Thailand Part One

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Well after a long flight from Heathrow to Singapore the short 2 hour flight to Bangkok was quick in comparison. We arrived safely and were picked up by Shirley who is kindly putting us up. Friday night we went to dinner at a Thai restaurant with some of her friends, Eddie and Ying and their niece Ohm, where we ate traditional food and Mark was introduced to a few of the spicier dishes.


Saturday we went with Eddie and Ying to their fruit tree farm about two hours outside of Bangkok. They have about 17 acres of land which they are growing fruit trees on including mango trees, papaya trees, dragon fruit, jack fruits and noina (custard apples!) trees which we helped to pick. Mark had a go at cutting out Bamboo shoots that are used to make soup as well as sowing sunflower seeds and driving the tractor. We met all the family including brothers, sisters and children plus cefour the dog. Mark helped cut down a few mango tree and showed them how to use a chainsaw. I wasn’t allowed to help with much as we were guests of the family but did help make one of the sauces for dinner by crushing garlic and chillies in a pestle and mortar!


Monday we went to their equivalent of Blue water, a shopping centre called Future Park - it is however about twice the size of blue water and that’s their small shopping mall!! It was amazing to see all the things that can be bought from fresh food in the basement to furniture on the middle floor and cameras and phones on the top floor!

Tuesday we were taken on a tour of the Wat’s in Ayutthaya as well as the summer palace at Ban pa -in. The summer palace is a collection of buildings from all over the world put together is honour of all the countries that the king was doing trade with. It was built by the son of the King in the film ‘The King and I’. It had buildings from China, Sweden, Holland and England along with Victorian lampposts on the bridges and walkways.
The first Wat we visited houses one of the largest Buddha images in Thailand, we then visited an old Wat partially in Ruin, although the main Buddha worship area was still being used. The last Wat we visited was no longer being actively for worship through it holds great significance for Thai people as it was one of the last Wat’s that was destroyed during the war with Burma. It was immense and definitely in ruin.

Wednesday we cleaned out Shirley’s fish pond as the Koi were dying so we rescued all the fish and cleaned out the pond - well Mark did anyway!!

Thursday I went to Niva International School where Shirley works. It is a small international school with only about 300 students. It was Teacher Appreciation Day which was an amazing sight to see. All the students presented the teachers with bouquets of flowers and bowed to them. It is a Thai tradition that happens every year and the students are really thankful to the teachers.

Rainy season isn’t too bad - its quite amazing to see the storms and the roads flood then about an hour later everything be dry again!! It storms about once every other day for about half hour to an hour so not too bad at all. Other than that temperatures are high and sun is out.

We are off to Chiang Mai and Pai at the weekend for a chill and a relaxing holiday so we will update from there!!

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