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Most likely I'll post some pics as part of whatever update I give, and given that there is no way all three of my daughters will think that they look good in the same photo at the same time, pics will likely be pulled and right there is your incentive to check back every day to see how things actually went before something gets taken down.This section will contain the running commentary from the trip, in regards to the most recent country we have been in. But once I'm able to start the next country, I'll put the historical posts in the "Old Updates - XYZ" tab above. This all assumes I (or one of my kids) will be able to figure out how to make this website work.

If you want to read about the first 28 days and our time in Italy, then click here.

If you want to read about our time in Turkiye, then click here.

If you want to read about our safari in Kenya, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach vacation in Tanzania, then click here.

If you want to read about our amusement park/desert experience in the U.A.E, then click here.

If you want to read about our desert/beach experience in Oman, then click here.

If you want to read about our jungle ruins experience in Cambodia, then click here.

The Journey Continues - Thailand

Siem Reap to Chaing Mai

To jump directly to one of our days in Thailand, click here:

DAY 112

Chaing Mai to Bangkok

DAY 88

We took off to Chiang Mai, with a layover in Bangkok. This time I double checked that we were landing in and taking off from BKK airport (apparently Megan double checked as well). Since we were traveling on a Star Alliance partner, Megan and I have status, so we were able to go to the club and bring 1 guest each - this time Liam and Keira and I went while Lily and Elenna got McDonalds. Unfortunately, we had to go security again after going to the club, so I was foiled in my favorite pass time (taking as many free waters as possible).

More behind the scenes on Keira's instagram.

We were staying in the jungle, over an hour from the airport and the hotel picked us up and brought us there. We were in a large van, and as we got closer to the hotel, we started climbing the steep mountains. The woman who sat next to the driver kept telling him to go faster whenever she could see around a corner that the coast was clear, I think in part because she feared that if we slowed down, the van wouldn’t make it.

We got there just at the end of elephant happy hour, where the elephants come up to the dining area and you can feed them. Our girls weren’t too excited about feeding, so Megan and I watched the elephants for a little. Then we went to our room.

I'm not sure how someone (our kids) could be this close to elephants, and do disinterested.

We couldn’t remember exactly what the room set up was, we thought it might be one giant room where we would all sleep but instead it was one giant hut, with three smaller huts next to it. It was Elenna’s turn to stay with Liam, so Keira and Lily got their own huts.

About 10 minutes later, Lily came in asked for me to kill a big moth in her room. Then another 20 minutes, she came running into the room complaining about an animal that was running around in her ceiling. Megan said that it could be a monkey (wrong thing to say), but that she hadn’t seen many around (nice try at a save). It was at this point that we took a closer look at the huts and all four of them had open areas where bugs (or animals can get into the room). Each room has a bed with a net around it, so you could sleep bug free.

Just then, we saw a cat jump off the room of Elenna’s hut, and we realized that it was likely just a cat. We told the reception and they had someone go up and take the cat out. But Lily asked, “Did they seal it up so the cat can’t come back?” At this point, she begged Keira to share her bed, and they would sleep together. When Elenna saw that Lily was sleeping with Keira, she seemed a little bummed like she was she was missing out.

We went to dinner, but all of the tables that could fit us in the main outside area were full, so we went up to a little indoors restaurant that was probably only used when it rained. Shoes were lined up outside the restaurant area, so we took off our shoes and entered the restaurant. It was separated from the main area and we soon found that the service was very slow, ostensibly because the waitress never passed our area unless she was specifically looking for us.

Dinner took about 2.5 hours, but the friend banana samosas with ice cream were worth the wait. Beyond the wild cats that walked around, there were also wild dogs. At one point, we realized that one of the dogs had stolen Elenna’s shoe and was playing with it. At this point, we took all of our shoes and put them in a pile behind Elenna, inside the restaurant, so that the shoes would be safe.

As dinner was winding up, Liam leaned over to me and said, “I see someone playing with your shoes. He’s over there” pointing off into the distance. I thought he was joking since we brought the shoes inside, but when I finally saw what he was pointing to, sure enough, that dog had come into the restaurant and stolen my shoe. As I went out to get it, I saw that one of Megan’s shoes was also out there. I retrieved the shoes and the dog proceeded to grab the welcome mat and start to play with it, shaking it back and forth.

The dog on the welcome mat was the shoe thief.

We finally finished dinner and went back to the rooms. About 10 minutes later, Elenna was screaming because there was a spider in the room. My girls are WAY too afraid of bugs if you ask me, so I expected to see some really small bug, but it was actually quite large, probably almost 3 inches long. Now, I was a bit scared of it. I walked to the reception to see if the spiders around here were poisonous, and I made the mistake of telling Elenna what I was doing, and now she was really freaking out. No one was at reception, so I just had to try to kill it.

As I approached it, it hadn’t moved - not from when Elenna first brought me to out, while I went to reception and back or walked by it, trying to find the best angle of attack. I was hoping that maybe it was dead. I made my move but it was NOT dead, and it was extremely fast, easily dodging my foot, and scampering behind the sink pedestal. I tried again, and he ran down a pipe that lead outside.

Since I didn’t get the spider, Elenna was now freaking out and she ended up going into Keira’s and Lily’s room/bed while Liam slept with Megan and me. So I guess now Elenna wouldn’t be missing out. Given the amount of tears that were coming from the hut next door, Megan and I were looking to see if there was another hotel that we could go to tomorrow night. The main reason we were here was because of the elephant reserve, and that trip would be done around 5pm, so there was no need to stay another night, other than it would have cost us more money. But we waited to see if the girls would be more calm about things in the morning.

It seemed like every stop we made, we found that our kids were less and less outdoorsy than we thought. Megan posted on her facebook how she failed in making them true girlscout if they couldn't stay in a hut with a bug netting. In a week, we were staying at a place on the river and we had the option of a place with electricity and one without, and 6 months earlier, it felt like it could be an adventure to choose the place without electricity (not to mention cheaper). Now, 3 months in, we were glad that we decided on the one with electricity.

DAY 89

We got up “early” (at 7am) because at 8, breakfast was being served along with some elephants for company. We had hired a photographer to come and take some pictures at breakfast as well as on our tour later in the day.

At 7:25, I knocked on the door next door to make sure that the 3 girls were up, but they weren’t, so they rushed to get ready and we were all outside at 8. The kids all survived the night, and all dealt with sleeping in the same bed. Megan and I had looked to see if there was availability at our next hotel for the next night in case the girls just had a flat out horrible night. But no one really complained, so we decided to stay the next night and save ourselves the couple hundred bucks that switching would have cost.

They served a 3 tiered tray with pancakes, eggs and fruit, along with some juice and tea. But then the elephants arrived and we went into picture taking mode.

Breakfast was put on pause when the elephants arrived.

Unfortunately, the girls were incredibly scared of the elephants, which, in their defense are massive animals that weigh 2-3 tons, and the last time we saw elephants was on safari, when they were wild. But that said, these were clearly domesticated elephants, and although they were a little “grabby” with their trunks when you handed them food, in the scheme of things, they were really quite delicate.

But, our kids were acting like we were standing them next to wild crocodiles for how scared they were, and I felt bad for our photographer who was trying to get a good picture. If she does, then I’m going to write her a fantastic review.

Megan and I tried our best, and tried to act calm whenever an elephant muscled its weigh around, but the kids were a lost cause. After 30 minutes, the shoot was over, and we went to eat. The pancakes were good, the eggs got mixed reviews, and the drinks were basically a lost cause because some of the elephant food (stalks of sure cane) fell into them all. But I was happy that the pancakes were good, because it meant that Liam would start the day with some food in his stomach.

The tour was a full day tour, going from 9 until 5pm. By this point in the trip, I had sworn off full day tours, but this was booked before we gauged our family’s stamina, and since we were only here for 1 full day, was the best use of time. A truck brought us from our area, to the gate of the hotel, and from there we hiked up a steep road. The whole time I was waiting for Liam to complain, but he climbed it like a champ.

We got to the top and there was an area with a bunch of elephants. We went over and fed them for a while and took some pictures. Unfortunately, the lighting was horrible with them in the sun and us in the shade, but it was cool to feel them. Liam generally preferred to throw the food to them, rather than hand it to the trunks, but he was brave a couple of times and did it. Meanwhile, the girls did it just often enough to be in a couple of pictures but tired of feeding them relatively early.

The kids were generally more comfortable when feeding the elephants when there was a little barrier between them and the animals.

Then, we got to see a baby elephant, who was very cute. Our photographer arrived and took some pictures. By this point, our kids were a bit more comfortable around the elephants, and I’m more optimistic that pictures here came out.

After that, we went down into the forest and had an elephant walk with us. We got a few more pictures with the elephants.

An elephant followed us around

Then we went to a river, and got more pictures with elephants, first, while sitting on a swing. I’m not sure why swings and wild animals go together, but apparently they do.

What is more natural than sitting on a swing in a river next to an elephant?

From there, we went into the actual river and fed and pet the elephants, taking more pictures. Our photographer seemed really good - we will see the pictures in a few days, so the jury is still out - and up until this point and told us more/directed us more than our guide (for some reason, every time our photographer was taking pictures, our guide would disappear. I guess it meant he wasn’t in the pictures, but it felt a little weird).

Then, we ate lunch, which our guide cooked, and consisted of grilled chicken and fried rice, which was quite tasty (watermelon for dessert, which I thought was a problem, because the photographer told us that the baby elephant’s name was “watermelon” in Thai). We sat along the river and about 30 minutes in, I said to Lily, its kind of amazing that there are just a bunch of elephants there (we were about 30 feet from where we took our pictures), it was just easy to get distracted by food and/or get used to 2 ton animals being around.

After that, we drove to an area that had bamboo rafts, and we rafted down the river. Liam asked if there were going to be rapids, and the tour guide assured him that there wouldn’t be, and the Liam burst into tears. Apparently, he had wanted there to be rapids!

It was two people to a raft, and each raft had a captain who used a poll to navigate us down the river. I shared a boat with Elenna, and pointed out that we now have seen how gondolas are oared, and now Thai river rafts, and she should use this knowledge for the Fayson 500.

Elenna and I had the best raft. Watch out next year for the Fayson 500.

As we were getting onto the rafts, one of the captains said to watch out for crocodiles, and when Megan looked alarmed, he said he was joking. Later on, he smashed his poll into the water, and said “crocodile”, and then said it was a joke. A little later, he did it again, but then said, “Snake” but it wasn’t a joke. Keira and Lily had seen one too, and freaked out a little bit, even though they have both seen them in the lakes near our house.

Rafting down the river, but also back in time?

It was a very cool experience, going down a river in a jungle area, often where there were no buildings to be seen (although there were quite a few hotels lined up against the river), and it was easy to picture yourself in 200-300 years earlier, and how this is how they would have traveled. Unfortunately, everyone once in a while, you would be jarred back to the present day, when you noticed a bunch of bottles or trashed washed up against the shore.

After that, they drove us to an area with a waterfall. We had to walk about 10 minutes from the parking area to the falls. When we got there, the guide warned us that the dark colored rocks were slippery, which was bad because almost all of the rocks were dark colored. Megan was fine since she brought water shoes which gave some grip, but I almost fell once, and then actually fell later, hitting my tailbone. At this point, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and crawled to the falls for the picture, and then scooted the same way back.

