Saturday, August 13, 2011

Thailand - Khao Lak pt.III

It might not sound like it from the earlier blogs but we did get out of the resort, and not just to ride elephants.

The main town Bang La On (which most people refer to as Khao Lak) was about 20 minutes drive from where we were staying. The roads are pretty crazy even though this area is not massively developed, there seems to be a skinny outside lane closest to the curb where all the motorcycles/scooters ride (and there are a lot of those, often with two or three people on them, sometimes with a baby up front on the drivers lap) and then all of the cars, trucks and buses use the other lane and are prone to high risk over taking. 95% of the cars on the road are pickups and that seems to be so they can double as cabs. The local cabs have a welded steel riding section with canopy screwed to the back of the pickup, so we were hanging on to the kids each time we rode in them for fear of losing them overboard - definitely a different experience.

If Scout moves to Thailand she wants a scooter in pink!

The town had some really great restaurants, a couple of 7Eleven's (where we picked up beer and snacks), a lot of shops that sold knock-off surfwear and a number of tailors and optometrists. It was really hot cruising around in the shops and after the first trip into town we decided that it was no fun for the kids so we got a sitter the next time we went in.

The second time we went in we had two objectives 1) find a tailor to copy a favourite pair of trousers of mine and a jacket of Kelly's, and 2) visit the local markets.

When the cab driver found out we were after a tailor he went on about the best tailor in the area and insisted we go there. The place was a mile and a half out of town and the driver promised that once finished someone at the tailors would give us a ride into town. Undoubtedly the driver got some form of kick back from the tailor for bringing in business and although we were aware of this we chanced it and it was a mistake. The tailor did not have great fabric so we decided to check the multiple tailor options in the town proper, but with no business there was no ride into town. With limited time and 32 degrees C temp the mile and a half walk into town was something we didn't want to face so we started walking in the opposite direction toward the local markets where we had seen some cabs (this was a bit less than a mile away). We had only just started walking along the side of the road, watching out for the scooters buzzing by us (no sidewalks here), when we saw a cobra and a cat in a stand off about 10 feet from the side of the road. We didn't care too much about the scooters at that point and found the next taxi in record time.

When we finally made it to the local markets we had a good time, again a lot of knock-off stuff but also all sorts of fruit and veg and some interesting stall food. It was a lot of fun and I guess our luck turned while we were there because no sooner had we finished with the market and were sitting down in a restaurant across the street enjoying a beverage then the heavens opened up.

Local markets

One of the highlights of our last couple of days was letting off paper lanterns on the beach at night and watching them fly off into the sky until you couldn't see them any more. All up there were probably one hundred lanterns let off in the space of 20 minutes so they made a continuous line of fire in the sky as far up as the eye could see. The kids stayed up late to do this and they loved it.

Kel & Luca waiting for the hot air to fill their lantern before release

The journey home was overnight so it was much easier on the kids who slept most of the way. It was a magic family holiday making it hard to snap out of holiday mode and get back to work. We are already planning our next Thailand visit, probably in 2013, and we are hoping that some of the family and friends in the US can join us!

Friday, August 12, 2011

Thailand - Khao Lak pt.II

The Le Meridien was awesome for more than just pools and food, there was a great activity schedule for kids and adults. There was a special kids indoor play centre called the Penguin Club that had everything from Playstation competitions through to crafts like t-shirt printing. Both Luca and Scout did a number of the craft classes but the stand out activity was the Thai boxing (Muay Thai) classes that Luca took. The kids dressed in the special Muay Thai boxing pants and boxing gloves and had lessons in a real boxing ring. There was no holding back as you can see from the photo's of Luca below.

Mosquito weight champion Luca Ferguson

For Kelly the favourite "activity" was the spa, which from her description sounded pretty decadent and awesome, and for me I enjoyed the garden tour. The guy who led the garden tour, Karn, became a bit of friend for me while we were there and whenever he saw us he would invite the kids to feed the Koi with him. There were some awesome ponds with pagodas built over them and all had masses of well fed, huge Koi in them.


There may have been a lot of Thai/Buddhist ornaments to choose from on the grounds of the resort but Scouty's favourite was a small statue of a Thai women that was outside of our room who was nicknamed the "booby lady" by Scout.

Scout and the "booby lady"

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Thailand - Khao Lak pt.I

We've been waiting on this one for a while - a well earned break in the tropics in the middle of the Australian winter. There was the not insignificant hump of getting there with Luca and Scout to deal with but once that was done it was automatic switch-off.

We stayed at the Le Meridien Khao Lak which was great, we had been going back and forwards with a place in Phuket as an alternative but both the facility and the region were the right choice in the end. We had adjoining rooms with a door between the two rooms which meant the kids had the own room and they treated it as there own , I was asked to leave and go back to my "holiday house" by Scout on more than one occasion.

Luca eating Dragon Fruit at breakfast

First morning we headed down to the buffet breakfast which really set the scene for the food on the entire trip. The buffet breakfast which catered for Asian customers, Europeans, healthy eaters and the egg and bacon crowd (me!) was the way to get things started right everyday. After that we didn't need lunch, so we were on a two meal a day plan with dinner alternating between one of the restaurants at the resort (Italian, Indian, Thai, Korean, Seafood) and a trip into the local town to eat awesome Thai food for next to nothing. As my lead off topic you can tell the food was a big hit, in retrospect my enthusiasm for the food experience was not even dampened by dealing with 20 sit down restaurant meals with Luca and Scout - which is more than they have had to deal with for all of the non-Thailand part of their lives.

Kelly and Scout on a waterslide - but who is having the most fun?

The other day one activity that was high on the list were the water slides. Before we arrived, Thailand was the land of water slides and elephant rides in Luca and Scout's eyes. Day one we spent a good six hours in the pool and went up and down the water slides roughly 50 times. As well as having our "own" pool virtually outside our apartment the resort had three other massive pools with two of them having partial accommodation for children. Most days we did between 4 and 6 hours in the pools over two stints.

The other week one activity we got straight onto was the elephant riding. Luca got a big kick out of it and got to ride up front with the jockey(?), Scout didn't let her reputation down for instant sleep in any moving vehicle and was asleep before we even hit the jungle. Post the elephant rides we saw a snake show where this crazy guy was kissing massive cobras and getting them to spit venom at him and then he put an 8 foot long Burmese Python's down his pants. At one stage he got Luca out of the audience (which was just the Ferguson family) and was just about to put a python down Luca's pants when we put a halt to that (we told the guy Luca already had one down there and it didn't like competition). These guys were persistent and when we were not paying attention for a second they had Luca holding another large python with no assistance from them while they were taking pics that they later sold to us. A bit of reality on this, at one point on the elephant walk through the jungle we passed where these guys lived, it was primitive, third world so a couple of bucks for a photo didn't seem like much to part with.

Elephant jockey and snake charmer - Luca Ferguson

We were only a couple of days in and had the two big ticket items for the kids well and truly covered. I married a (beautiful) well organised, over achiever - as if anyone who knows Kel had any doubts!