our own box of Duplo to play with.

There were even Lego creations in the bathrooms!  It was great.

After a change and a rest, we headed over to the main park.  It was easy to get from the hotel to the park, but you had to get past the Lego guards.

Near the entrance, there were several Lego creations to welcome you.  We found the pigeon lady to be the most memorable, in a disturbing way.

The first activity we found was a Lego driving school.  Vivian hopped right in a car and got her Lego driver's license.

Jeff really wanted to ride the Lego train, so we all got on.

Then we wandered into an ancient adventure area, complete with camels.  That's her new driver's license that Vivian is proudly wearing around her neck.

Vivian is becoming quite the daring amusement park goer, so she was excited to try the drop ride.  Jeff is trying to teacher her to put her hands up.

But when the drop actually happened, she held on for dear life.

As we were walking around, we also found a Lego Ribena blackberry.  Vivian posed with her new favorite.

We hadn't found a roller coaster yet, but we did find a splash ride.  Jeff and Vivian bravely got on, while Elena and I watched from the bridge.  Elena was definitely concerned when she saw the boats go splashing down the ramp.  "Uh-oh, Daddy Vivi."  Sure enough, down they went with a splash!

Jeff with arms up, and Vivi hanging on for dear life ;-)  She loved it though, and since they were already soaked, they went around for another go.  

As we left the ride with Vivian and Jeff squelching and dripping water, we noticed that there was hardly anyone left in the park.  We asked one of the park attendants what time the park closed, and she said 6:00pm.  At that point it was 5:55pm, so we figured we'd better make our way towards the exit.  In a way it was good, since it had been a LONG day of fun.  

Jeff and Vivian got in to some dry clothes, and then we went downstairs for dinner at the Bricks restaurant.  It was a fairly standard buffet set up, but they had a kids chef donut decorating station, which Vivi got a kick out of.

Luckily, she agreed with us that she should probably just take a sample bite of her creation, rather than eating the whole thing and going into sugar shock.

We ended the night with some Lego robot building time.

The next morning we ate breakfast in the hotel, and then Jeff played in the giant Lego pit near the restaurant with the girls while I went upstairs to pack us up.  Elena is becoming a real Lego apprentice.

Our first stop in the park was a roller coaster, since Vivian hadn't gotten to go on a proper one the day before.  They thoughtfully put a car in front of the ride for pictures.

Elena wanted her turn too but was too curious to sit still for a picture.

She and I positioned ourselves in the shade of a tree, and we could see Jeff and Vivian zooming and dipping around on the roller coaster.

Still no hands up for Vivi :-)  We ended up getting the full souvenir photo package that included a Lego block version of the picture.  It also included a key chain, like the one Vivian got at Sesame Place when she and I went on her first roller coaster together.  She's building up a collection of roller coaster key chains.  We'll see who's next.  Judy?

After the roller coasters, we needed some air conditioning, so we went into the Star Wars exhibit.

They showed a short, goofy Lego Star Wars movie, and then we got to walk through rooms displaying Lego creations from all the movies.  They started with Phantom Menace and went through Return of the Jedi.  I guess they're still building The Force Awakens.

The girls liked the cantina scene, especially since you could push a button for music.

Every display had a couple buttons you could push for sound and motion effects.  It was fun to look around.  

After that we went to the 4D Lego movie for more air conditioning.  They gave us all 3D glasses, which Elena was very impressed with.  She's noticed that Jeff and I wear glasses, so she keeps wondering why she doesn't have glasses.  The movie was about 10-15 minutes long, which was about as long as she was interested in wearing glasses, so it worked out.

We wandered through Miniland, with Lego creations of famous sights.  Since this Legoland is in Malaysia, Miniland was full of Asian attractions.  We recognized our own Wat Arun from Bangkok.

We also found Angkor Wat from our trip to Siem Reap.

Some of it was geographically impossible, like the China display with the Great Wall right behind the Forbidden City.

But the girls were impressed all the same.

Jeff got a cool shot of Miniland with our mega hotel in the background.

After that, Vivian wanted to go jousting on a Lego horse.

We found some cute Lego bunnies on the way.

Vivian also joined a pack of Lego wolves.

She wanted to do a few more roller coaster rounds, so Elena and I found an indoor, air conditioned area to play, while Vivian and Jeff zipped around.

The ended up playing a while themselves, since the blocks and the air conditioning were irresistible.

We got lunch at the park, and Vivian managed to catch Emmett just as he was about to leave the restaurant.

Then we played at a covered Duplo playground for a while (they had fans!).

Finally, it was time to say good bye to Legoland and head back across the border to the Singapore airport.  We got a driver through the hotel, and he was very friendly.  He told us about the things we were driving past.  We had a funny moment, because we had seen a building with this gateway in Miniland.

We thought it was so over the top that it might not be real, but, sure enough, we drove by the real thing on our way out of town.  Our driver told us it's a royal palace.

We got to the airport with plenty of time before our flight.  In fact, we had so much time that Jeff and Vivian went to get foot massages at the airport spa.  I walked with Elena in the stroller, trying to get her to go to sleep, but there was just too much stimulation, and she kept asking, "Where Daddy Vivi?"  It worked out though, because she ended up nodding off peacefully on the flight, which was quite late at night.  Poor Vivian though had a rough time on the flight.  She ran in to some friends from school at the airport, which was fun, but she's had a bit of a cold, and when the plane was landing her ears got really painful.  Luckily, the seat next to Jeff was empty, so she went and sat with him while I propped Elena up to make sure she didn't keel over during landing.

We had a great vacation, but it was definitely good to sleep in our beds that night after such a full day.