Safety First

One of the things that has always amazed me about Thailand is the traffic. Lanes are pretty much only a suggestion, and you can veer from one lane to the other or even straddle both lanes if you feel like it. There's no real right-of-way, and people will turn left right in front of you if they want to. There aren't really any speed limits, and Thai people generally seem to want to get where they're going as fast as possible. Even the trolley driver at the zoo drives like Jeff Gordon. Only in Thailand would you worry about getting into a crash as you're going by the zebra enclosure. The most unbelievable thing of all is how many people and objects Thais will try to stuff into their vehicles or onto the back of their Honda Dreams. Just when I...

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Tiger Kingdom

Yesterday we visited Tiger Kingdom, a brand-new attraction in Chiang Mai. For 300 baht, you have your choice of two options: you can play with one-month-old tiger cubs for half an hour, or you can enter the enclosure of some older (much more active) tigers and interact with them. Guess which option we chose?We didn't feel much like cheating death yesterday, so we picked the baby tigers. First we got to see the mom and dad tigers in their rather small and sad cages:There were four babies, and they were extremely cute, although my girls were still terrified and wouldn't go near them. Oh well. I guess it would be weird if they weren't scared of tigers. These guys aren't too scary, though:Here are the older tigers. We did see some tourists go into...

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She's back, and still cancer-free!

Remember Benign Girl? Well, she's back! And now she has two new pals and her own line of cellphones!And doesn't this look like a fun toy? Isabella was actually pretty bummed out we wouldn't buy it for h...

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Posted in: Tinglish

Declare the Buffet!

On our last night in Phuket, we went to our hotel's Thai buffet night. Dave and I tried not to eat much during the day so we could really get our money's worth at the buffet. Unfortunately, we forgot that most normal people don't eat dinner at 4:45 like we do. We thought the buffet opened at 6 pm and were chagrined to discover it wasn't open until 7. We paced around aimlessly for about 40 minutes, whining about our hunger and speculating about how many spring rolls we each thought we could eat. After that, we just circled the buffet like vultures until the staff got tired of seeing us staring at the food with our sad, hungry eyes and let us in.We had a table close to the stage so that the girls would be able to see the musicians and dancers...

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Posted in: Phuket,Tinglish

Miscellaneous Phuket Photos

Playing in the hotel's park, aka the beach-toy dumping ground for parents who don't feel like bringing sand pails home when they leaveMommy and William, self-portraitHeading out to dinnerAt every restaurant we went to in Phuket, the girls were given Connect Four boards to play with:Relaxing in a hammock on the be...

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Posted in: Phuket

Dino Park

One rainy day, sick of the Scorpions concert they kept showing on TV in our room every time the satellite went out (which was often), we ventured out to Dino Park, a dinosaur-themed mini-golf course.It was pouring rain, William was crying, and Isabella was terrified of the life-sized dinosaurs, so we weren't having too much fun, intially. But then William fell asleep, the rain stopped, and Isabella finally decided to take our word for it that the dinosaur statues wouldn't eat her. There was standing water on the ground and the holes were full of water, so we didn't exactly set any course records, but we had fun. Isabella lost interest in golfing after only one hole, but Olivia golfed all 18 and was actually pretty good at it.Olivia with the...

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Posted in: Phuket

The Beach

The weather in Phuket was quite rainy for the first three days we were there. As a result, the ocean was very wavy, and the red flags were up every day. It's too bad we couldn't really swim, because the beach and the water were beautif...

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Posted in: Phuket