I made it to the waterfall with only a bruised tailbone (and pride).

As often happens with waterfalls, there was a rainbow. When we were in Iceland 6 years ago, I took a bunch of pictures with Lily and rainbows where it looked like she had rainbow powers. I tried to have Keira taking a picture of me, but when Megan said, "You are NOT going to take a picture with the rainbow coming out of your butt.", I had to change tactics.

I had a rainbow shooting out of my.... hand.

After that, out tour was over, and I commented that this was the first full day tour where no one complained, and we weren’t forced to end early. The first pointed out that it ended at 4, so maybe it didn’t count, but I said that they should take the win.

We rested for an hour, and then decided to go to dinner at 5 since the night before, dinner took so long and we had to pack and should go to bed early. The dinner was served quickly, but then no one came to ask for dessert or anything for 30 minutes. I asked a 3 of the banana desserts and about half an hour later they brought us 1. We waited about 30 minutes so I went up and asked where the other two were and clearly they didn’t put them in, so they put them and said they would be there soon.

An hour later, they still hadn’t come and I asked again, a bit more agitated now, because it was 8:10, so we had been there 3 hours, and as I was about to complain, one came down from the kitchen, and I said, “Is that ours?” I asked because we had seen 3 other tables get that dessert in the past hour instead of us. They gave it to us, but since the trucks back to the room came every half hour, we needed to be on the 8:30 or we’d be stuck until 9. By 8:22, I was getting everyone ready to leave, when it showed up and we scarfed it down. Just was we were almost done, they brought us another one for free at 8:26. We ate that one quickly and got to the truck just as it was pulling up.

We got back to our rooms, but the ability to pack was limited because Megan didn’t want to turn on the lights for fear that it would attract the bugs. So we all went to bed early. When I went to use the bathroom before going to bed (which was connected to our room, but outside, with walls, but an open ceiling, I noticed that there was a giant slug in our sink and 2 slugs on the walls. I decided not to tell Megan.

We read for a little in bed while Liam slept, and then Megan got up to go to the bathroom, and I decided that I had better warn her. She said that she only saw the sink slug and not the others, which is probably for the best.

DAY 90

We got up for breakfast at 8:30am and it wasn’t clear if the elephants were going to come or not but since our kids aren’t fans of animals it didn’t particularly matter. We had the option of buying extra elephant food the night before but we skipped it, leaving it up to fate.

Megan, Liam and I, who had been sharing a bed, went out on our back porch and say that down the hill an elephant was being fed by someone from their back porch. They came up and asked if we wanted to eat on our back porch and we said yes.

They brought us 3 baskets of food for the elephants and the girls came over and we fed the elephants from our porch.

Feeding the elephants from our back porch.

Once again the girls did the bare minimum to be in a picture but that was it.

A rare photo of one our kids feeding an elephant.

Liam would join in from time to time but never by himself. Sometimes, the elephant would get a little grabby, which is part of the reason that the girls didn't love feeding them.

The elephants could get a little up close and personal if you didn't feed them quickly enough.

After the elephants were fed we ate breakfast, finished packing and the. Went to the city of Chiang Mai ñ, which was about 1.5 hours away, to our hotel called “At Chiang Mai”.

We got there around 11:30 and the reviews said that they wouldn’t let you into your room before 2, so we went out for lunch at a bakery called “Crusty Loaf”. There was a pub attached to it and we ate there. We could get hamburgers and such, but since the plan was to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, I saved my American food for later and had fried rice. The food was solid, but the garlic bread was really good.

We went back to the hotel and they let us into our rooms early and we relaxed and I finally was able to post about Angkor Wat. Between the trips and being sick, I had fallen behind and I think for the first time Megan was posting ahead of me (I was proud to be ahead since writing this requires a lot more time).

We left for the movie theater at 2:45. With Moana 2 and Wicked both out, our girls were pulled in two conflicting directions: Disney vs Musical Theater. Wicked won out. They don’t have Uber but they do have “Grab” so I downloaded that and they dropped us off at a mall near an airport. It wasn’t clear at all where the movie theater was, but the driver motioned “up”, so we went up.

The inside of the mall was a lot like a normal mall with shops you would recognize but also shops you wouldn’t. There was even and Auntie Anne’s pretzel stand.

The mall looked like it could be in America, right down to the Christmas decorations.

We walked around for a while hoping to see a sign but eventually asked for directions. The first place got us to the right floor, but then we had to ask again to find the location.

Megan had bought the tickets on my computer but there wasn’t as easy way to get them to the phone so I ended up taking a screen shot and texting it to myself. I also uploaded the image to the calendar but that never showed up on my device. But that picture was all we needed.

We went to buy some snacks and they didn’t have a candy selection- some gum and lollipops but no chocolate or gummies or anything. So Liam and I ordered some potato chips while the girls ordered popcorn. They had a bunch of specialty popcorn and drink cups, one of which was a Transformers cup where you could get Optimus Prime or Bumblebee to go on a track around your cup, and when you pulled it back it would race around. Liam wanted one but I said no because we didn’t have anywhere to put it.

We got to our seats and the coming attractions were half in English and half in Thai. Then there were some actual commercials for things including what appeared to be something that would stop dental pain. Then it looked like there was this propaganda video about the king of Thailand and how great he was. I thought the song was in Thai, but Megan thinks there was a part that was in English, but either way, I didn’t understand it, so it was hard to tell how great he was.

Then the movie began and everyone loved it. At the end, Liam again asked for the Transformer cup, so we got it for him. The main problem was that you couldn’t just buy it, you had to buy it with a bag of popcorn and a souvenir Wicked cup, neither of which we needed. We kept the popcorn, but threw out the rest.

My phone wasn’t getting good reception, so I couldn’t pick up a car - I have had this problem in a bunch of countries - I’m able to order the car from the hotel where there is wifi, but then we get somewhere, and I don’t have reception to get us back. Megan seems to always have reception, so she was able to download the app and order a car. It took a while for the car to find us, but then we were on our way to Hard Rock.

We don’t normally go to the Hard Rock Cafe (it had probably been about 6 years since the last time), but we had been seeing them all over, and the reminded us of home (although the first couple we saw in Italy were just Hard Rock stores - which we couldn’t believe anyone would go to, because who wants Hard Rock merchandise if they didn't eat at the cafe). So it had been a bit of running joke for months, and after we passed one in Chiang Mai and didn't go, we kind of had to go here.

Our family could use a "home" cooked meal. Unfortunately, the bill was also a bit closer to an American bill for a restaurant.

The Hard Rock was near a local market, and we vowed to go out to a market and eat dinner some night.

DAY 91

We got up at 9 to go to breakfast, which closed at 10. We had planned on having a lazy morning, so Megan and I walked into the city to get a hole in her favorite pants repaired. The woman at reception at the hotel gave some directions on where to go. She said that there wasn’t a name for the place, but to go a couple blocks and we would see it on the right, but then also said the left, and we set off assuming that we were walking into another miscommunication situation.

We walked down the street to where we thought it might be but couldn’t find a place that looked like would fix it. So we stopped at a store that sold clothes, and there was a sewing machine on a table which seemed like it had potential. They said that they couldn’t fix it, but that if we walked another 15 minutes we would get to a market and they could do it there. We asked what the name of the store was, and they said that here, it was custom for women to sit on the steps and have a little area where they fixed things. We figured that 15 minutes was too long to walk in the hopes of finding a place, so we headed back. We were about 2 minutes from our hotel when I saw a made to order suit place and I walked in and asked if they could fix it. They said that they could, so we dropped off the pants.

We were set to go to a cooking class later that night and they said not to eat much before hand, so we got some bread from Crusty Loaf as lunch. About an hour before we were to leave, Keira said that she wasn’t feeling well, so she stayed behind as the rest of us went to cooking class.

We were picked up in a van, and then headed to another hotel to pick up a nice couple in their 20s (not married) who were traveling for 8 months together, and went to the class. We started off by going to the market to get the ingredients as the guide explained about the various types of rice and vegetables used in the meals. Liam hadn’t had much bread and was starting to melt down so we bought him an ice cream and some bananas.

Liam needed a pick-me-up after walking through the hot market.

Then we headed to the actual class which was an open air place with a cutting/prep area, a bunch of stove tops and then an area to eat. Each person was able to make their own main course, appetizer, soup and dessert from a set selection of 4-5 options.

Step by step instruction to some really good food.

Our guide was great. She spoke English very well and walked us step by step through the preparation. She had us all chop our own vegetables and then bring them to the stove tops and cook them. The Chicken and Cashews I made was excellent, as were the spring rolls and banana samosas.

We also got some snazzy aprons.

Liam worked on Keira’s meal (with Megan’s help).

Liam was a good helper, and when he wasn't he generally would walk to the table and play by himself.

Although I am always a bit skeptical of any place that tells me not to eat before, and that I will be full after, in this case it was true. Overall, it was a great night and we were all stuffed.

Everyone enjoyed the food. The spring rolls were especially good.

DAY 92

After breakfast, the girls went to get their nails done, and then Megan and Lily went to get a massage. We were running low on local currency money, and I had had trouble finding a place to exchange our Omani or Cambodian money, so Liam and I went in search of a money exchange. The second one we went to only would exchange 10 Omani Reals (it only could exchange denominations of 10 - 50), so I was still stuck with a bunch of other currency. I found an ATM and gave money to Megan for the nails and massage.

Liam was a bit shaky on the plot of Moana 1, so we watched it while the girls got their nails done. Then we went to the pool for a little while.

Then we went to the mall to watch Moana 2 and buy Keira and Megan new suitcases and Liam a converter/charger. Liam's lack of his own charger had been a point of contention, since I always charged the iPad with my charger, but if Liam was in a separate hotel room, I couldn’t get it back into his room in the morning. 98% of the time this wasn't a problem, either I snuck into his room, or he wasn't supposed to use his iPad before we were set to leave (he can't use it before 9am), but the 2% apparently was a HUGE deal for the girls.

Liam got an early Christmas present with the giant Grimlock popcorn bucket.

Moana 2 was a solid follow up to the original, and generally got a 7 out of 10 from us on average, and I think that anyone who gave it less, did so because the first one was so good, the second was bound to pale in comparison.

Liam once again wanted a special popcorn holder, and this time we bought him a crazy big Grimlock transformer popcorn bucket, with the proviso that we leave it here when we leave. Although it was huge, it actually was less egregious of a buy for him than the smaller Transformers cup we bought last time, because this time we bought it on the way in, and ate the popcorn and drank the drinks it came with. I’m sure our daughters are tracking how many things that Liam is bought, but he doesn’t have a phone, and we could all use him having a toy to play with from time to time. So these things are as much for us, as they are for him.

Buying a new suitcase was a bit of a event since there were about 2 gazillion suitcase stores in the mall. Most of them sold what seemed to be somewhat low quality suitcases. Eventually, they found ones that they liked, and although they looked like they might be a little smaller than what we had, they looked about the same size. But since our suitcases are already filled to the brim (which is part of the reason that we needed new suitcases), even slightly smaller could prove disastrous.

We then looked for a place to eat dinner, and there was a Sizzler there. I had thought that a Little Ceasar's in Istanbul was the most out of place US chain I had seen, but now I think that the Sizzler in Chiang Mai won that award. We almost ate there, until we realized that Liam wouldn't eat anything on the menu. So instead, we went to a Japanese restaurant and then headed home.

