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!