Bangkok

It’s not often we get a family vacation. Last time we went to Pai. This time, we took Pan, Alaypa, Lutiya, and David (our friend visiting from Ireland) to see Bangkok. The kids grew up in villages, and have never been far from Chiang Mai, so it was exciting to take them to see one of the largest cities in the world.

We took an overnight train there on Wednesday night. It came late and we slept in chairs, so we were all dead tired when we arrived. But having only three days there, we still had to go out! On Thursday we went to see the Grand Palace, which was kinda cool – I liked the murals of the Ramayana in particular. But the kids were bored, so we went to find something more interesting at Siam Paragon, one of the largest malls in Asia. We were looking for a discovery museum, but ended up admiring some really expensive show cars and visiting the largest aquarium in Southeast Asia.

On Friday, Isaac spent the day with Cindy’s aunt while the rest of us went to Siam Park. Here the kids got to experience roller coasters and such for the first time. Everyone enjoyed it, though it was hard to find rides that everybody could go on (Cindy and I learned a lot about going to an amusement park with an all-ages family). But really we spent most of the day with Siam Park’s water slides. The last time I went on water slides was in 6th grade. They were packed with people, sometimes taking 30-40 minutes in between rides, and you always got yelled at by someone for breaking some safety rule, but at Siam Park we got a ton of exercise running up the stairs in between rides (a turnaround time of maybe 30-40 seconds), and though there were lifeguards on duty, they only seemed to care about obvious breaches of safety. It made everything a lot more fun.

On our last day, we went to Pattaya. Though not a great beach by San Diego standards, it was still pretty good. Pan spent most of the day collecting oysters, and nearly everyone got buried in the sand at some point. There was something in the water though, as both Lutiya and I got itchy like crazy and couldn’t go back in (Sean thinks it might’ve been jellyfish eggs). After a few hours at the beach, we began the long drive back to Bangkok and the longer overnight train ride back home. There’s some more pictures here.

These vacations are hard to pull off, but they’re a lot of fun and good to look back on, and Cindy and I learn all kinds of things about parenting. I was shocked to realize that, had I let them, our kids would’ve stayed in the apartment all day watching TV, but then I realized that I was the same when I was a kid. Honestly, I don’t know why my parents ever took us anywhere.