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Month: January 2018

Claire’s thoughts

Claire’s thoughts

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A bit of a different blog this week, I didn’t much like Bangkok and we didn’t really get up to much. We saw the Grand Palace with everyone else, it was very gold and pretty. I tried to wear the correct clothes but got pulled up on my leggings which were too tight so I purchased a skirt. It was very hot!

 

So it’s been a month on the road.

It’s been a month of excitement but also a month of getting used to Asia and being put out of our, ok ok, MY comfort zone.

 

A few things I’ve noticed….

A smile and trying to say a few words (even if they are totally mispronounced) go a long way.

Mums are the same everywhere whether on holiday or local, every mum is helping their kids, up stairs or escalators or crossing the road, and trying to stop siblings squabbling or tantys. They smile at me and I’ve started to smile at them, that knowing smile, ‘I feel yah Mummy, keep slogging!’

Traveling with a cute little 6 year old makes for interesting people watching….everybody loves her, she brings a smile to SO many faces as she skips along, they wave at her, they want to touch her, at first our shy girl was like 😧 but is better with it now and is more 🙄. C has settled in too and is not at all sad about not starting school this week.

The heat is actually reasonably bearable, Chiang Mai in particular was great and I felt cold twice in that week!

BK is finding plenty of opportunities to work, he’s had good experiences with co working spaces. The WiFi at these has been lightening fast, while the WiFi at our various Airbnbs have worked but frequently drop out. It has been very helpful to have a friend watching over our business at home when BK is MIA.

My fave thing so far was definitely the elephants, though I did enjoy the island trip out from Krabi. Singapore as a whole was quite a highlight for me too.

The kids will be a toss up between Kidzania and the elephants. BK’s was the elephants too. l’m glad we spent several days worth of budget on that excursion! Must remember that for the future, sometimes it’s worth splurging!

The budget has been quite easy to manage. I once read a blog where a family went on a trip like this and started off well but then got sick of talking about money so then didn’t, so they over spent and went into debt!!?? I can’t quite understand that. Yes I’m adding up money at the end of each day but it’s not a chore….

Which brings me to what IS a chore….

School work! God bless my kids school.

I’ve worked out very quickly I did not miss my calling to be a teacher!

We’ve been trying to do an hour about 3 times a week. The maths books are easy, getting them to write is a task and reading, well, wish I’d researched that a bit more. I’ve signed up to Getepic.com but choosing a book for them to read is 😩. We must try harder. BK has done some sketching with them, and soon I’ll add in some spelling.

 

So that’s Thailand done for us, country number 4 ✔️

 

Budget update :

Bangkok – $3 under

Total budget – $263 under

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai

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I had heard a lot about this being a place visitors love. Well sign me up to that list! It’s been great. The temperature has been manageable, some nights we’ve even slept with the air con off. One morning was a cool 17 degrees!

 

The flight up here from Krabi was great. Followed by a quick Uber to our apartment and falling straight into bed as I did not feel well. A fever and dehydration took me a couple of days to recover from, I couldn’t eat much but sculled the rehydration sachets my doctor had so kindly given me before we left home.

 

On Friday I finally felt well enough to Uber into the central town to see a monument and grab dinner. Hawaiian pizza was all I could manage.

 

On Saturday we went to a mall, which was ginormous as seems to be the norm here. By then I had worked out the little boy had lost the spacer to his asthma inhaler and spent my time at the mall pacing the pharmacies looking for one, with a picture of it on my phone in one hand and the inhaler in the other hand!! I failed unfortunately and will have to keep looking, but his asthma has been under control without the inhaler thank goodness.

 

That afternoon we decided to go up a mountain to visit a temple called Doi Sa Tep for sunset. You have to fill a red truck with 10 people before they’ll take you any where. So we sat, a German girl arrived, yay half way! Then 2 Korean girls arrived, that’s 7, we sat, we waited, we looked at our watches, sunset was getting closer…..Finally one Korean girl and I negotiated with the driver a 20 baht discount for each person and he would wait for us until 7pm so we could see the sunset. Winning. It would have been a lovely view if Chiang Mai got its pollution under control! But there was beautiful sunset light reflecting on the temple.

