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Noi naa already knows how to make quintessential Asian pose for the camera.

We spent the better part of the morning in Rot Fai Park (“Railway” Park – thus known for all the old train cars scattered about the grounds) on rented bicycles. It’s the large park just adjacent to Chattachuk Market at the end of the Mo Chit BTS line. It’s a lovely green park with lots of shade, two playgrounds, lakes with rental boats, and even a free butterfly house (closed on Mondays though).

The bikes were all trendy shades of pink and blue and all had an extra seat behind the main seat for doubling.

When we went to rent the bikes, both Bella and I were astonished to hear that we could rent a bike (with a child’s seat) for 20 baht or about 50 cents. That’s all for an hour? we asked in disbelief – No, said Joss, That’s for the whole day!

So no wonder the park’s full of school kids in uniform (junior high, high school and uni students) riding around in laughing clusters and picnicking in the gazebos. I can hardly think of a cheaper way to have fun in Bangkok, except to ride the river taxi up and down.

It was hot – sweltering hot – although now that it’s rained since we’ve been home, the weather has cooled dramatically. But while it was too hot to stand around outside, it was fine on bike with the wind cooling our sweat-wet necks and backs. Bella rode with Noi naa and I rode with Christian while Joss and Songbae spent some time at the driving range. Sue is in South Africa until next Saturday and we’re keeping Noi naa busy… Bella flies home tomorrow!

The babies loved it.

Here in Thailand, Mother’s day is celebrated when the Thai mother of all mothers, THE QUEEN, celebrates her birthday, which was last Wednesday, August 12. There are huge photographs and billboards of her everywhere and fireworks at night.

We had thought to go to the British Club (where Joss and Sue are members – it’s a nonfancy club for expats, basically – where you can play tennis and swim laps and order a “full” English breakfast, which includes baked beans and roasted tomato halves) for the Mother’s Day dinner buffet. But after getting up at 6 am on Ko Phi Phi to catch the 7 am ferry, then spending a couple hours in Phuket, and then the hour’s plane flight back to Bangkok – well, we were whipped and we all needed a night at home.

Luckily, our driver on Phuket knew the perfect seafood restaurant to while away our time until our afternoon flight.

It was the classic Thai seafood restaurant, which means a large, sprawling, open-air restaurant built on a dock right on the sea. Sue did the ordering which included a heaping plate of green mussels, a huge platter of deep-fried lobster (more the size of large crayfish – but with the lobster creaminess – it also came with loads of fried garlic which I was practically lapping off my plate), and the house specialty: fresh grilled sea bass.

It was the perfect Mother’s Day meal. We could even see those long silvery fish with long strange snouts just under the water’s surface from our seats.

The whole family, but after most of the food was demolished. Pretty big crowd to travel around with!

PS The only one missing from this family portrait is Chad! : (

PPS. I highly recommend this restaurant on Phuket. It is called Leamhin Seafood at 90/11 M.7 T. Kohkeaw/ A. Muang Phuket 83200. Tel 076-239357. It looks like the kind of place that’s been a neighborhood tradition for many years. There were no other tourists there as far as we could see.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHlmWL2INXs]

We’ve been back in Bangkok for two days and we’ve just put my parents on the plane to Korea. Sue leaves for South Africa (where she’s giving a presentation at a conference) tomorrow. I should be able to get out of photomontage mode and start posting again soon. I plan on writing more about Ko Phi Phi…

Just as the guide books promised, the floating market of Damnoen Saduak offered terrific photo opps, but was on the touristy side. Still, it’s an activity I highly recommend if you’re spending time in Bangkok because one, you get 100 km out of the city and see the country side (we hired a taxi van for the day which cost 2000 baht or about $70); and two, it is FUN to zip around by boat through all the canals – and very interesting to see how people live along the river, even more interesting than the market itself.

The cons: it’s a day trip and you spend a lot of time in the car. Also, we ended up paying 300 baht ($10) per person for a 1 1/2 hour boat ride, which is expensive by Thai terms and far more than the website said we would have to pay. But we did get a covered, motorized boat; pleasant boat drivers; long tours through the canals; time to explore the town on foot, and the tour ended up being almost 2 hours long. We got two boats, as each boat carried a maximum of six people. As we got closer to the market we could see there were lots of different boat operations we could have chosen, and it would have been cheaper probably to go with a paddled, uncovered boat, but we were happy with the sun protection. (The speed was not important to me, but we didn’t know until we were in the floating market that the motorized boats were the SUV’s of the crowd) Lastly, the market ends early, so you have to leave Bangkok by 7 am to catch it.

Songbae hanging with the dude while we waited. Sue did some hard-core negotiating to get the price per person down from B450.

The kids were fascinated by the whole thing. I struggled to keep Christian fingers in the boat.

Converging on the crowd at the market. There are boats selling food and stalls right up against the water selling things - mostly trinkets, but some interesting stuff too, like carvings and marionettes.

That silver wok you can see in the boat is filled with bubbling oil frying yummy treats. It was like dim sum on water!

The town itself is quiet. We stumbled into this strange spot - it looked like a graveyard for broken buddhas.

And there was this random dog there that looked like a statue.

For what ever inexplicable teenage reason, by the time this photo was taken, Bella was no longer into the touring of the Thai countryside. No shopping makes a grumpy Bella.

Noi naa and Sue applying a little square of gold leaf to the buddha in the local temple. (Look for their heads to the left of the top buddha. They climbed stairs to get there.)

