Food

I am a foodie and love Thai food. My breakfast consisted of Swiss musli, pad thai, spicy pork salad with chillies, 2 fried eggs, guava juice, coffee and any of the exotic Thai fruits. I didn’t even get that many weird looks because everyone was doing the same thing… just tasting it all! We usually opted for late lunch in a local restaurant where noone spoke any English which translated to great, yet always unexpected and surprising menu. No dinners as we were exhausted.

I do have to mention the fruits – two were my favorites. Mangosteen and longan.

Both more sour than sweet and very refreshing in the heat. The locals on the speedboat told us that you eat them when you have hangover, need to stay awake and need energy – so I lived on it! The kids were pretty adventurous in the beginning, especially Lucas was tasting everything and rather disappointed at the low spice level (me order no spicy please). But at the end, they were ready for some spaghetti and pizza – so I let it go. They did enjoy satay everywhere and loved the Thai pancakes and guava juice.

Green curry with the little green eggplants, and tom kha gai were our favorite and I swear I had it in every restaurant we went to – and every plate was delicious (and cheap!). While the boys were tempted, we didn’t touch the grilled lizard, the fried crickets or roaches 🙂

AND – the lemongrass tea – I am sipping it as I write. The best thing ever made for drinking (besides margarita on Friday night) – but if you didn’t have one before, get it – its calming, smells great and brings you back to Asia !  Mine is from Thailand but hopefully they make some good ones in the US too as I am coming for my supply.

Sightseeing & activities

Too much to mention it all but there were some memorable events / places and I will let the pictures speak for me (so much more on my FB account and our shutterfly page, so if you know me – let me know if you want to see). Elephants, monk feeding, hiking, islands, family, wedding, watching silk being made, beaches, tuk tuk…. Lucas also clearly captured much of it in his 6-year old style on previous blog posts.

Have you ever seen silk being made though? In theory, I always knew that the moths made it but it is absolutely fascinating to see. Whoever came up with this and thought of making thread out of a bug – in China, hundreds years ago?

Wedding

Our first time at a buddhist wedding. Now, we all did hindu weddings about 5x – in fact, I have been to more hindu weddings than non-denominational or Christian weddings, so know the drill – and thought maybe there will be similarities? Not so much but we had a blast and here are some memories:

• walking Petr to the bride’s family with a loud band in front of us, carrying coconuts, food and (yes!) palm tree
• blessing the couple by pouring water on their hands – all of us, one by one
• the 40C / 105F weather thru it all so the beautiful make ups melting, shirts soaked, water bottles used as refresher sprinkling vs. drinking
• Mia figuring it out and standing in front of the fan throughout the whole wedding
• taking a truck through Karon and Kata to a temple – getting lost or going to a wrong temple? Following a bride/groom tuk tuk
• Lucas secretly whispering to me that “weddings are kind of boring, no music, no party, no cake” – that was before the night reception
• accidentally tasting the food for the monks and realizing that dried salted shrimp is not so tasty at 10 am
• seeing the whole family together after such a long time !!