 

The next morning, we were up early with great anticipation, it was time to spend the day with elephants! I had researched extensively. I knew we did not want to ride and didn’t want any nasty hooks, we were not going to support any abuse to the animals at all. I knew I wasn’t keen to go where there was heeeeeaps of people. So I had found a place online and had been into their offices on Friday to book, pay and run all my requests past them. They passed with flying colours. Elephant Nature park here we come. Except we weren’t going to the actual park we went on a ‘saddle off’ tour.

 

The van arrived to collect us at 8.30am, and when the van door opened I was stoked to see only 4 other people! Plus our driver and a guide. We were off to a great start. We drove 1.5 hours south, then transferred to a ute for another 20 minute drive. We had finally arrived. As we changed into the clothes that were provided, 2 beautiful elephants came down the paddock towards us and as they got closer we noticed a baby was with them also!

 

We learnt that these animals, all female, had only been freed from riding camps 3 months ago. The adults were 38 and the baby was 4. One adult was pregnant, she’d been pregnant for a year….with another year expected to go! It was time to give them some love, so we got straight into feeding them sugar cane, then we were given bags full of mini bananas to carry and took them for a bush walk with their handlers ‘mahouts’. They sure knew what was in those bags! Elephant trunks came nosying around, looking for food if you weren’t paying close attention!

 

After our lunch we made them rice balls and left them to set while we took the elephants to the mud pit and smeared mud all over them! Then it was time for a play and wash off in the waterfall for everyone!!

 

The kids were amazing. Mr 8 was all guns blazing, his new BFF was the guide, he sucked out any detail he possibly could, if you know our boy you’ll know he will chat your ear off if you let him!! He was in his element!

 

Little Miss 6 went between excitement and fear. She almost had a few mishaps like when she almost fell in the water, and almost got squashed when an elephant backing up and she didn’t realise or when she held onto the banana too long and the elephant got too close to her and she didn’t like it (sometimes she did like it🙄) but with 2 parents, a guide, a driver, 4 tour buddies and 3 mahouts looking out for her when she made frightened noises somebody scooped her up! Needless to say, once we transferred back to the van she used her Daddy’s arm as a pillow and slept all the way home!

 

A truly memorable day with plenty of photos and GoPro footage taken for everyone to remember it by.

Budget update :

Chiang Mai – $82 under
Total budget – $260 under

Krabi

Krabi

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Flying from KL to Krabi was an easy exercise. As soon as we arrived we dumped our gear at our villa and went into town on a tuktuk, with the craziest driver ever. We found the town full of busy streets, where it appears, Brits in particular, have come to have a break from being a responsible adult. 🙄 Not the greatest first impression! We had pizza for dinner, went to the supermarket for some breakfast supplies then rung up the crazy tuktuk driver to come back and get us.

 

The following day BK went to a co-working space and I decided the kids needed some structure so we made up an hour by hour plan. School. Pool. Lunch. Catch the shuttle into town for a look at the beach (but not get off!). Rest in bed. More pool time. Screen time. Showers and tidy up. Dinner. We did this routine for several days.

 

I was happy to stay in the neighborhood where I felt safe. We found plenty of food options around so didn’t need to go back into town.

 

The shuttle driver at first thought I was a bit crazy taking these two kids to the beach but not letting them get off! But eventually he understood that I wanted to stay with him because I felt safe. He took us for a tiki tour on the way home, it was great to see some ‘localness’ and by day 2 he said “Same same??” when he saw me. Ha! “Yup!” I replied.

 

On Saturday the weather forecast said the skies were NOT going to do their tropical thing (where it buckets down for an hour so in the afternoon), so we thought we’d go see the islands. Mr Shuttle driver told me ‘4 Island’ was the one to do, so we did. Amazing tour!

We were picked up from our villa, transferred to a long tail boat (I worried it would be too noisy but it wasn’t) on which we had a driver and a guide. First we went to Tub Island and saw fish swimming round our legs! Amazing! So glad I took my go pro and goggles for kids! Next they took us to a cove on Chicken Island, just out from the shore. We all got off in our life jackets and looked at the fish and coral. Master 8 had a wonderful time and now has a new hobby, snorkeling! Next they took us to Poda Island and we had a buffet lunch on the beach. Yum! It reminded me a lot of the Mount, lots of similarities but obviously so different! Finally our last stop was Prang Cave Beach, it was a beautiful beach and the temperature was perfect for swimming in, just like bath water. I didn’t go into the cave but BK did. Then it was back to base and transferred to our villa. It was an amazing day, and all for the bargain price of NZ$64 for all of us (plus an island ranger fee of NZ$35).

