When Adam first moved over from his job at Novell to Omniture he had no idea at the time that Adobe would eventually take over the company (like 2 months later). However, having Adobe as Adam’s new employer actually came with quite a few perks. One of which was a month long sabbatical after 5 years of employment with the company. Nice!
If you know us at all, you know that Adam and I LOVE to travel. We are always thinking of our next big trip and dreaming of new fun places to go. So for YEARS we have been planning this sabbatical trip and SAVING for it, as we knew we wanted to go someplace foreign, and exotic, and with the kids. Therefore, wherever we chose had to be both kid and economically friendly since traveling with 6 people gets expensive fast.
After weighing some options we decided that THAILAND was the place to go. Although the flights over would be expensive, hotels and food are ridiculously cheap in Thailand which is perfect when you have so many people you need to feed and find lodging for. Plus the thought of riding elephants, eating Thai food, and laying on beautiful beaches next to rocky mountains Adam could climb pretty much had us convinced! And so a plan was put in place. At the time though we had no idea that India was in our future, or that we would be moving there. When India did become a reality, we realized that moving there came with some super awesome perks – like being thousands of miles closer which would cut down on how much flights would end up costing us. So that little nest egg of money we’d slowly been saving over several years? It suddenly just got a whole lot bigger! It meant that the money we had been planning on using for expensive flights, could now be put towards other things. Things like visiting Adam’s mission in Korea, or a quick weekend get-away to Sri Lanka. But those of course are blog posts for another day! đ
Thankfully Adam’s boss Rotem was on board with the idea, and very supportive of us taking part of our sabbatical trip while in India (especially since we HAD to leave the country anyhow to meet the requirements of our 3 month Visa). Adam also planned our Thailand trip so that it landed on the week of July 4th, since Adobe has company shut down that week and work would be slow anyway. Then he just took a few days off the following week. It ended up working out pretty perfectly and we booked flights for a 12 night stay in Thailand with 2 nights in Bangkok and 10 nights down south near Phuket and Krabi where all the beautiful beaches are. We couldn’t have been more excited!
The only downfall was that we had to leave from the Bangalore airport, and for some crazy reason, all International flights from Bangalore are all scheduled for the middle of the night. We have no idea why, but it is what it is. So we just made the best of it. Our flight ended up leaving at 1 am and then arrived 3.5 hours later in Bangkok at 5:30 am. Not the easiest flight to do with kids and try checking into a hotel at THAT early hour when six people are in desperate need of sleep! Needless to say the first day came with its share or difficulties.
We were welcomed to Thailand in the best way possible. Check out this beautiful sunrise we got to see from the window of our plane! AMAZING!!!!
We had emailed and asked about an early check in with the apartment we had planned to rent, and the owner seemed willing to work with us, but unfortunately the tenants in it already ended up decided they wanted a late check out, which meant that we not only didn’t get in early like we’d thought (we’d been told we could probably get in around 10 or 11) but we ended up not even getting to get into the room until AFTER the normal check in time of 1 pm. They finally had our room ready at 2:30 pm! Yikes! The good news though? We got to see a lot of the city before crashing in our apartment once we finally got in!
Looking up at our apartment in Bangkok
We took a taxi from the airport for 700 baht ($22 dollars) to our apartment which should have taken 40 minutes but ended up taking over an hour because of bad traffic. Then we dropped off our luggage where we were staying and headed out to find some breakfast. We loved all the street vendors just outside our hotel selling all sorts of different things and opted to mostly buy a bunch of fruit for the kids. Some fruits we knew the kids would love, and others we had never seen or tasted before and decided to give them a try.
We bought mangoes, watermelon, and cantaloupe at this stand.
And then we tried these Rambutan fruits which you break open to find a fleshy clear type fruit inside with a big seed. Although some of the kids didn’t like these, most of us really did. They were very sweet to taste.
Anyone up for some chicken heart, fish or wings for breakfast? Yeah, us neither. đ
We did end up finding a place that would do fried rice for us though and opted to try that. It ended up being SO good and one plate fed our whole family for $1.50. Sa-weet!
After filling our tummies we asked around and found out that there were some pretty cool temples nearby that we could go see. Some people told us they were closed, but we didn’t find that to be the case at all. We were able to get into every single temple we looked at our entire trip. But for some reason in Thailand people like to tell little white lies to you. We’ve heard that its because they hope that you will choose to do something else instead, like visit their shop, or take a tour, but it also was annoying at times too when you really were looking for accurate information. Once we learned that this happens though we just tried to make sure we did our homework first (google is such a wonderful thing!) Such a strange concept though.
We loved how bright and ornate the insides of the temples were though. This one I believe is a buddist temple.
Similar to Indians the Thai people offer different foods, flowers, or gifts to their Gods to show their love, devotion, and humility.
There were so many buildings all over Thailand like the one below.
We loved the colors and designs of the rooftops!
This guy is looking pretty good for only getting 1 hour of sleep!
You’ve got to love these beautiful lanterns all over too. So pretty!
After looking at several temples we heard there was a river nearby where you could do a river boat cruise. We went to check into it a little further but found it to be very expensive ($60+ dollars for one hour) and decided to do a tour via tuk tuk instead. All of us for $2 for an hour. Can’t beat that!
This nice retired professor told us about the river boat cruise and helped us find our way down to the river. So kind and helpful.
The kids had a ball chasing these pigeons all over and making them fly all over. Boys will be boys!
Some of the street vendors had crazy things for sale. Like these water snakes. I have no idea what they are used for, but they were pretty fun to watch!
Lots of temples and lots of Buddha’s!
When we finally did get the call that our room was ready, we were overjoyed to discover that we were on the 40th floor and had an AMAZING view of the city! Bangkok really is just a gorgeous city!
And we were pleasantly surprised at how nice the apartment was too! Especially considering we’d only paid $70 per night and it had two bedrooms and slept all six of us!
We spent the rest of the afternoon taking long naps and having “quiet time” which the kids all love, because it usually means they get to watch movies or play games on their tablets since it helps keep them quiet. Adam opted to use his quiet time to watch the World Cup Soccer Game! đ
And this little girl and I fell asleep together holding hands. Oh how I love her!
You know, for only getting a few hours sleep, I have to say that the day didn’t turn out half bad. Adam and I commented on the way home on the tuk tuk (when all 4 kids fell asleep) that we were very impressed with how the kids had handled their obvious lack of sleep. For the most part there hadn’t been any tantrums or meltdowns or even crankiness! Maybe we are getting this travel thing down more than we thought…or maybe we just got really lucky that day! I’m pretty sure it is the latter. đ
And just for your viewing pleasure…some pictures of the city at night. Gorgeous!
