Feb 2 – Shawn’s cousin, Albert Vermette and his wife Poorita kindly picked us up on the side of the road where the bus dumped us off at 3:15am in Hua Hin. They took us to our hotel and we got a few hours of sleep that night.
We had breakfast at the hotel and then toured Hua Hin by first visiting Monkey Mountain. We admired a 20 foot tall golden Buddha at the bottom of the hill and continued on to see the view and monkeys of course. The kids were a bit apprehensive about all the monkeys in the wild that we were walking by due to our last experience with aggressive monkeys that are used to being fed. We climbed up to the top of the hill and shared the steps with the monkeys going up and across them. Here there was a small temple and a nice view of the city ,Hua Hin, and the beach.
Our next stop was fruit and coffee shakes because it was so hot out. From there, we went to a beach just outside of Hua Hin called Pak Nam Pran and rented some chairs in the shade. The kids rented some inner tubes to play on in the water. We spent quite a few hours here as it was the weather was perfect. We had some lunch and drinks and got to know Shawn’s relatives a little better.
Once we left the beach we stopped at a night market on the way home. We had to buy Gabe a new shirt for $4 since he had taken off his wet swimming shirt before we got into the car. We had some fruit shakes and supper here. We went back to the hotel and went for a swim before bed.
Feb 3 – We woke up and packed all of our luggage into Albert’s Mazda and loaded in to the vehicle just like the day before. Albert and Poorita sat in the front and the 5 of us sat in the back seat with Sayer on Shawn’s lap and Gabe on mine. Yes, vehicle safety has been a bit different on this trip. We left Hua Hin and headed to their house just outside of Bangkok in Long Khaem. They invited us to stay with them but we weren’t 100% of that plan. We knew they had cats and Shawn is allergic so we figured we would see how it goes. The kids loved the cats and when I saw cats, I mean CATS! Nine of them! It was quite the spectacle seeing them all being rounded up from the neighbourhood, each getting their own dish and some having to be separated because they were either too timid or aggressive.
We went to the mall to grab some lunch and we found an arcade. We couldn’t get Gabe off of his virtual fishing game because he kept on catching fish. At least he caught some virtual fish since the other Thailand fishing trip was a bust.
We headed back to Albert and Poorita’s house and Poorita made us supper that was very good. The kids played with the cats and met some local kids that they played soccer (football) with. We then headed to our hotel which was just at the end of their block.
Feb 4 – We woke up early at 5:00am to beat the Bangkok traffic. We had some breakfast at Albert and Poorita’s and were back in the car to head to the floating market. We arrived at Damnoen Saduak Floating Market at 7:30. It was very quite at the market because it was Chinese New Years. There was far less vendors and tourists as usual. This was okay for us since we didn’t need to buy much but mostly went for the experience. We had heard it would be hectic but we got the leisurely version. We found some Thai coconut ice cream in the coconut. Delicious! We also found a tuk tuk ornament that would go on our Christmas tree with the ornaments we collected from Chile and New Zealand.
We headed home after the market and had a little siesta or quite time since we were up so early. Albert and Poorita took us to the mall where we had lunch and then we took the kids to a water park. We paid a little too much for this park and also had to rent swim caps, tubes, and a locker. We found out Gabe wasn’t even able to use the two slides that were open. He had a blast anyway playing in the lazy river on the tube when the big bucket would fill with water and dump to create waves. we met Albert and Poorita again after and broke down and had McDonalds for supper. We went back to their place again and tried to book our place for our next destination, Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Feb 5 – Today we slept in and planned to go to the Grand Palace and temple today. We made a pit stop at Albert’s school where he teaches Grade 5 and 6 social studies. It was nice to see the beautiful Thai school and how it was laid out. We then continued our drive to Bangkok and went to Wat Pho to see the Reclining Buddha. Its pose is representing entry into complete spiritual enlightenment. This Buddha was 46 meters long and a beautiful site. It was busy with lots of other people admiring Buddha. After seeing the reclining Buddha we went off to see the Emerald Buddha at the Grand Palace. It was quite the walk and we were under the impression it was at the same location. We got to the Grand Palace and there were swarms of people. They were quite strict with the people entering and blowing whistles if you weren’t dressed appropriately. They made Albert, Shawn, and I buy pants and I also had to purchase a t-shirt. You didn’t even get a choice. They just handed whatever pants and shirt they wanted to us. It was 30 degrees this day and the kids were starting to melt down from being in the car for almost 2 hours and walking in the heat for so long. When we got to the next gate we found out that our ticket was not good for the Grand Palace. It was only good for Wat Pho. They wanted 500 baht each ($21 cad) and were only open for one more hour. The kids were done and getting hungry so we decided to call it a day. How nice of them to have us buy the clothes first before we even bought the tickets to enter.
Feb 6 – Poorita organized a taxi for us to bring us to our hotel in Bangkok this morning. We settled into our two adjoining rooms and spent some time on the computer researching and trying to book our bus for the next day to Cambodia. We went to eat at the restaurant in the lobby and then took the kids for a swim at the pool. We never received our e-ticket for our bus so we had to use the live chat with the company. She got back to us and said our bus was full. We ended up having to book another day later so would now leave February 8. After that was arranged we took a taxi to the night market. This was more of a local market where people would buy their groceries. We didn’t see any places to eat so we hailed our first tuk tuk and went back to the hotel restaurant to eat and called it a night.
Feb 7 – Today we took a taxi to the Central Plaza. It was nicely air conditioned and about 10 stories in the mall. We decided to go to the Lego Movie 2. The theatres were pretty similar to back home but we did have to stand for the national anthem prior to the movie starting. We swam at the pool today at our hotel and it was pretty relaxed. We did not see Khaosan Road while we were in Bangkok. Our hotel was located closer to the bus station we need to get to and not in the heart of the city. We are hardly went out in the later evenings. It was a family friendly time in Bangkok. Tomorrow we leave on bus to Cambodia. – Renelle
Lew Crew Adventures 