I can hear the waves through the window behind me. Songbae is already asleep (as is Ti-ti) and Bella is listening to another chapter of Harry Potter on my iPod. The room is comfortably cool (outside is still warm and muggy) but I feel warm. I got a bit too much sun today, but I was tricked: I woke to a torrential downpour and thought the whole day would be overcast and never got around to putting sunblock on any part of my body except my face. As it turned out, it was gorgeous for most of the day and we spent hours lazing about in a warm blue Andaman Sea. Apparently it is quite common during rainy season  for it to rain hard for brief spells during the day – and to be sunshine-y the rest of the time.

As the pictures attest, it is beautiful here. We are at Phi Phi Natural Resort (a few levels fancier than I would normally pick, but several grades lower than what my parents or Sue would choose: a compromise), on a long beach dotted with other resorts and their accompanying restaurants, with a few shops (hard to spot them) and an entire small Thai gypsy village squeezed in between.

When the tide is low, the water is only a foot or two deep for many hundreds of yards out.

The getting here turned out to be a wee bit rough, because of the choppy waves. The morning we left Phuket it had really been overcast – and the two-hour boat ride to Ko Phi Phi made many faces turn green, including mine. Thankfully Christian slept through the greater part of that trip, because it was hard going when he was awake. The ferry (Andaman Wave Runners) was more of a large speed boat and could handle the waves – but geez, my stomach’s coming up just thinking about how I was looking out the window to control my nausea and how I would see the ocean one minute and nothing but the sky the next. Change of subject:

Long tail boat ride from ferry to truck. We're glad.

By the time the islands came into sight, the sun was out and the waves were calm; almost as if they were magically wrapped under a spell of good weather. We were the third and last stop on the ferry route, at the uppermost northern end of the island. There is no dock as such there, so we had to hop on a longtail boat. From experience I figured we’d have to jump in the water the last bit when the water got too shallow, but too our surprise, a heavily “lifted” truck backed up through the water all the way to the long tail – and then drove all us guest up onto the dry sand. It sounds like an inelegant way to arrive, but we were greeted with cool washcloths to wipe the sweat from our brows and glasses of sweet iced orange juice to sooth our throats.

Phi Phi Natural Resort

Our family bungalow has two air-conditioned rooms separated by a spacious foyer and large tiled bathroom which opens up to the back patio and beach.

Our accommodations are splendid. Sue, Joss and Noi naa are in a bungalow and my mom, dad, Songbae, Christian and I are in a two-room family bungalow across the way. We are beachfront, so first thing when Christian and I wake up, we can hang on the beach for a minute or two before even brushing our teeth. Crabs whish across the beach with dizzying speed, and the hermit crabs lumber along, and we can hear the myahan birds crying. Christian likes to pick through the coral that has washed up on shore and get a good piece in each fist before he starts a good tromp along the shore.

The view from our swimming pool which is the same as from our room.

We woke up on the morning of with loving faces peering down at us.

A couple days ago, my sister decided that a trip to the beach would be easier for the kidlets, rather than a trip to the jungle. And since Bella had been begging to go to Ko Phi Phi, Sue organized an adventure down south to the islands, rather than the beaches in Hua Hin just a few hours drive from Bangkok.

Noi naa waiting patiently.

Hat’s off to my sister, who managed to get all nine of us down here without mishap. We’re momentarily on the largest island of Phuket and by this evening we’ll be on the much smaller island of Ko Phi Phi, which is by and large considered among the most beautiful islands of the world – and where the Leo de Caprio starred in the film The Beach.

Allowed and not allowed in the taxi van.

So far, its taken a 45 minute car ride to Don Muang airport (the old airport), an hour delay at the airport (which afforded the babies plenty of time to run and make friends), a two-hour flight to Phuket, and an hour’s drive to the beachside hotel Karon Princess (where we were put up for the night because the waves were to choppy for the speedboat last night).

All things considered, everything went remarkably smoothly. I did resort to giving Noi na an organic lollipop, and Christian got a few gummy bears. And last night when we headed down to the beach – the long almost completely deserted beach of fine, fine sand backlit with the pale blue light of the set sun, and dipped our bodies into the warm water – every bit of stress washed away. Even my mom said so.

Water like this makes me believe that we came from the ocean. I feel like I am cradled by Mother.

All the boys got up at the crack of dawn to go play a round of golf here before heading to an island with no roads. My mom’s already had an hour walk on the beach, Bella’s watching the baby so I can post (he loves waking up in new places – right now he’s on his belly on the floor watching his sister repack her suitcase), and Sue and Noi naa are having a well-deserved sleep-in.

We’ll go down for our free breakfast and then spend the rest of morning divided between the ocean and delightful jungly pools here at the hotel before we board the ferry to Ko Phi Phi at 1 pm.

When I first visited Sue here in Bangkok, I was overwhelmed and had trouble picking things out in the landscape. Like when Sue waved her hand over to this side of the street and said, “Oh that’s our favorite coffee shop” I couldn’t even tell what might be considered a coffee shop. It turned out to be that small roofed A-frame in the foreground that I can see easily now.

We had club sandwiches there for lunch yesterday. But made with a fried egg instead of chicken and served with a sweet mustard dipping sauce. Sue’s showing off her fresh pedicure. Christian had made about a dozen Thai friends by the end of the meal.

We nearly always stop and peek into a shop or two on the way home. Who could help it when one-of-kind cute tops are sold for a few dollars? You wouldn’t know it by the mannekins though.

She may look hot and sweaty, but Bella has been quite pleased with her finds.

And when Christian gets tired of the shopping, he sleeps. With this much family around, there are always arms willing to hold him. (In the background there is a banana pancake maker drizzling condensed milk over a few fresh pancakes.)