The Japanese place had a cute kids meal, with Winnie the Pooh plates, but Liam didn't each much, so we probably should have just gone to Sizzler.

Day 93

Although technically, the elephant sanctuary was in the Chiang Mai region, we really hadn’t explored the city of Chiang Mai yet, so I booked us on a tour to see some temples. Since its hot, and our kids can’t take long tours, I booked a half day tour to see the three most famous sites.

The first temple we visited was Wat Doi Suthep. It had a bunch of ornate, white sculptures outside which is where the cremated remains of wealthy people were stored.

Our first stop on our tour. I think my kids were already done.

Inside, the temple was a long, open air building with ornate woodwork and a number of Buddha statues.

Each temple was ornately decorated, usually with a giant Buddha statue.

The next temple we visited was Wat Suan Dok, which was up on the side of a mountain. In order to get there, we took a windy mountain road for about 20 minutes from the city. When we got there, our guide gave us the option of taking the elevator or walking up 306 steps. I’ll let you guess which one we took.

At the top, there was a little plaza and there was a group of little girls (maybe 6-8) doing a dance and people were playing music. There was also street food available around every corner. The temple itself had a tour covered in gold plating as well as a number of pagoda type temples. The guide explained that they were “Lanna style” (the style of the region) which was a mix of Thai, Burmese and Laotian.

I enjoyed the architecture of the roofs as much as the temples.

After that, we went to a jade factory tour, that was walking distance from the temple. Lily argued that we had done something similar while in China, so we didn’t need to do this. I kind of agreed, but figured that it was 6 years ago, so everyone has forgotten everything about it, and since we were here, we might as well go.

They had us watch a 5 minute video on jade and jade sculpting, as well as some non-jade stones we should look out for as imitations. I was hoping a little bit for advice on how to spot fakes (since I’m now an expert on how to spot fake Turkish carpets), but there wasn’t much of that, other than to say, if it looks really pure and its not expensive, then its fake. We did get to go to the back room and watch the people carving the jade into figurines and jewlery. Then they had us walk around a show room, but we didn’t buy anything.

We had already visited a jade outlet in China 6 years earlier, but its always interesting to see people turning stone into sculpture.

The last temple we visited was Wat Chedi Luang. It was another large, ornate temple filled with Buddha statues. This was surrounded by smaller temples, and we went into one that was dedicated to a famous (famous to people who follow buddhism) monk. Inside, they had a glass case with a wax figurine of the monk which was quite lifelike.

The entrance to the last temple stop.

Behind the newer temple, was an older temple, that looked really neat - made of bricks but had giant elephant carvings as well as Buddha statues on it.

Most of the temples weren't that old - usually a cuple hundred years. Even this one in the back was only about 300-400 years old.

At this point, the kids were all ready to go, which was good since the tour was over. We grabbed some lunch at the restaurant in our hotel, before splitting up to get ice cream at 7-Eleven (me, Keira and Liam) and mango sticky rice (Megan, Elenna and Lily).

When we got back, Megan wanted a massage but Lily wanted to work out instead. So I volunteered to go with Megan. I don’t really like massages - either they are rough and hurt, or they aren’t and I wonder if they did anything for me. So I never go when Megan and I are on vacation, because $150 is a waste on me. But with it only costing $15, I figured I would go, since Megan didn’t want to go by herself.

Overall, it was nice. We had to leave our shoes outside of the building, basically on the sidewalk. By this point, we were kind of used to it since we had been taking our shoes off every time we went into a temple, but the idea of taking your shoes off and leaving them outside of a store in NYC would be nearly unthinkable.

We sat in the reception and they gave us cold towels and some tea. Then they took us to a foot bath where they washed our feet and gave us sandals. Then they had us change into loose fitting clothes for the massage, and I put my stuff into a locker.

The massage room was large, and had 4 beds lined up, with a curtain that could be pulled in between each - Megan likened it to an ER, where they could pull the privacy curtains. We each had older women massaging us, and we both chose the back, neck and shoulder massage. It wasn’t a hot oil massage, so the whole time, she gave the massage through the clothes. The massage was generally pretty good - a decent amount of pressure and a couple of points where it hurt. She did a couple of weird things where she cracked my back.

Afterwards, they gave us some sweet rice cakes and tea. When we left, we were pleasantly surprised to see that our shoes were still outside. On our way back we saw a pop up market/flower festival. Kids went to buy some things. Liam and I played with his Transformers in the room for a while, then went to the fair. We played a board came called “Duck da Bomb”, which was a game that teaches coding, using cards to get your duck around the board first. You have the ability to plant bombs against your opponents.

Megan at a pop-up market/festival.

Then we went back to the room for 30 minutes before going out to dinner at the night market. Our teacher at the cooking class highly recommended it, while I had seen something that said we should eat “sotee” (basically a cooked banana thing with nutella).

The market was quite big, and consisted of shops and food stands. We quickly found a food stand that served fried rice and noodles, and Liam and I waited in that line, while Keira waited in the line next to our stand where they sold cheese quesadillas (for Liam). Megan, Lily and Elenna went off in search of something - it wasn’t clear to me, but I thought one of them was a sausage thing that the instructor at the teaching class had recommended.

The lines took quite a while, and since the line went down the sidewalk, and cars were going down the street, I was holding Liam’s hand. He had started to fall asleep in the car on the way there, so he ended up sitting down on my foot and I carried him along on my foot as the line slowly moved.

Liam sat on my foot while we waited in line. Its not the most comfortable way for me to be in line, but at least I knew where he was.

I finally ordered, and it looked like Keira was about to order. I was starting to get a bit worried since there was no sign of the other 3 and we didn’t have a place to sit. The women at the stand asked if we were staying here and she walked off into the courtyard to try to find a place for us to sit. I was going to tell her that there was 6 of us, but there was no need because there wasn’t even a table that could seat 2. I looked off into the distance and saw an empty table, and brought Liam over there, wondering how I was going to save the table and get the food there, without leaving Liam by himself. I texted the group chat that I needed people to get here immediately.

The food stand where we got most of our food.

I pulled two tables together and then took a stack of chairs and placed them around the new table set up. Then I spotted Megan and waved her over, but Elenna and Lily weren’t with her. As she walked to the table, I walked back to the food stand to get our food. It took two trips, but I eventually got everything. I then saw Keira and waved her over.

Then a woman came over angrily and said that we took her table. It was clear that she worked at one of the stands, and there was a family nearby who told us that she is said that the tables were reserved for her customers (we had ordered from a little while away). We said that we would buy some stuff from her and that seemed to settle it. It seemed like a small price to pay since tables were in short supply. Her stand was short ribs and sausage, so I bought some of each, not sure how much would be enough in the woman’s mind, but it seemed fine. When I brought the food back, Megan was happy to see the sausage (since it had been recommended), and I saw that she had bought the rotee. A little while later, Lily and Elenna came back with crepe-type things. They were crepes that were drizzled in chocolate and had oreos inside, and then were baked to crispiness. I wasn’t a huge fan, but really like the rotee. But Megan and Lily loved the crepes so we all got something we liked.

We realized that the market wasn’t too far from our hotel (18 minute walk) and after stuffing ourselves we realized that a walk back might do us some good. Liam didn’t like the quesadillas (or much else besides the crepe), so he ended up eating 5 small bananas that we brought with us. But, he was much more awake and in better spirits, so he didn’t have any trouble with the walk home.

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The hotel had a statue of people playing "Go", but you could use the table to play your own game as well.

When we got home, we realized that the only movies we knew that takes place in Bangkok was Hangover 2, and since Lily hadn’t seen Hangover 1, we made her watch it, so we could watch part 2 the next night. We think its always better to have some reference when you go somewhere new. We had to watch it in the kids room so Lily could pack, which meant that Elenna was basically watching it, and Liam was in the room watching his ipad, but able to listen to the movie. I think we can use that paragraph for our nomination for parents of the year.

Although Lily had to be talked into watching the movie, she enjoyed it, while Keira and I (who had watched it together about a year ago) also like it. Even Megan thought it was a good movie, even though those types of movies are hit or miss for her.

Then we said good night and finished packing since we were flying to Bangkok airport for the 3rd time on this trip, but this time we were going to spend some time there.

DAY 94

We ate breakfast and then headed to the airport. The line to check the bags was huge, and as I looked at our tickets, I noticed that we were boarding in Zone 1. I then googled if it was Star Alliance (because that would have given me status and the boarding zone) but it wasn’t, so I wondered if I bought a an economy plus ticket. I asked someone there and it turns out that I had and we moved over to another line where we now second in line. I made these ticket reservations a long time ago, and sometimes getting the economy plus ticket was about the same price as the economy ticket, if you were planning on picking your seats and checking bags anyway (once those add-on costs were thrown in).

But with jumping that line, we got to the gate about 45 minutes before boarding, and hung out. I bought a snack even though we were assuming we would be fed (first rule of flying - never get on a plane hungry). Liam’s headphones weren’t working, so I ended up playing cards with him the whole flight to Bangkok. The most frustrating thing about playing cards with Liam is that he likes to add rules to the games. Most of them make sense, but when we were playing poker and he wanted to make 8s wild, and I said lets make 2s wild instead (what most people do) he refused and we played Crazy 8s instead (Liam’s version where kings are wild, 4s are draw 4, 2s are draw 2, and you can stack draw cards, so if he plays a draw 4, I can play a draw 4 and he has to draw 8).

We landed and this was the first time we didn’t have a car service set up to bring us to the hotel. My Marriott app said that a taxi should be around 500 baht (they offered a car service for 4,000 baht, which is why I didn’t book it), and although we went into the “big van” line, it only seat 4 people, so we needed 2. Either because we got a “big van” or because we were scammed, the drivers charged us 800 baht each (still less than 4,000), and that made me feel better that at least Megan (who was in the other taxi) and I were being scammed by the same amount.

We got to the hotel, which was the nicest place we stayed at on the trip, because I booked it with points. It was decorated well for Christmas, including a giant gingerbread house.

Our kids were excited to be in a bougie Marriott Hotel.

Megan talked to the concierge who said that he was giving a tour in a couple of minutes of the hotel and its history and how it used to be a princess’s palace. The hotel was a high rise, so it was clearly torn down and rebuilt, rather than repurposed, but he brought us to a suite that was decorated the way that the princess’s room had been decorated and there were a lot of touches throughout the hotel that were a nod to the princess.

Then, he said that we should change into some traditional Thai costumes. Megan and I were with a couple who lived in Singapore and had a 5 and 10 year old with them. If not for them, we probably wouldn’t have worn the clothes, but since they were, we did. Which led to some great photos.

I guess I should have said "great" photos.

He then took us down to the floor with the pool and took us outside to a terrace past a lot of guests, while we were still wearing the costumes. He took us to a shrine to the princess and then showed us that we could see the US embassy from the terrace.

After a short rest, Megan and I went to a food tour, while the kids stayed inside and order “Dough Bros” which serves pizza and donuts. Keira said that when she saw that, she thought it seemed like a restaurant that Liam would have created in his dreams.

Our tour wouldn’t pick us up, we had to meet in Chinatown, and the tour warned us that there was so much traffic around there that we should take the transit system there. However, they recommended that we leave at 5:30 to get to the 6:45 meet up, and I figured that we might as well just take a taxi if we were leaving that early.