 

So we didn’t do much but this week but it was mostly about rest and people. Our villa had a pool on its doorstep and our kids are already confident in the pool but are even more so now. Miss 6 made a lovely little friend, her family is from Sweden and we plan to go visit them when we are in Northern Europe.

 

The shuttle driver, (I so wish I’d caught his name), was lovely, very relatable and had great English. I had many great conversations both on and off the shuttle with him. BK met some lovely people at the co-working space too. I’ve read on other blogs that people change the experience and that is so true.

 

The last day in Krabi we all came down sick, a mixture of fevers, head colds and sore tummies so it was an early night and then a calm morning transferring to the airport. We remain in Thailand this week but at another location.

 

Budget update :

Krabi $102 under
Total budget – $178 under

 

Till next time 🙂

Malaysia

Malaysia

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Crossing the causeway from Singapore to Johor, Malaysia was a cheap and easy experience, only NZ$11 for all of us.

We arrived at our lovely Airbnb which was an apartment in a tower above a big mall.

We were directed to a hawker centre with great food for dinner. The following day we had a quiet day which was spent at the pool, doing laundry, buying BK some jandals and generally resting after a very full on time in Singapore.

It was then time to fly up to Kuala Lumpur, remember those flights I mentioned in an earlier blog that were only NZ$3 each? This was that flight! It left 10 minutes late but arrived 7 minutes early! I was lazy and booked a transfer which scooped us up from the airport and drove us most of an hour into central KL to our next Airbnb which was another apartment in a tall tower. We arrived in the early evening and were greeted by an amazing view of the KL tower.

Out exploring the next day we saw the Petronas towers, the kids had a play at the park right beside them and then we had a good wander around the mall which is under them. That evening we had our first google fail leading us (or not in this case) somewhere to eat. Not good when hot and hungry. Eventually we found an average place in yet another mall and quickly ubered home to bed.

BK worked in a coworking space the next day so it was time for Kidzania for the kids and I. If you aren’t familiar with Kidzania, it’s a mini town where kids do jobs and earn ‘kidso’ money then they can spend it on getting things like their driver’s license and driving a car or getting nails done or buying things at the store. There are several of them around the world. It’s all about the kids, so the parents aren’t allowed to interact/help with the ‘work’ so I just ended up being the bag lady and standing with a bunch of other mums trying to peer through the windows at your cute kids. It wasn’t cheap but it was totally worth it, our kids had a ball!

This was followed by another mall food court for dinner. There are a lot of malls here in KL!

We had heard Batu Caves were an interesting place to visit so it was up early the next day to get there before the heat really set in for the day. The 272 steps to climb while watching out for monkeys was a challenge but it was interesting in the caves. We were back at our apartment before 10am for a rest and more mall visiting for lunch and dinner!

In front of our apartment block was a monorail station, having never been on one before we chose another mall to visit for lunch that was one stop down the line. At NZ$3 for all of us return it seemed like a great idea! It wasn’t as smooth as proper rail but fun all the same. The mall and lunch were great too!

Two days of rest followed that with quite a lot of lazing round our apartment. More mall food courts for lunches and dinners, yep that’s getting old already. We did manage a visit to the next door hotel’s pool, since we could see how awesome it looked from our balcony we invited ourselves over, well the kids and I did, BK stayed home as he was horrified!! Ha!!! Oh we also dug out the maths books, first 6 pages ✔️

So Malaysia, you’ve been interesting, I can see you are trying and wanting to be like your beautiful little sister Singapore to the south. Your food has been amazing, so cheap yet so yum, my favorite – coconut steam bun for 59 cents.

I’ve enjoyed the slower pace of life, I probably could have packed our week full but it was nice to relax.

See you again Malaysia on our way out to Sri Lanka in a few months time.

 

Till next time!

 

Claire

 

 

Budget update

Malaysia $90 under!

