Dolphin Bay, home of...monkeys!

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We are now down to the last days of our two-year trip. It’s hard to believe. At first, we didn’t count at all. As time went on, we started to count down in chunks of time according to location. When it came time to leave a particular country, we were excited for the next leg of the trip, but also sad that another chapter had closed. Before we knew it, we were telling people we met that we were, “in the last two months.” All of a sudden we have just one week left. We fly out of Bangkok on August 7th, ready for Kyla to start kindergarten just two weeks later. Part of me is ready to go back home and give the kids a “normal” life, but if the truth be told, were it just Scott and I, we’d seriously be looking to press the extend button again, even if only for a couple extra months this time.



For our final destination of the trip, we’d been a little stumped. If we did our usual trick of traveling according to the weather, we should have been in Indonesia or peninsula Malaysia. We ended up ruling those out as options as we’d already been to the parts we wanted to see, and besides, WiFi and phones are not reliable or cheap and easy enough in these countries. Why would that be a problem, you may ask. Well, reality was setting in like a steam train about to hit a brick wall: the job hunt. In the weeks leading up to our return, Scott wanted to start applying to jobs and making connections with recruiters so as to hit the ground running when we arrive home. That requirement could only put us in one place; Thailand. Our favorite Thai island, Ko Lanta, is practically closed down at this time of the year due to being pummeled with monsoon conditions. However, we’d been told by several families we’d met along the way about a place called Dolphin Bay Resort. The beach there was no great shakes, apparently, but the resort was super kid-friendly as well as affordable. Also, it’s location causes an anomaly in the weather - it’s much sunnier than the rest of Thailand during the rainy season. Given these facts, coupled with the fact that our kids are having serious beach-rebellion, we decided to give it a try.



Dolphin Bay, incidentally, is famous for its pink dolphins. However, we’ve never actually met anyone that’s seen them, so I personally think it’s an urban myth made up for advertising purposes! There are, however, trips you can take to an island just offshore inhabited by monkeys, and many temples in the area are overrun with monkeys. I couldn’t help but notice the contrast to a place we’d visited earlier on the trip called Monkey Mia in Western Australia. There, there were no monkeys at all but dolphins all over the place. To sum up, it pretty much goes like this...

Monkey Mia, Australia - the place to see dolphins!

Dolphin Bay, Thailand - the place to see monkeys!

Personally, I think the two places should just swap names and make it less confusing for everyone!



Ok, so after that side note, I’ll get back to the story...



After a four-hour drive from Bangkok, we arrived at Dolphin Bay Resort. Kyla and Jake instantly spotted the playground and ran off to check it out while we checked in. Our friends had given us some great advice and had told us to check several rooms and get one that hadn’t been remodeled. It was all to do with the bed. The non-upgraded rooms often had beds with a soft(ish) base. We checked a couple rooms and discreetly (or maybe not) reached under the mattress to feel the base. We chose one with the soft base and then requested that the extra single bed they’d placed in the room be removed. Then we got to work. We took the mattress off and placed it on the floor for ourselves and then made up a bed for Kyla and Jakey on the bed base. Voila! We now had two double beds, and we avoided adding almost 50% to the cost of the room by rejecting the extra mattress. Great advice. Thank you for saving us a fortune, Charlotte and Jesper! All we then had to do was unpack and go through our usual list of room-darkening procedures: blacking out the window with black garbage bags and duct tape, and placing duct tape on anything that glowed too much, namely the peep hole on the front door, the fan display, the air conditioner display, and one of those annoying see-through bricks that are so popular in Thailand. I’m not sure whose brilliant idea it was to design a brick made entirely of glass, but it definitely wasn’t someone who had young children prone to waking up as soon as they detect a sliver of light penetrating their closed eyelids!