We ended up getting there 30 minutes early and walked around a little. Then we met up with a young woman from Dusseldorf who was also taking the tour, and then our guide showed up and we went on our way. The tour guide was very nice and told us a bunch of stories about her English boyfriend and their pet pig.

The food was really good, and saved us the trouble of having to decide whether a street vendor would get us sick or not.

We ate chicken and lamb satay, pad thai, a shrimp soup, dim sum, a donut type thing and mango sticky rice. The food was all good, and it was neat to walk around the town.

It felt a little strange to have the food tour of Bangkok be to Chinatown, but the food was good, so...

Then she took us to a couple of temples (one had a 5 ton gold Buddha statue) and the “gate” to Chinatown (which was built less than 1 year earlier).

It was neat to see some of these buildings at night.

Then Megan and I went out to a bar for a drink. There was an acoustic band playing songs, and they played “Let it go” by Passenger. It was strange, because we had heard three acoustic bands since we got to Thailand, and all three have played this song - a good song, but one I hadn’t heard in about 6 years. Elenna theorized that that might be how long it took music to travel around the world, and then people learn to play it. Or maybe its just a really good song.

Day 95

The next morning I got up at 6:45 so I could shower, get Starbucks and then we could all leave be ready for an 8am pickup from the hotel for our half day tour. I had booked the tour to see the Grand Palace and a couple of other temples, but the night before, our food tour guide recommended doing a long-boat tour. Megan was thinking that we might want to do that right after the tour, because if we came back to the hotel, our kids wouldn’t want to leave again.

The first stop was the Wat Traimit - the same temple that we had visited the night before! But this time, we actually got tickets so we could climb up to the top and see the Buddha. Apparently, the Buddha was made of gold, but then covered in plaster to hide the fact that it was pure gold, when the country was attacked. A couple hundred years later, they transferred the statue and the outer shell cracked and they realized it was solid gold. Worth about $300m for just the gold today.

We got to see the same temple Megan and I saw the night before, but in the day time, and much closer up.

At the temple, there was a giant cauldron that you could make a wish and then throw a coin into.

We relearned that Liam needs to practice his throwing as much as his reading.

Every temple had ornate decorations.

The first statue we had seen that we pure gold instead of covered in gold leaf.

Our guide then suggested that we might want to add a long-boat trip to the tour, and we jumped on the idea, since it solved having to find a boat. So we drove to a smaller temple which was next to a pier.

Even the smaller, out of the way temples were interesting to look at (although my kids might have a different opinion).

We boarded the boat, and the tour guide said that she liked going on a boat at this hour because if we were lucky, we might see a monitor lizard. As we all sat down, Lily shouted to Keira, “Did you see that snake? Its huge!” I said, “Its not a snake, its a monitor lizard!”

The first monitor lizard we saw on our trip. But it wouldn't be the last.

I then asked the question if they thought that a monitor lizard is a large lizard or a small crocodile, and Keira told me to stop talking about it. And I remembered how my kids all love animals.

Meanwhile, Elenna and Lily decided that they wanted to see 12 monitor lizards and were on the lookout for more. Since our guide said that it we were lucky, we would see one, I thought seeing 12 would be a bit of a stretch. We went down narrow canals and saw the houses lined up along the waterway. Most were run down, but some looked beautiful and recently refurbished.

Megan and I are suckers for any type of boat ride.

Lily and Elenna were up to 8 monitor lizards, when we pulled over and the guide said that we could feed the fish here. She bought 3 bags of bread slices and we through it over the side. Soon, there were swarms of catfish around out. It was a lot of fun, except from time to time, there would be a big splash and the swarm of fish was splash water into the boat (there is a small splash in the video below).

It looked more like.a shark feeding frenzy than a group of catfish.

After about the 3rd time of that happening, our girls (particularly Keira) said they were done and we should leave. So we went back on our way.

Lily and Elenna were on the lookout for more lizards.

The boat ride was nice, and it was neat looking for lizards and seeing the houses. However, it was a little depressing to see the bottles and other garbage that floated on by.

We ended up getting to 13 monitor lizards when we got to a canal lock.

Lily and Elenna weren't sure if it was good or bad that they hit their target of seeing at least 12 lizards.

We waited for a few minutes, and then the lock closed and the poured water into our lock to bring us up to the level of the main river. Then they open the other side and we went out onto the river. It was no Panama Canal, but it was neat to watch. Here's a time-lapse video (my favorite type of video.

My kids make fun of my for my time lapse video obsession, but that would have taken 1 minute otherwise.

This was much more wavy/bumpy here. But after a few minutes we got to the Grand Palace. The palace was amazing. I was actually pretty surprised that there were tours of Bangkok that didn’t include the palace.

I was blown away by the Palace. Easily the coolest thing we saw in Bangkok, and probably in Thailand (if you exclude feeding the Elephants).

Basically, everywhere you looked there was an ornate temple or tower.

Almost every square foot was covered with an ornate temple.

Some had porcelain decorations, others had mother of pearl doors, and others were covered in gold leaf.

The mother of pearl doors gave a cool effect.

At one point we stopped and took a picture, and the guide said that this was a good place for a picture, and I said that I didn’t think that there was a bad place to take a picture.

What child can resist banging a gong?

The main temple here was the temple of the Jade Buddha. It had three different outfits (made out of gold) and since it was the winter, it was wearing the winter outfit. By now we had seen nearly 100 statues of Buddha in the past week, most of which were at least human sized, so when we saw the jade Buddha, which was smaller, and way up high on a pedestal, we were a little underwhelmed. Although I guess its hard to find much larger pieces of high-quality jade to carve a statue out of.

The main problem of the tour, however, was that it was deathly hot and we had to wear long pants and cover our shoulders, which made everything even more hot. Liam was struggling in particular, but really most of us were, even though the guide gave us plenty of water.

On this tour, and the hotel tour, the guide said that the past kings went to Europe and then brought back a lot of western style to Thailand - there were no real roads or cars in Bangkok until about 1960 - prior to that, it was canals and dirt roads for elephants and horses. I feel like by adopting Western things, they are probably better off, but also that society probably lost something, when the architecture changed. But I guess I might have thought the same thing 500 years earlier when the area adopted things from Laos or Cambodia when attacking armies controlled the land for a period.

But in the palace, there was an area where the buildings were in the style of European buildings, and our kids said that it seemed like we were in Epcot, as we walked from one area with Asian architecture, into the next area where it looked like France. On our way out, we saw an ice cream stand and felt like we had to buy some for the kids who had done a good job of slogging through the non-stop temple tour in the blazing heat.

Ice cream took the edge off of the heat. For about 2 minutes.

After that, we went to Wat Phra Chetuphon, the temple of the reclining Buddha. After being generally underwhelmed by the Jade Buddha, our expectations were now lower, but we were blown away by this one. It was absolutely huge.

The temples were all cool, but the Buddha statues were largely similar, with the exception of the Golden Buddha, and the Reclining Buddha.

Along a corridor, there was a series of small pots, and you could "buy" some coins to put into them, making a wish as you went along. there was something like 80 of these small pots, and Liam wanted to do each one, and he took his time thinking of wishes as we went along.

Liam has a lot of wishes that should be coming true. Good thing he took his time to make sure that they were good wishes.

The kids were ready to go back and they wanted to eat at Dough Bros again, and after being good sports on the tour (including adding the boat part to the tour), we figured that they earned it. So we ordered food on our way back to the hotel so we wouldn’t have to wait long. The timing was near perfect as the food got there 5 minutes after we did. Megan and I thought that the pizza was so-so, but the dough balls and the tater tots were good, and the Nutella donuts were fantastic.

After that, the girls watch Vampire Diaries for a while, and then most of us took naps. Then, we ordered room service, and watched Hangover 2, which takes place in Bangkok, but had little resemblance to our stay in Bangkok so far.

Day 96

We got up early for a 6:15 pickup for a tour to the bridge on the river Kwai, on our way to The Float House resort. I had bought some crackers and things the night before at a convenience store across the street since Starbucks wouldn’t be open and we weren’t sure what food options would be.

When we got on the van, there was already an elderly couple from Manchester inside. Most of us just slept on the van ride, and after an hour we stopped at a rest stop. Keira and I went in search of food, and found some muffins and croissants to eat. Liam was still asleep so we didn’t get him anything, which was a bit of a risk. Then we went to a WW2 cemetery of POWs at the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery. There were tombstones for hundreds of POWs from the UK, Australia and the Netherlands, and it was beautifully maintained. Apparently, after the war, the Allied forces went around to all the POW camps and removed the remains from the cemeteries at those camps and brought them here (and I think two other, smaller locations).

The cemetery was a moving monument to the people who lost their lives on building the railroad.

Then we went to the Death Railway Museum, a museum about the Burma-Thailand railway that the Japanese built during WWII, where the bridge on the river Kwai was just one the many bridges. I say that the Japanese built it, but more accurately, they used about 16,000 POWs and about 100,000 Asian laborers (mostly conscripted from neighboring countries - none from Thailand, because Thailand signed a cooperation agreement with Japan during WWII, where they wouldn’t attack each other, but Japan would be allowed to move troops through the country to attack other parts of Asia).

The museum was very good. It went through the treatment of the POWs and how so many died during the construction of the railroad - mostly from starvation and lack of medical care. This was a big theme of the movie Bridge on the River Kwai, that Japan mostly ignored standard POW treatment protocols to get this built. Although thousands of POWs died, around 60,000 of the conscripted people throughout Asia died in building the railway, as their treatment was at least as bad, and they didn’t have the medical staff that the POWs had to treat the sick (the medical staff was made up of POWs, and although they didn’t have any medicine to treat people with, they did reasonably well with what they had). Most of the POWs were English and Australian, as it appears that the US military wasn’t fighting much in the region.

It was all very interesting because all of my WW2 history focused 90% on Europe, with very little on what happened in Asia. I didn’t realize just how much land Japan had conquered. I also didn’t appreciate just how poorly they treated the POWs during the war - the Japanese come off incredibly poorly in all of this. The railway itself was needed because the Allied forces were starting to make travel by boat difficult, but the idea of the railway had been discarded by Europeans a decade early as too difficult. But it seems like its a lot easier to do if you have 160,000 slaves working for you and you don’t care if half of them die.

After that, we went on a boat ride to the bridge itself. As we were pulling up, a train was going along the bridge.

The bridge wasn't much by modern standards but being able to build it all the way out here, 75 years ago, was impressive.

The Allied forces bombed the bridge and destroyed part of it, but it was rebuilt. We were able to walk across the rebuilt bridge. Lily wanted to stop about 10 feet in, and so did Elenna, but we convinced her to keep going. Once the bridge stopped having guard rails along the sides, we had her and Liam sit down, while the rest of us walked to the other side.

It was neat to be able to walk across the bridge.

Then we walked back and took the van to lunch. At lunch we sat with the English couple and learned their backstory a little (it was kind of hard to talk to them in the bus, and in the morning we were too tired to do much more than sleep). They had just come from Vietnam, and after meeting a bunch of people who had toured that area, it is now fully on my list of places to go (it just narrowly missed being part of this trip).

Then we went to visit the Hellfire Pass. Here there was another museum about the construction of the Burma-Thailand railway, and about 75% of it was the same information as in the first museum. This one was neat as there were a number of video interviews with survivors who gave first hand accounts of their experience there, and coming home.

