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Published: March 23rd 2018
Our first two months in Thailand hadn’t exactly been the relaxed chill out time we’d envisioned. As described in the previous blog, we were constantly nervous about news of the wildfires and the mudslides back home in California, and then there was my trip to Bangkok for surgery. On top of all this, Jake smashed his finger and couldn’t swim for over two weeks, making us both land-bound on a hot tropical island. We were determined our last two months would be better!
Arriving back on Ko Lanta after spending a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur for a visa run felt so good. I remember our first evening back, walking down to the beach to see all the familiar volleyball players and feeling a sense of calm wash over me. We were greeted by our friends, Jesper, Charlotte, Laura (10) and Asta (8). We’d met them about a week prior and had pretty much hung out together day and night ever since! They were from Denmark but had been living in Beijing, China for 13 years and had finally decided to go back home to live in Denmark via the long way around - a year long
trip in Asia, Australia and New Zealand. As the kids had been born and raised in China, they spoke fluent Chinese. It was pretty funny (and very impressive) to hear such young blonde kids speaking Chinese! The parents had some really funny stories and interesting insights from their years of living in China too!
We had a lot of evening rain while they were here but it luckily cleared up for a couple of nights right at the end. One night we all took a truck-tuk to the next beach over, Klong Dao, and went to Indian Bar to see “bubble man” and an informal fire show by local Swedish elementary school kids. Health & Safety back home would have a fit! The next night, their last night, was the lunar eclipse which handily occurred at 8:30pm, right after we’d finished eating dinner. We stood on the beach watching the moon turn more and more red while lightning flashed in the distance. We even saw a shooting star!
After our Danish friends left we decided we needed to get the kids back onto a lights-out-at-8pm schedule. We’d been staying up late to socialize, but
Jake especially was turning into the meltdown king. Our efforts the first night were thwarted by realizing at lights-out that Kyla’s bunny was missing. After at least 30 minutes of searching the room while listening to a backdrop of Kyla’s cries, we gave up and went to bed. The next morning we discovered that, as I’d suspected, the cleaners had scooped him up with the sheets and poor old Bun Bun had taken a turn in the washing machine. At least he came back all fluffy and sweet smelling!
For the next few days we made a huge effort to get to bed on time and thankfully the meltdowns disappeared for the most part. This was just in time for my friend, Janine, to arrive in early February. We’d lived in Japan together for two years but, apart from a few quick meet-ups, hadn’t really had the chance for a proper catch up. To cut a long story short, her flight from Malaysia was turned around mid-air and she ended up getting two ferries followed by a four-hour taxi ride, finally arriving on Ko Lanta about 24 hours later than planned! We had just three days to
catch up, so we made the most of it, beaching around during the day, and going out to catch a few beers or cocktails each night after the kiddos were in bed. Before we knew it, it was time for her to leave for a wedding further north in Thailand.
A few days later, my parents arrived on the island. They are traveling Asia on and off with us for the next three months. Kyla and Jake remembered them (they are always worried they won’t!) and it wasn’t long before they were going off to grandma and grandpa’s hut, giving Scott and I a little break here and there. We even got to do our visa run to Krabi town sans kids, which made it a whole lot less stressful!
In early March, three Canadian/American families arrived on the island, all from the Worldschoolers Facebook page I’m on. We all became good friends quickly. It was so nice to have so many English-speaking kids for Kyla and Jake to play with. We did a trip to Indian Bar together to watch the fire show, and did a day trip to a fun water park
where we all got a bit sunburnt, but mostly we just hung out and watched the kids play on the beach. Capturing hermit crabs (affectionately known as Hermies) was a favorite activity!
It was interesting to find out that each family had experienced the same problem as we had, and each was approaching a solution in a different way. Our common problem was that it is hard to see your kids when you work all the time (not me as a stay-at-home-mom for the past five years, but Scott). Everyone had similar stories of kids being at after-school care until late, and then having no time left to see them before bedtime. One dad said his daughter wouldn’t even approach him as he spent no time with her. Another admitted feeling resentful towards his kids as they didn’t leave him enough time to do his job properly. It really is a sad sign that the modern day life in America is not very family-friendly! The solutions? One family would travel and work remotely for six months out of every year, another family was planning to do high-paying seasonal work in Alaska that would allow them to take
several months off to travel as a family each year, and the other family was in the process of setting up an online business and relocating from expensive San Diego to a cheaper country where the cost of living doesn’t suck you dry. It really was food for thought for us. While we are essentially escaping the rat-race for two years by traveling in (mostly) cheaper countries and living off of our savings, we will ultimately go back to it all and nothing will have changed, apart from our bank account will be smaller and I will need to go back to work, giving us even less time as a family. It got us to thinking about if we could make it work out another way. Unfortunately, we feel that we lack the technical skills to do online work, and we are doubtful we could sell or rent our house right now anyway, seeing as it is in the “extreme hazard” zone since the deadly debris flows in early January. So, for the foreseeable future, we will go back to the grind this summer and live vicariously from our memories of the past two years! But you can bet we
will keep all options open in the future!
So, back to the Ko Lanta story... after a week or so of lots of kid-interaction, two families left. We were now down to just us, my parents, and the Canadian family. It all ended quite abruptly for them when the dad came down with dengue fever and they had to suddenly pack up and leave the island to head to a hospital on the mainland for monitoring. We also heard that there had been several recent dengue fever cases in a nearby hostel, followed by another three in a different hostel. This sent Scott and I into panic-mode, going back and forth on whether we should move to another beach to avoid a possible epidemic, or just take the easy option and stay put with a plan to use lots and lots of mosquito repellent.
At one point we were absolutely certain that we should play it safe and leave the area. Then, we started to realize how much stuff we had accumulated over the past four months (Christmas certainly didn’t help!) and how much sorting out we’d have to do to move. It was
no easy task, and we worked out it would only be for four nights anyway. We loved our current room too so that made leaving extra hard, AND my parents had just that morning moved into the room next to us - yay for sending the kids off to knock on grandma and grandpa’s door! In the end, we decided to take a chance and stay. We just modified our day by staying away from the disease hotspot area (mosquitoes can only fly about 200 meters), staying indoors during peak mosquito times, and applying lots of repellent. The typical advice of wearing long pants and sleeves wasn’t an option as it’s just too hot for that!
Just like in December and January, stressful things don’t seem to come solo. While all of this was going on, we were also nervously watching the news back home. A huge storm, supposedly bigger than the one that wreaked so much devastation in January, was heading towards Montecito. Once again we were truly afraid that our house might be flooded. Given that the last debris flows brought mud within a few feet of our home, we were now well aware that
this time it could actually reach us. Fortunately, after several nerve-wracking days, the storm hit further north than anticipated. There was much much less rain than there could have been, but I still learned of a mud slide blocking the road just 3 miles from our home, but luckily no injuries (everyone was evacuated anyway). I just don’t want to imagine how differently it could have turned out had the storm had a direct hit. Again, dodging bullets!
Right now we have just one more day of dodging the dengue fever bullet before we head to Australia, land of all things deadly! Fingers crossed for us to avoid the dreaded mosquitoes here in Thailand, and the legendary evil drop-bears in Australia! 😉
**** As always, scroll right the way down for more photos.****
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Andrea Kenyon
non-member comment
Loving the mermaid
Hey - great to hear more tales from your trip. I am absolutely loving the mermaid picture - guess what I’ll be doing next time I hit a (warm) beach?! Hope you have a wonderful time in Oz and the cost of things aren’t too much of a shock to the system. Enjoy xx