Once the room was set up, we went off to explore the resort. It was extremely kid-friendly as promised. In the middle, there was a large expanse of grass with a wooden playground built to western standards of safety. I was so glad it wasn’t one of the awful metal death-trap playgrounds we’d come across all over Asia. Next to the grassy area there were two pools. One was shallow enough the entire length for Kyla and Jake to put their feet down, and it had a fun but non-death-trap water slide. In addition, there were bikes, tricycles, scooters and wagons, a playroom full of toys and books and showing kids’ movies, a chalkboard, a teepee, soccer nets, fusball tables, badminton, table tennis, a plastic play house, and a cute little bus that kids could pretend to ride in. It was basically a kids’ dream, and we were paying the same as our average room night on the trip. The major con was that it was in the middle of nowhere.



We’d been expecting a more thriving beachfront area with restaurants and trinket shops, but instead found a very desolate area with empty ghost-town-like hotels and restaurants. The nearest town was 16km away and to get there required arranging a taxi an hour ahead of time. We were not used to being so isolated, but the area did grow on us after the initial surprise. One of our favorite activities was to use the resort’s bikes to explore the area, the kids riding in the child seats on the back. The surrounding scenery was absolutely beautiful. There were fields of coconut trees and cows all around us. The cows would make a pleasant jingling noise from their neck bells as we passed by. Beyond the green fields were impossibly steep limestone mountains, just begging to be photographed. You really got to see the traditional, slow way of life. On the coast, we’d see fishermen sat under the shade, picking tiny fish from their nets and laying them out to dry. Inland, we’d ride past little shack houses, each one with a beautifully ornate mini-temple outside. People would be seen herding their cows to another field. Others could be seen burning piles of plastic by the side of the road (Ok, I know I just ruined the lovely scene, but inhaling burning plastic is one of the unpleasant but inevitable parts of a trip to SE Asia.)



I loved the bike rides as you never knew what would happen. One day when it was just Kyla and I, we stopped outside a small shack of a house to observe how dragon fruit grows. An old bent-over lady with no teeth came out holding a machete and hacked off the ripest, pinkest dragon fruit and handed it to Kyla. It was so amazing that someone with so little would give us, rich westerners, an exotic fruit from her garden that costs upwards of $8/lb at home! Another day, we came across a military parade for the king’s birthday. All of the people in uniform waved to Kyla and Jake as they passed by. We later came across a temple where the festivities were continuing, and Kyla was very interested in the beautiful costumes of the young girls.



Our biggest excursions were to Hua Hin, 45 minutes away by taxi. As expected, I was very unimpressed by the city. It has always had a bad impression in my mind as a place a high rise hotels where seedy old men go to find young Thai girls. I was pretty much right. The beach was nothing to write home about, but I will admit that Kyla and Jake both loved doing a pony ride there. However, the thing to do in Hua Hin, it seemed, was to go to the modern shopping malls. Kyla and Jake were excited to find a soft-play area, and Scott and I were delighted that the immigration office there was so efficient. Other than that, however, there was no real reason to go. It was just like being in an indoor mall anywhere in the world. Oh, and I was right. There was a definite presence of old white men with young Thai girlfriends - yuck!



Given my description of Hua Hin, as you can imagine, we spent most of our time close to our resort. We made a great find one day: a fancy resort a 25-minute bike ride away with a fun curly slide. The kids loved it even though the stairs to get up to it gave me a heart attack!



We ate every single meal at our resort restaurant. There were restaurants close by, but there was never anyone in them so we were definitely hesitant. The western food was all quite expensive so Scott and I stuck to the Thai menu. We found out by trial and error that the “small” massaman curry for $3 was absolutely massive and enough to share, but the “large” massaman curry for $7 was tiny! All of the other “small” curries were indeed small. As you can probably guess, we ate massaman curry at least once a day, if not more. I’m so tired of it by now but it’s just too good a deal to order anything else! I’ll be glad to expand our diets once we get to Bangkok, however!



So that’s a wrap. We have one more day at Dolphin Bay before heading up to Bangkok for a few days to get some errands done before our flight home. We are still in disbelief. When we were down to a week BEFORE leaving on the trip, our house was barren and it felt really real. Now, however, our room looks like it always does. Packing it up tomorrow will just feel like we are moving to our next tropical location. If only...



I’ll squeeze in one more “final” blog, so until then...





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