Hellfire Pass was an area where they had to cut through a mountain to build the railroad. Since it was in the middle of the jungle, they couldn’t bring heavy machinery to build the railroad, so almost everything was done by hand - including drilling the holes to put in the TNT to blow up the mountain and make a pass. Then the rocks had to be carried away by hand and then the tracks laid by hand. An incredible undertaking, especially for poorly fed, poorly cared for workers.

We then walked down a portion of this pass and saw where they had blown up the pass. As we looked out into the valley, I was reminded of the line from “The Bridge on the River Kwai” where the Japanese general said, “You will notice that there are no walls here. There are few guards here. That is because we are in the middle of a jungle and there is nowhere for you to go.” And even today, it was largely in the middle of nowhere and you could imagine how trapped the POWs felt being there.

It was amazing how they were able to blow a path through the mountain without any modern equipment.

From there we went to the hotel. The Float House, as you might imagine, was built on the river, and each bungalow was essentially a pontoon boat, floating on the river. It was beautiful, all wooden, with thatched roofs, in the middle of a jungle. Since there is a current, and we are floating, the floor would move up and down, and it was a little like being on a boat, particularly whenever a motor boat went by and created some waves.

It was really cool to take a boat ride down a river. You could easily imagine what it was like 100 years ago, going through the jungle.

Megan and I got a drink and sat out on our deck - best Mai Tai I've ever had. There is an option of swimming in the river - you have to wear a life jacket, and essentially, you start upstream, and then float downstream and get out. So as we sat there trip planning (or writing a blog), from time to time a bunch of people would float by us.

The restaurant for dinner was nice, with lots of Christmas lights up and some Christmas decorations up. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but almost everywhere in Thailand had a Merry Christmas or Happy New Year decoration. The food was good - they had a set 5 course meal, but since only Megan eats seafood, they allowed us to switch out 2 of the 5 courses for chicken dishes instead. Meanwhile, Elenna and Liam could order off of the menu, so they both ordered pizza, but Liam promptly fell asleep after 1 piece.

Its amazing to see Xmas lights way out in the jungle.

Earlier in the day, Lily said one of my pet peeves - “Me and Keira” as in "Me and Keira were really annoyed", instead of “Keira and I”. Megan and I have corrected our 3 girls about 1,000 times (and I think that this is an actual number) over their lives, and yet they never say it correctly. I jokingly said that I should give them $1,000 and then subtract $1 every time they say it wrong, and if it goes below $0, then they would owe me money. When Lily said it incorrectly twice at dinner in the span of 5 minutes - I pointed at her and said “$999!” then “$998!”

It was initially a joke, but we decided to put it into practice - with about 200 days left in the trip, I offered $200, and would subtract $1 each time. Keira didn’t want unlimited downside, so she offered $10 per month left on the trip as the cost of going below 0 (so if she got to 0 in March, it would be $30 for April, May, June). Elenna, since she doesn’t have a job, was in, but only has to pay $5 per month, if she dropped below 0. Lily, meanwhile, refused to join for fear that she would lose too much money. By the time dinner was over, Keira was down to $199, and we worried that Elenna would just not say anything for the next 200 days in order to win the maximum amount.

DAY 97

NOTE: Not sure if you noticed, but I added another flight to the top of this section - Chiang Mai to Bangkok. This is the first time we've had multiple flights in a country, so I think I'm going to do it this way - add the flights when we get to the new city. When we get to the Koh Chang section, I'll add another flight, so you can see where we are.

We got up and ate a buffet breakfast before going on our half day tour. The first stop was a cave near the hotel. We had to walk up a stone staircase, then down a road and then up another 113 steps to get to the cave. Once again, we started to worry about our ability to do the Sydney Harbor Bridge climb, which was now mere weeks away. As we walked down the road, there was a little girl of about 8 or 9 who waved to us.

As we stood outside the cave, there was a sign that talked about the cave a little and showed some things that might be in the cave, such as bats, scorpions and camel crickets. Once they saw bats, Lily and Elenna started to get scared. The tour guide didn’t do us an favors by saying that during the rainy season, the cave is full of bats, but its the dry season and there aren’t "many" bats now. Someone asked about snakes, and he said that we were in the jungle so there are snakes here, and they even have large cobras, but he hasn’t seen any snakes in the cave in the 26 years he has been doing this. By this point, Lily and Elenna were scared past the point of going in and decided not to go in. Keira initially wavered, but then ultimately decided to go in. Liam was a little skeptical, but once he was given a flashlight to hold, he confidently went into the cave.

Only those of us that were very brave, or foolish, went into the cave.

The cave was interesting. The first big room we went into had a shrine in it, but it seemed more like it was set up for tourists, rather than used for anything.

The first area had a small shrine.

Then we went deeper and deeper into the cave, and surprisingly, it was just as hot, if not hotter in the cave than it was outside. There were cool stalactites and stalagmites throughout. But the whole time, it was a little nerve wracking, as I was on the lookout for bats. Luckily, of the things we could have seen, we only saw the crickets.

Liam gave 2 thumbs up to the cave.

As we were leaving the cave, we passed the little girl from the village, holding a flashlight, followed by 2 adults, and we believe that she was giving the tour. This gave us some ammunition to use on Lily and Elenna to go back in, but they still wouldn’t.

So we moved on to the next part of the tour which was a boat ride to a waterfall. The guide said it was an hour, and I wasn’t sure if he meant the whole thing was an hour, or it was an hour away, not sure if any waterfall here would be worth an hour long boat ride.

We (Megan and I) always love a boat ride. Particularly through a jungle.

It turns out that it was an hour long boat ride to the waterfall (actually more like 70 minutes). The scenery was beautiful, as there was a dense jungle on either side of the river and mountains in the background. As a result, it wasn’t too bad, other than the seats getting a little uncomfortable after a while.

I was always surprised to see how ornate the temples are, particularly when they are so far away from anything.

We passed one waterfall that was maybe 20 feet high and pretty, but not really anything I'd travel 70 minutes to see. I wondered out loud if this was going to be like Oman, where we were in the dry season and whatever we see now would be more impressive at a different time of year. Later, I realized that tour operators want to make money so if things are remotely interesting, they will be put into a tour.

We traveled over an hour to see this waterfall.

We got off the boat and then walked across a bridge to the waterfall.

On the bridge over to the waterfall.

It was pretty small and there was an area where you could wade in the water, but it was only about 6 inches deep and most of us had sneakers. I did convince Elenna to go into the water for a picture, and later to get Liam to go in.

Liam will do anything that Elenna does.

I asked if the waterfall was bigger in the rainy season, and our guide said not really. The source of this waterfall was a natural spring, so it wasn’t impacted by the rain. We walked towards the spring and the scenery was neat - jungle, going along a stream. Our guide explained that the Japanese had a camp there during construction of the railway, so that they could get fresh water, but it was for the army only - the POWs were somewhere else.

Elenna was uncharacteristically willing to be in pictures.

We took the boat back and got back a bit quicker (going downstream), but it was still a long ride back.

A better picture of the bridge.

Then we ate lunch and decided to jump into the river and do what we had seen those other tourists do - float down the river in life jackets. We all put on life jackets and then walked towards the area where we were supposed to jump in.

Some of us were more excited than others to jump in the river.

Unfortunately, Lily was looking at the shore and saw a large monitor lizard crawl out of the water onto the rocky land and pointed it out. At this point, it was good that Megan and I had had a conversation the night before about these lizards. Apparently, she had mentioned to the elderly couple on the excursion the day before that we had seen Komodo Dragons in the canal when we went to the Grand Palace. The man said that was dangerous because they are venomous with no antidote. I said that the guide called them monitor lizards, and I thought that Komodo Dragons only lived on a certain island in Indonesia (which is why I was bummed we didn't go there, but was also the reason that Megan wouldn't let us go there). We did a little research and it turns out that Komodo Dragons are a type of monitor lizard, and they only live in Indonesia, so we saw a less dangerous animal, that in theory wasn't venomous.

As a result, Megan and I were reasonably confident going into the river, but Elenna and Keira quickly freaked out and they all said that they wouldn’t go in. So at this point, we basically made them go, saying that they had to do it once. Our guide said nothing dangerous was in the river and in the summer, the locals were in the river a lot, so it seemed like it shouldn’t be a problem.

The kids all fell in line, and I went down the ladder into the river and quickly realized how strong the current was. I was in the water, holding onto the ladder so I could help Liam into the water, but it took a lot of my strength to hold on. The plan was that Keira and Lily (our two lifeguards) would watch Liam while I took pictures with the Go Pro, so they came in and we all took off.

Despite initial concerns, everyone had a good time in the river.

Once you were in the river and not trying to hold onto anything stable, the current didn’t seem so bad. We leisurely floated down the river, but once you had to start swimming to the side to get to the ladder to get out, you realized how fast the current was again. We all made it, and agreed that it was a lot of fun. Liam said he wanted to do it again, and everyone was generally on board, until Lily saw what she thinks was a snake and said she was out. Elenna jumped on that as an excuse to bow out. We made Keira go again, figuring that she was the best swimmer and we might need help with Liam.

We went down again and once again, just floating down the river was pretty fun. Keira and Megan got Liam over to the ladder again, and as he got out Liam wanted to go again. Keira said that she was done, and we convinced Liam that the third time would be the last time. Megan had promised Elenna that she would go bike riding with her (you could borrow a bike and ride to the other resort that was part of the complex, and Elenna had been saying for weeks how much she missed riding her bike).

But now, Megan and I had to get Liam over to the ladder and fight the current. I handed the Go Pro to Keira so I wouldn’t have to deal with that and held Liam’s hand the whole time down, keeping us close to the side, so we wouldn’t have to fight the current as much. I was pretty stressed out, Megan was relatively calm and Liam was living his best life - relaxing, lying on his back and floating down the river. Once you pass the last bungalow on the water, its time to swim to the side, and fight the current. We made it with some time to spare, but the whole time was a bit stressful.

Floating down the river, before we got to the difficult part.

We got out and I gave Liam a shower and got showered myself. Then I went into Keira and Lily’s room and we worked on this year’s Xmas letter. After we got that done, it was time to go to dinner. After dinner there was a dancing show at the other resort. We didn’t know what exactly it was, except that it was only 30 minutes long, so it was my kind of show.

We took a boat over to the resort and walked up to the stage area. There were 3 musicians banging on bells and drum-type things. To me, the music was very dissonant, and not terribly pleasing to listen to. Then 6 women came out and started singing, but the music drown them out so you couldn’t hear them. Although I did hear enough to know it wasn’t English, so I just sat back because it didn’t make a difference.

KHS could teach these performers a thing or two. We later realized that they were all just workers at the resort, so I guess with that background, it was pretty good.

There was a dance where two little girls came out, and that was very cute. The younger girl didn’t know all the moves and kept watching the older girl and smiling. Then there were other dances with 2 male dancers coming out sometimes. You got the sense that there was a story to some of the songs, but it really wasn’t clear.

Although this was a high school musical quality production, our kids sat there patiently and clapped, everyone agreeing that the dance with the little girls was the highlight. Meanwhile, Liam fell asleep pretty early on, which was a little bad since he was in the front row, but at least he wasn’t disruptive.