That is amazing as it includes $65 for some new glasses for Connor since his got lost somewhere between leaving my parents place and Auckland airport. 🙄😩

 

Total budget update : $75 under.

Last day in NZ, Australia & Singapore

Last day in NZ, Australia & Singapore

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After a walk around the beautiful Mount Maunganui and a few last minute errands it was time to go to the airport, We had decided for our first flight we’d fly a full service airline. Emirates had a great flight from Auckland to Singapore with a 21 hour layover in Melbourne, perfect for us to see BK’s sister and her fam, then fly on to Singapore.

 

On the way to Auckland Airport Emirates began emailing and texting me, first it was, we’d be leaving 30 minutes late, then it was an hour and 15 minutes late, we ended up leaving two hours late! it was something to do with weather in Dubai affecting the entire Emirates fleet.

 

However the kids were excited and settled into watching movies and playing games on their tablets. Dinner was served at 10pm, so it was a good thing we’d fed our crew at the airport!

 

Seeing the fam in Melbourne was great, we all had such a fantastic time and the kids played together so well. Soon it was time to head back to the airport.

 

Melbourne’s airport is fantastic! I was so stoked to see a kids climbing thing right by our gate. Oh yes! Run that energy off kiddos cause you’re going to be stuck in a chair for the next 8+ hours! I also received a text from Emirates ‘good news – your flight is running on time!!’

 

A great first long-haul experience for the kiddos, R ate her dinner then slept the rest of the way including sitting upright for the landing 😄 The boys and I slept about 3-4 hours.

 

Arriving in Changi (otherwise known as the best airport in the world) was great we were instantly hit with everyone’s friendliness and honesty. When we were trying to get a shuttle to our accommodation they suggested a taxi would be cheaper and better for our family! This saved us about $20!

Checking into the accommodation was no problem and we were all tucked up and asleep very quickly.

When we woke up, we grabbed a free brekkie from where we are staying and headed for the luge on Sentosa Island.

I’m disappointed to report we were highly let down by the luge track, there ‘once is never enough’ slogan is totally correct, because if you blink you’ll miss it! It was a nicely planted track but sloooooow people and just too short!! Oh Rotorua luge, we take back all the bad things we’ve ever said about you! That evening we visited our first hawker centre for dinner. Fed the whole family for $10 and it was yum!!!!

 

The following day we were up early and caught a taxi out to the zoo. I’m happy to report that it lived up to expectations and is the best zoo ever!!!! We purchased tram/train tickets to help the little legs of the family but it was really a waste of money. The lines were too long and it didn’t stop enough and it went in a silly route and and and….my list goes on but I’ll spare yah!! Big thanks to the grandparents who paid for us to go. We LOVED it! That evening it was back to the hawker centre and yes, I had exactly the same thing for dinner. Adventurous….not!!!

 

After two big days we were lagging a bit so wanted a bit of a quieter day. We attended a service at a mega church, with 8,000 other people then we went to Chinatown for lunch. I ordered pineapple rice but got shrimp so not a great experience for me as I had waited so long and was so hungry then couldn’t eat it! A quick trip to the mall next door saved my family from Mummy getting ‘hangry’ 😄

 

It was a quiet afternoon back at the accommodation then we headed to Orchard Road to see ‘the road’ of Singapore, even better that it was decked out in Christmas lights. I came up with my best idea yet….we took the train to the top of the road then started walking down back towards where we were staying, the kids soon got tired so we caught a bus that finished the journey and we looked at the pretty light displays as we drove past and then it dropped us around the corner from where we were staying. All for the grand total of $4.50 for all of us. Bargain.

Of course being in Singapore for new years means new year fire works. They were amazing! A great party literally on our doorstep but luckily thick enough walls and back off the street further enough that when we went to bed, we didn’t hear a thing!

This morning it was raining, but we hadn’t seen the gardens by the bay! So a quick taxi ride fixed that. They were well worth the trip and wandering round in the drizzle

So Singapore, you’ve been amazing!

Such a great start to the Asia leg of our trip. We will be back, we know we didn’t even scratch your surface!

 

Budget update – $14 over!

Not bad, not bad.

Of course it would have been entirely blown if we paid for the zoo!