Thailand Christmas

The novelty of Christmassy shopping malls in Bangkok wasn't lost on any of us.



































































































































This is the Police HQ. It made both Harv and I think of the Ministries in 1984...



































BKK traffic is sooooo much prettier than KTM traffic - check out the lipstick coloured taxis....































We loved the boat ride up the river so much last year we did it again this year.





















































Here's a Christmas tree made from the sand bags left around the city after the floods in November.


























































And so to the beach....









































































Picking over the shell treasure...

























































Post swimming snacking...



















A night time beach walk home from the restaurant.



























Here's Eve's entry for the Christmas card competition - love the creative spelling - she won the second prize!































Christmas Eve dinner.




































































Then look who turned up......












He brought a present for every child. Eve got shorts and a t-shirt, and Noah got a dinosaur egg.....


























































On Christmas day the beach was, um, not available.....






















So we hung out by the pool and played with the pressies.
For dinner we all had our favourites - Noah and Thom shared cheesey pizza, Eve had tempura prawns, and Harv and I shared this:



























On Boxing Day Noah and I went for a bike ride to check out what the storm had done further down the coastal road - and a couple of miles from the resort we found this!






































Then back to BKK for a wee bit more shopping......this time looking for new trainers for Daddy....


























.....and a play date with our old neighbour, Martina, who introduced us to the turtles in her park......








































Merry Christmas to all our family and friends!

Trekking Day Two

We set off through more jungle, crossing lots of streams, stopped for an early lunch where the littles were delighted to meet the sleepy cat and kittens, and Eve organised us all to take turns photographing each other. We don't have many family photos at all, so she definitely has a point....




















Mushrooms drying in the sun on the terrace of the lunchtime teahouse.








Arriving at the blue roofed village of Ghorepani. This is the lower part of the village.




Little Thom insisted on holding my finger for the first two days whilst he was riding on Den's back - this was progression from the first day when he had refused to go with Den at all, so I carried him until mid afternoon. Of course by day three Den was the best thing EVER and very funny and clever and much more interesting than me.....





This is our tea-house for night number two:




And this is the view from its front door:





Noah took this photo of the dining room and sitting room area.....





Looking down onto more bright blue roofs.



And the rather surprising site of a volley ball / basketball / footie pitch. I am still in awe that this is in a village where there are no roads, and everything is carried in by either mules or porters!