After the dance, we came back and went to bed.

Day 98

I got Starbucks for everyone for breakfast, and then we were off to the airport. Since it was a domestic flight, there was no customs, and we were at the gate about 60 minutes before boarding. For the second time on the trip, we boarded a propeller plan, this time for the 1 hour flight to Trat. We were headed for Koh Chang, an Island that was part of Thailand.

Even on a 60 minute flight, they served food, and the chicken and noodles was the best airplane food I had had in a while. The problem was that Liam was next to me, and I had ordered him a fruit dish, since he hadn’t eaten anything that a plane has served previously. But now, he liked my noodles and my dessert, so I was still a bit hungry when we landed. But of course, I had brought some snacks (never fly hungry!) that I ate on the way to the hotel.

We had arranged a transfer to the hotel, since we had to take a taxi to a ferry to a taxi. It turns out that the van we hired was able to just drive onto the ferry, so it was pretty seamless. Meanwhile, our kids didn’t want to get out of the air conditioned van, and Liam wanted to play Transformers with me, so we just stayed in the van on the way to the ferry. Megan and I would have forced them out of the car, but it was a bit cloudy and overcast, so it wasn’t a great day to be on the deck, and Liam was desperate to play with the transformers and the McDonald’s Happy Meal toy we had gotten the day before (a figure that turned between Super Girl and the Mummy).

On the van ride to the hotel, Liam discovered that if he looked through a bottle of water, then everything looked distorted. And if he made you look through a bottle of water, then your eyes looked distorted. He said that I looked like a Disney character.

I would have said that I looked more like a bee than a Disney character.

I said he looked like an alien, so he grabbed some Sprite cans to make antenna.

Liam comes in peace, and only wants to eat your pizza and nutella.

We got to the hotel around 3, and Megan and I wanted to tour the hotel, but predictably the girls just wanted to sit in the room. So we brought Liam around with us to explore the resort, and then walk down the street to buy some things at a local 7 Eleven.

One of the reasons that we choose this place was that there was a kids club, but just like in Oman, this “Kids Club” was a room with some toys in it that wasn’t staffed by anyone and didn’t have any activities. Who knew that was even a thing? But we certainly will think twice about booking a place with a kids club from now on.

We bought Liam some beach toys and a new cord to charge his iPad (since he had already broken mine). We also found a place that would do our laundry, so when we got back, I loaded up everyone’s laundry and brought it back over there. It was about 75c per pound of laundry, and ended up being 30lbs of laundry.

We rested for a while before we went to dinner at the hotel restaurant which actually was pretty good and had an extensive menu. Before we went down, Megan had been researching some restaurants to eat at, assuming that we would get sick of the hotel food. But it might take longer for that to happen than we might have thought.

Day 100

With Day 100, we were about ⅓ of the way through the trip. I thought it might be interesting to say some facts about our trip so far. I’m a numbers guy, so here are a lot of numbers

We have visited 9 countries, including Vatican City.

It is at this point that you might realize that the home page says we are visiting 18 countries. When we started the trip, it was 16. And then we realized that Vatican City is its own country, so I made it 17. So why 18 now? Well, Megan has been trying to meet up with world schooling hubs (world schooling is home schooling while you travel around the world). In these hubs, a bunch of world schooling families get together and do activities together like sightseeing, etc. (still schooling their own families independently). We are joining one in the Maldives. But she found one that is hosting a World School Prom in May, but in Budapest. Its 100% completely out of the way - forcing us to fly from Japan to Budapest back to Peru/Ecuadpor then to Greece - but we are doing it anyway because we thought Lily and Keira would have a good time and our kids could use hanging out with some people their age.

Liam has been living his best life on this trip.

But back to the numbers:

We have been on 14 flights, covering 16,367 miles.

We have been on 10 trains.

We have been in 77 taxis/ubers/car services.

We have been on 11 buses.

We have spent 11 days with a driver guiding us around.

We have been on 4 metros.

We have been on 7 ferries.

We have been on 8 water taxis.

We have been on 17 tuk tuks.

We have slept in 27 different places.

This includes 2 overnight flights
One overnight train ride

We have been to Bangkok Airport 3 times (so far)

Essentially, this means that on average once every week, we are on a plane.

On average, we change where we stay every 4 days.

We have seen about 21,376 temples, churches and mosques (as estimate from our kids).

Liam has eaten pizza approximately 45 times. Elenna has eaten fried rice approximately 30 times.

Illnesses - 10.

Number of times we almost went to the hospital - 1.

Number of times we did go to a hospital - 1.

Number of doctors that we consulted - 5.

Number of Excedrine that Kevin has taken - 98.

Number of Excedrine that Kevin will admit to having taken - 30.

Amusement parks - 8.

Card Games Liam has created - 2.

Card games where Liam has added his own rules - 2

Number of people who will play Liam's invented games with him - 1.

Decks of cards - 3.

Liam's card games are usually pretty good, once you figure out all of the rules.

I have read 17 books, which is about 10 more books than I read in a normal year.

Lord of the Rings (trilogy)

Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (trilogy)

Shogun (Books 1 and 2) - reread

Angles and Demons - reread

The Da Vinci Code - reread

The Turtle of Oman

I am Malalah

Davinci’s Tiger

The Naturals (Books 1-4)

(the last three were books that Elenna was reading for her home schooling, so I read them as well).

The girls have all read more books than me, even Lily and Elenna who say that they have too much school work.

Books Keira has read - 75.

Books Lily has read - 32.

Number of new suitcases we had to buy while on the trip - 3.

Number of haircuts people have had since we started - 2.

Unique visitors to this website - 737.

Site sessions on this website - 1,979.

Page Views - 4,844.

Average time spent on the site per visitor - 4 minutes and 58 seconds. So I guess you are reading these posts.

Number of followers on Keira's Instagram for this trip - Funfilledfamilyouting - 183

Highest number of views for a single post on Keira's Instagram for this trip - 1,992.

My guess is that we have seen over 1,000 zebra, and probably closer to 2,000.

We have seen about 1,000 giraffe

Over 1,000 water buffalo

About 1,000 wildebeest

About 500 elephants

An infinite number of antelope

A couple dozen rhino

5 hippos

5 crocodiles

15 monitor lizards

A couple hundred geckos

Dozens of sea turtles

We have fed rhinos, elephants, giraffes and sea turtles.

Number of sunsets that I have seen - 20 (about 19 more than I normally would).

And the last number is 0 regrets from Megan or me about taking the trip.

Hard to have regrets when visiting places like this and spending time with our family.

Day 101

One of the worst things about traveling for 10 months is missing the holidays. We aren’t particularly big on Thanksgiving - we like seeing people, but Thanksgiving is mostly about food. In fact, Megan and I, when we were first together, had spent 7 of 8 years over Thanksgiving, away, largely in other countries. Its a perfect break from work where you only have to take 2.5 days off and you get a full week - so its perfect for traveling.

Missing Christmas is quite another thing. Megan and I are big fans of Christmas, and Liam is prime Xmas age, so him missing this year was particularly sad for us. Since we do go all out for Xmas (anyone reading this probably knows every year I put up enough lights on my house to ensure it can be viewed from space), we figured that our older kids would miss it as well. So we had been planning for the past month about how to bring some Xmas to Koh Chang.

An older picture of our house during Xmas. I add more every year.

Megan had wanted to buy a bunch of Xmas stuff as far back as Oman, but I convinced her that Bangkok would likely have Xmas stuff, and we didn’t have much room in our bags to carry things for an extra month. Plus, the longer we carried things, the more likely it was that the kids would see it. So I had guided us to look for things in Bangkok, since it was a city, and I assumed there would be something there we could buy (Megan did buy a couple of things in Oman though). As we continued our travels and saw Xmas decorations in Cambodia and Thailand, I felt better and better about being able to find something in Bangkok.

On our last night in Bangkok, Megan and I went out, in theory on a date night, but in reality to find Xmas decorations. We ended up finding a 4 ft high cloth, with a picture of an evergreen on it, and we bought some safety pins and small Xmas lights and figured that we could hang that up on the wall as our “Christmas Tree.”

On our way into Koh Chang, I was on the lookout for anything that might sell more Christmassy stuff, and I saw one roadside shop that looked like it had stuff, but it wasn’t clear if it was for sale or just a decoration for the store.

When we got to the hotel, I googled supermarkets and they were all in the opposite direction of the place I saw, but we figured that they might be our best bet for decorations. So we went to the one that we could walk to (16 minutes away). While there, we bought some food to eat as a snack around lunch - for the most part our plan was to gorge on the free buffet breakfast, and then not eat anything until dinner. But some people wanted a little food to get them through the 8 hours in between and bought some bread, Nutella (of course!), some fruit and some granola bars.

We also found a small Xmas section that sold decorations for a tree and some Xmas lights. At the top of the display was a small 3 or 4 foot fake tree, and there were boxes for Xmas trees next to it and we figured that this might be better than the wall hanging. As I put it into the cart, I realized that the box was taller than the display tree and it said “7 Ft” on it, and I mentioned this to Megan who later said she didn’t hear me. As we got ornaments, I kept saying that maybe we should buy more, but Megan thought that between the couple we bought there and what we bought in Bangkok, we were fine.

Meanwhile, I kept eying the Christmas lights, and I grabbed two more packets, and Megan said that those were solar powered (implying that they wouldn’t really work in the room), and I said, “I know, they will be for our balcony.” At this point, I was hoping to win the Xmas light decoration contest on 2 different continents.

We checked out and as we exited, we took a closer look at the Xmas display that was in front of the store. There was a 7 ft tree that was nicely decorated (as well as a picture of the King of Thailand). At this point, Megan agreed that our tree almost certainly was bigger than we thought, but still decided that since we checked out, we should see what the ornament situation was at home before buying more.

We started to think that the tree I was carrying might be the size of the one on the left. Which actually was fine with us, for the most part.

I carried the tree back to the hotel, while Megan carried the groceries and decorations. There wasn’t a taxi stand at the supermarket, and I said to Megan, this tree isn’t that heavy, but somewhere around minute 8 or 10 I’ll be regretting not getting a taxi. This turned out to be pretty true, although it was more like minute 12 or 14. We passed by a taxi stand about 8 minutes into our walk, but by that time we felt like we were almost home. I noted to Megan that we probably were saving ourselves about $2 by walking as I pushed ahead.

Keira was teaching Liam to read in our room, so we called her to move her and him out of the room, so we could get in. We then stored our stuff and went to dinner.

For the next 24 hours, I continued to worry that we didn’t have enough decorations, so I convinced Megan to go to the store with me again, this time to a further away one that we needed a taxi to get to (assuming that there might be cooler things there). We got a little more food (Liam had eaten 6 pieces of bread the first day and wanted more before we cut him off). But there really wasn’t a section for Xmas decorations. So we had the taxi stop at the supermarket we went to the day before, and bought a few more decorations.

Again we had Keira and Liam leave the room, and this time we set up the tree, which was, in fact, 7 ft tall. I also went onto the balcony and set up the solar lights, somewhat worried that the resort might have lighting that was too bright for the panels to register that it was night time. That happened the year I tried to use solar lights for my front lawn - every time a car drove down our road, the headlights would create enough light that the panels would think it was day, and the lights would turn off - essentially turning off at exactly the time we wanted them on - when someone was driving by. Meanwhile, I used so many lights that I had to be incredibly careful about the direction the solar panel was facing (beyond making sure that they got sun in the day), because if they faced into the yard, the lights there made too much light, and the panels thought it was day and wouldn’t turn on. So although it was a good idea in theory, I don’t use solar Xmas lights at my house anymore.

Me, proudly with my lights. I only need about 50,000 more lights to match my house.

But they did the trick here at Koh Chang. I didn’t go crazy, knowing that we would leave everything when we checked out, and it was somewhat likely that everything (including the tree) would end up in the landfill). This particularly worried Megan, but I soothed her concerns, noting that the stuff was already made, and if we didn’t buy it, it would have ended in a landfill one way or another (decent logic if you don’t think about it too much).

So then, we invited everyone into the room and we decorated the tree with the lights and ornaments. I think everyone enjoyed it and appreciated the gesture. We then watched an Xmas movie together - the new Rock/Chris Evans movie “Code Red”, which was maybe a 5 out of 10. But we ate some cookies that we found that were somewhat Xmas themed, which got us through the movie.

The tree was almost half of the size of our normal tree, but it was perfect for a Thailand Christmas.

As we set up the tree, there were a couple of pictures that we take every year that I wanted to recreate. We have cathedral ceilings at home, so every year we cut down our own tree, and it its up being somewhere between 12-14 feet high. And every year I have a picture of me lying under the tree with a saw, cutting it down. This year, we had this:

Setting up this tree was much easier than actually cutting down a tree. However, the carrying it back to the house was almost as bad.

Earlier in the day, Elenna and Liam were playing Minecraft with Uncle Mike and Alex, and when it came time for us to go to breakfast, Liam didn't want to leave, so Megan and he stayed in the room and he kept playing. So as the rest of us were eating, Lily said, "You look like a single dad taking his kids on a trip." And I said, "Yeah, I could see taking you all on a trip, but it wouldn't be as well planned as this.."

I bring up this story because in that first picture, all of the branches were essentially as they came out of the box, and I commented that it looked a little sparse - like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. I didn't realize that they could be separated and spread out to make the tree look more full, but Megan did, so we retook the picture with the tree looking a bit more like a Christmas tree. Its the little things...

This is why I keep Megan around.

The other picture I wanted to recreate was me putting the star on the Christmas tree. I always do it because I can reach over the railing from the second floor to put it on top of our really large tree. A bit easier to do it here.

You have to keep some traditions going.

Day 103

The resort is nice. We got two rooms next to each other, and Megan, Liam and I are staying in one room with a Master and a large living room where the whole family can come together to watch movies.

It is located on a white sand beach that doesn’t have much beach at high tide, so all of the chairs are on the resort, which is built up on a concrete wall. But there is enough sand to play in, especially when the tide is low, so we bought Liam sand toys to help occupy his time - although he generally prefers to play poker.

The water has been between pretty calm and completely calm since we got here. So there has been good visibility in the clear water down to the sand, although Liam prefers to be in the pool over the ocean, and our girls prefer to be in the room (Lily and Elenna) or lying on a lounge chair (Keira) to being in the water.

Lily and Elenna have generally done their work, but we can usually get them to leave their room if we promise them drinks at the swim up bar. Usually, before we do this, we make Keira give Liam swim lessons. He continues to improve, and this pool is about 50 meters long and he swam the whole way across, mostly on sheer determination, and only because I was walking along with him. But it certainly was a good start.

Elenna doesn't often come to the beach, but when she does, she usually times it well.

The buffet breakfast is pretty good - the best bacon on the trip so far (cooked extra crispy). Liam loves it because it has a donut wall, but he also eats pancakes (covered in peanut butter and nutella), waffles (covered in Nutella), and fruit loops. These compliment the 4 donuts he eats each day and we try to get him to eat a banana or something to get some vitamins into him. But since he is the slowest eater (slowed down by his constant talking, or just sometimes daydreaming), our other kids complain every time we add something to his plate, because it adds another 5 minutes to the meal. I’ve gotten to the point where at 10:30 I let everyone else go, and I stay with Liam for however long it takes.

Liam's normal breakfast, although usually there are a couple more donuts.

One issue was that, like many tropical places, there are geckos all over the walls. In general, this isn’t an issue, except that a geko got into our room when Lily was here to take a shower. I basically told her it would be impossible to get it because they are so fast, but Megan and Lily made me try. We knew I had to trap it, but quickly decided that using one of the glasses wouldn’t work (I’d have to slam it against the wall to catch it). We luckily had a sand bucket we bought for Liam and I tried that. Amazingly, I trapped it against the wall, and then was able to slide Liam’s work folder underneath and get the geko out. A true Christmas miracle.

Another good thing about the hotel is the sunset view. Absolutely amazing. We have had some great views in Zanzibar and Oman, with spectacular sunsets against palm trees, so its hard to say that these are the best, but they are certainly up there. I’m not sure that I would ever get used them.

Its hard to accurately capture how good the sunsets are here. Our view from our balcony.

Day 106

Megan and I wanted to explore the island a little, but there really weren’t any tours that interested us. No temples to see and we had already done the elephant encounters. So that left water excursions - fishing, scuba and snorkeling. Since we don’t fish or scuba, our choice was made for us.

Of course, when we asked the kids if they wanted to go, they said no, even when we said that they would have to watch Liam while we were gone. So Megan and I headed off on a half day snorkeling tour.

We were on a speedboat and I made sure that the boat would have shade, but it ended up working against us. On the sides of the boat, there was a shaded plexiglass area that provided a bit more shade and protection against spraying water, and then there were a number of metal bars that went from there to the roof to hold up the roof that provided the shade. However, it meant that there was only about 2.5 feet of air, and most of it was criss crossed by metal bars that supported the roof.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a probably, but the waves were a little choppy and our speed boat was going full throttle. So it was a bumpy ride to say the least, but more importantly, the boat would swoon to the side from time to time. It would often go on a 45 degree angle and once or twice it got up to 60 degrees. So at this point, it felt like there was a potential that the boat could actually flip over.

I wasn’t too worried, although I was certainly nonplussed whenever we turned on an angle, but Megan was in a bit of a panic. She didn’t like the fact that, if we did somehow flip, it would be hard to swim out through the narrow area of “air” with bars criss crossing it. I took some comfort from the fact that the captain of the boat seemed very calm and relaxed as the boat rocked, but Megan interpreted this as a sign that he was a bad captain and it made her even more worried. At one point, I wondered if we would be able to get Megan back onto the boat once it stopped at an island.

At one point, a woman tried to get to the front of the boat (there was an 8 foot section at the very front where there was no shade), and Megan noticed her stumbling towards the front as the boat bounced and rocked, and she put out her hand to help her along. When Megan noticed the front section, she quickly followed the woman. She felt much better being outside, without being potentially trapped in the boat in something went wrong.

We finally made it to the first snorkeling spot and saw a decent amount of fish. Its amazing to me that wherever you go in the world (where the water is warm), there seems to be zebra fish.

Megan didn't have to be told twice to get off the boat and into the water.

The next stop was a much better spot for fish, and we saw a lot of neat and colorful fish. I was trying to take an underwater of picture of Megan and me, when one of the boat guys said something like, "I can make it under the water." So I though that he was offering to take our picture, but then he dove underwater without my camera and we watched him. Instead, he went down near the bottom and blew a bubble ring up. It was pretty cool.

We weren't expecting a bubble show. But a zebra fish came to watch.

My favorite was the school of fish that we saw with about 100 small silver fish who would swim together and veer away as one. It reminded me of Finding Nemo, when the fish would form up to make a sign.

This reminded me of Finding Nemo, because I tend to make sense of the world by finding Disney analogies.

We got to the third spot but at this point we were a bit cold and considered just sitting on the boat. But it seemed like the kind of thing our kids would do, so we decided that since we were here, we might as well see what there was to see. The third spot was almost as good as the second, although for the most part we were seeing the same things over and over. But the coral was neat and had some color, and there were sea anemones with fish swimming through.

We saw some cool fish. But it will be hard to convince me that I haven't seen this exact same zebra fish in the Caribbean.

Then we stopped at a beach and they fed us some food which was decent. On the beach there was a sign about what to do if you were hit by sting ray venom, but the picture actually looked like a jelly fish. We weren’t all that far from where we were snorkeling and I was wondering if we had been in danger at all. Megan said that she saw a stingray go along the sea floor while we were snorkeling but it would have been 10-15 feet below us, so not a threat to hurting us.

Then we headed back. By now, Megan had been in the very front of the boat for all of the little trips in between snorkeling spots and was much more comfortable.

The taxi ride to and from the dock for the boat was about 35 minutes and for the most part the main road looked like the area around our hotel, although there was a major switchback that Megan didn’t like at all. The ride was a little bumpy and twisty, and on the way there, there was a little boy who looked very sick (and ultimately was sick while on the boat part of our cruise).

The upshot of the long car trip (which was actually in the back of a truck) was that we got to talk to two families. One was at our resort and they had an 8 year old. The mother was Russian, the father was Czech and they met in Switzerland and talked English to each other. Their son spoke Russian, Czech, English and French, and he would speak German by the time he graduated because German and French were the official languages of Switzerland, so he was learning that in school. And that makes you wonder what are we doing with our lives?

We were also kicking ourselves because the one time that we didn’t bring Liam somewhere, was a place where there were kids, and one who could speak English! (although Megan probably would have had a heart attack if Liam was on that boat with its rocking and rolling) When we got home, we told Liam about the boy and said that we would try to find him for a play date.

Day 107

Well, we did it again. If you were observant, you would notice that what was once 16 countries, 10 months, 4 kids, and then turned into 18 countries, is now 19 countries. We decided that after the World School Prom in Hungary, we would stop in Austria and stay at a Kinderhotel - a hotel geared towards children. Unlike the last two places that had "kids clubs", these hotels have all sorts of activities for kids. Its also near where the Sound of Music was filmed, and not that near, but close enough to the library that Belle's library was based on.

When we went to breakfast the next day, we ran into the dad and son from the trip (the mother went on a full day fishing tour) and agreed to meet up later. A little after breakfast, we went in search of them just as we saw them going into the ocean. So Liam and I joined them.

They were very nice and the boy started to play tag with Liam, and we ended up doing a game of tag (which the boy, Simon, called Wolf) with all four of us where once you were tagged, you were also “it” until everyone was tagged. He said you were added to the “wolf family” but I called it the wolfpack (after watching Hangover). Then they got a soccer ball and we played a game where we threw the ball around. Liam was certainly a bit young for the game that we played but he generally held his own.

Then we went back and rested a little and played some cards. Then a little while later they came over and said that they were going to go on the paddle boards. So we joined them out on the paddle boards. I got Liam a life jacket and after a little while he was annoyed by it so we took it off. He and Simon would jump off the paddle boards and we played pirates as Simon and his dad would try to board our boat. It was a little bit worrisome, since Liam can swim, but not very well, and sometimes he would jump off the board and float away. But luckily, the other dad was conscious of him and also looking to reel him back in if he got close to their boat.

We had drifted down the shore and had to return the paddle boards after an hour so the other dad started paddling back and I had the two kids. We went closer to shore and it was taking a long time to paddle up-wind, against the current, so I got out and just pushed the board back along the shore. It was tough running several hundred yards through knee deep water and pushing it, so by the time I got back, I was ready to lie down. Megan took Liam back to eat some lunch and I got a little time to read.

When they came back, Liam and I went in search of the boy and his dad and were going to offer to build sandcastles, but Simon was kicking a soccer ball around, so we decided to play soccer - kids against dads. Simon was pretty good, but Liam was 5 and has all of the athletic talents of a Fischbeck, so there were limits to what he could do. As we played, a 10 year old came up and asked to play. He was Swedish, but could speak English and he joined the kids team. Then two more kids came up and wanted to play and they were Czech and could speak a little English and they joined. This allowed the two dads to bow out and watch the kids play.

By now, Liam had learned that he preferred to just be standing in the goal than trying to kick the ball - these 4 European kids were all quite good for their ages. They were also very respectful of the fact that Liam was much younger than everyone else. Liam had a great time, blocking a number of shots on goal. He got knocked over a couple of times and got bumped a couple of times, but always got up (something that isn’t always clear will happen, but generally the more fun he has, the less he notices that he was injured). After the game, I congratulated him on his play, and he said, “It was just beginner’s luck.”

I don't have any pictures from that day, so here are a couple of random pictures.

DAY 108

The food in Koh Chang has been pretty good. The food at our hotel was surprisingly good and varied, but we also went out to eat about half of the time. Usually we prefer to go to the grocery store and eat in during our 2 week stays to save money, but the rooms here don't have any cooking appliances other than a teapot. However, meals here are so cheap, and we have free breakfasts so we are still able to stay under budget - usually about $75 for dinner and dessert for 6 people and a couple of drinks.

Half of the time we went into the town (which was really just one long main street) and half of the time we ate on the beach and enjoyed the sunsets.

Some of the sunsets we saw while dining out.

It was interesting because the beaches aren’t that deep during high tide, so it seems like the restaurants add more chairs when the tide goes out and then bring them back in when the tide is coming up. Luckily, for most of our stay, it was low tide when we were trying to eat dinner.

I generally preferred eating on the beach because the sunsets were always amazing.

Sunset from our resort. I finally got a good picture.

Liam would generally eat pizza, but at one of the places they served mozzarella sticks, so he will now order that when possible. Elenna almost always orders fried rice, but will sometimes order something “american” like pizza or mozzarella sticks (don’t try to tell me that those are Italian food). Lily will eat a variety of food, mostly Thai, but every once in a while something else like Mexican. Keira will usually eat Thai, often with some sort of noodle. I generally would eat chicken and cashews, but Megan would goad me into eating something different. So the next night I would, and I wouldn’t like it anywhere near as much as the chicken and cashews, and so I would usually go back to it the next night. Megan tried to order something different every night.

Unfortunately, during one dinner it came up (again) that Lily would rather be home with her friends than on this trip. It seems that Keira is still on board with this trip, but Elenna did some silent nodding along with Lily. This made Megan and I somewhat sad, as we know perfectly well how easy it is to miss your friends (after all, we miss our friends terribly), but we had hoped that our kids would appreciate all of the cool places we have been, and things we have seen. But instead, they have largely focused on the blazing heat during our tours - I don’t think we have toured with a temperature below 80, and more often than not, the temperature has been above 90, and often we have to wear long pants and long sleeves to comply with local customs. With these conditions, the kids have had a hard time paying attention to the guides, which in turn means that they aren’t learning anything interesting and only makes the experience worse.

We will routinely hear about how their favorite parts of the trip are the days they ordered room service or ate at an American restaurant. So this is not quite having the cultural effect that we might have been shooting for. I was largely prepared for this, after Megan told me the story of how her grandmother took her and her cousin through Europe for a week, when they were in their early teens. However, every time they went to a museum, the two of them would sneak away and read trashy romance books, while her grandmother took in whatever was around (I told this story to Elenna and she said "sounds about right"). Looking back, Megan wonders what she was thinking, and how she wasted an opportunity. Therefore, I have been prepared for a lot of pushback in the moment, with the expectation (hope) that later down the road they would either appreciate it, or kick themselves for not appreciating it.

If you read the explanation of why we are doing this trip in the first place (in the Why are we doing this? section), that is in part why I call the blog “Fun Filled Family Outing” - its a trip that parents think will be good, but the kids won’t be sold on. In fact, one dinner, our kids said that we think that they fight all the time, but really they don’t, its only when we are around. So, I told them that it sounded like they were getting my experience as a boy on fun filled family outings - “us against the parents” bringing the brothers closer together, and they generally agreed. So at least there is that.

They also made fun of us for planning tours of the places we visited (as if we went to Angkor Wat to sit in the hotel and read by a pool?), and were always willing to add onto the tour if something sounded fun (Fun to us - nothing sounds fun to them if it involves walking around. Meanwhile, Megan and I can’t pass up a boat ride through canals, which feels like a great way to see a place - certainly better than walking around in the sun).

Since we were just in Bangkok, “One Night In Bangkok” has been playing on repeat in my head for most of the past couple of weeks and there is a line in that song, “One town's very like another, When your head's down over your pieces, brother” (the song is from the musical “Chess,” so he is saying that when he’s on tour and all he does is just play chess, he could be anywhere and it would be the same to him). That line resonates with me, because a lot of the traveling I do for work is similar to that - I travel around the world and talk to investors about stocks, but since I usually fly in and out the same day, and only visit the financial district of whatever city, Chicago isn’t all that different than Frankfurt or Hong Kong, except for the people I meet. If our kids had their way, they could say that they visited all of these countries, but really what they would be saying is that they would have stayed in Marriotts in all of these countries, with very little differentiation between the stops other than the quality of the room service. The kids would enthusiastically talk about our stay at the Marriott in Bangkok in part because we had 5 meals there and two were Starbucks, 2 were Dough Bros and 1 was room service. So I’m both at a loss for words and yet not really surprised.

Day 111

Christmas Eve was here. Liam has been counting down the days to Christmas Eve for the past week, so the suspense was certainly building.

We spent the day on the beach, Elenna still had school work because she hadn’t been keeping up with her work previously, but Lily had blocked off Xmas and Xmas Eve as no work days. Liam and I played a bunch of poker for most of the day. When 2 o’clock came around and they were giving out ice pops, Liam wanted Simon to get one, but we couldn't find him.

Keira wanted everyone to dress up for the big Xmas Eve party, so we went back and got ready. The Party was interesting. They had put up a bunch of lights and some wooden Xmas trees as decorations.

Thailand doesn't really celebrate Christmas for the most part, but they do help the tourists celebrate it.

There was a welcome drink that was some sort of thing that tasted like a watermelon Jolly Rancher. There was a big buffet line, which is always annoying because the lines are always long at the beginning, but it ends up working itself out as the party goes on.

During dinner, there was a singing act which actually was the same act that played during every dinner. the girl was OK, but the guy had a baritone voice that fit with some songs, but not with others. They also were the wedding band whenever there was a wedding there, and we decided that if our kids decide to get married there (right at sunset, the pictures must be amazing) we would have to bring our own band. But this time they were more Xmas focused in the songs they would sing. But interestingly, they were more religiously focused, with songs talking about Jesus much more common than songs talking about Santa. Then they had kids games like musical chairs. We were a bit worried about how Liam would do since he doesn’t like losing. He actually made it half way through before being knocked out, which is further than we would have thought, and luckily the hotel was smart enough to give everyone a bag of chips when they were knocked out to lessen the blow.

Liam was better at musical chairs than we would have thought. But keeping with the religious aspect of the night, the announcer kept calling it "Going to Bethlehem."

Then they had a pinata. Megan had told me earlier that there were a bunch of 20-something people taking candy out of the pinatas, which was ridiculous and she yelled at them. It was clear that people had been taking candy out for a while because by the time about 5 kids went, there was no more candy in any of the 4 pinatas. So Liam didn’t get any, but he took it pretty well. Meanwhile, It wasn't a very organized line, wo I was watching scared to death that Liam was going to get whacked by an overzealous kid.

There was no candy to be had by the time Liam went up.

When Liam and got back, we saw that Megan and Keira were doing an adult game on the stage where one person sits in a chair with a balloon in their lap while the other one has to pop the balloon. Their team came in 2nd and they won a bottle of local Thai light beer. Keira tasted it and declared that she could drink it if she had to, but never would order it (the same way that I think about beer). Lily took a taste and almost choked - not liking the taste or the carbonation of the drink.

Megan and Keira did well coming in second.

The best thing about the buffet was the dessert bar - with a number of macaroons, ice cream and toppings and other pastries, including a chocolate fountain.

They had a cotton candy machine as part of the desert buffet.

Then Santa showed up and gave everyone presents. Liam got two bubble wands and was quite happy. Then they played some music and Liam danced for a while. He was crazy - full of energy, likely because of all of the sugar he had eaten that night. He was sleeping in the girls room that night because last year on Xmas Eve he had a sleep over with Lily and ended up throwing up in her bed because of all of the candy he ate that night. He happily said at the party “I’m going to throw up on Lily again tonight!” - so excited about how much sugar he was eating.

Liam was full of energy after the dessert bar.

We got back to our room to start our normal Christmas Eve routine, which included watching videos from Santa to see if the kids were on the Naughty or Nice list. Surprisingly, they were all on the nice list, although there were definitely some tense moments.

Megan made some hot chocolate in the room (didn’t taste good - but it was the thought that counted) as well as face timing Ana and Papa to read Christmas Stories and sing some Christmas songs. The kids were tired and we wrapped things up and sent them to bed. This was the first Xmas in years that we were done with the presents by midnight, but unfortunately, Megan made me watch a bad Christmas movie with her, so I still didn’t get to sleep until after 1am.

It wouldn't have been Christmas Eve if we didn't read Xmas stories with Ana and Papa.

Day 112

Christmas! The kids knocked on the door at 9 as planned, but Megan and I needed another minute because we forgot to wrap the presents that the grandparents got them. After that small SNAFU, we let the kids in and celebrated Christmas.

There weren’t many presents for this Xmas, since we didn’t have room to carry things, everything had to be small and easily packable. Liam got a Transformer, which was a highlight. We also did Secret Santas because a big part of Xmas is going out and getting a present tor someone else.

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The stockings were hung by the TV with care.

The big presents were surprise trips to a number of theme parks. The original plan was not to travel around the world visiting Disneylands, but as the trip went on, we realized that the kids would really enjoy it, so we adjusted the schedule to also hit Disneyland Shanghai, Disneyland Hong Kong and Disneyland Paris. So those of you who are observant might have noticed that the home page now has gone from 16 countries to 18 to 19 to 22 countries. I think that this is the last addition, although I guess we still haven’t planned June yet, so there is always a chance things change. We also added a trip to Thomasland in Japan, which Liam was very happy about.

The kids were actually very excited about the whole thing - and I was really glad that we did it. Its rare to surprise the kids that completely but also to see them that happy. That is what Christmas is all about,

We spent the rest of the day at the beach and the pool.

Keira teaching Liam to swim.

We usually eat Chinese food at Christmas, so when we went to eat, I tried to order the most Chinese food thing on the menu. We got a great sunset. Unfortunately, we got Liam into Pokemon Go, so he hasn't seen much of his surroundings, except for the Pokemon.

Liam has to catch them all! Although it sometimes means that he misses some things in the real world.

Merry Christmas everyone! And if you celebrate something else, Merry that too!