The Marvelous Misadventures of the Dean Tribe

BANGKOK……it’s everything you’ve ever heard about it and then some!!

In the last four days we have ridden on the BTS Sky Train, the Underground, tuk tuks (see photos), countless ups and downs in our hotel elevator, a Mercedes luxury van, escalators, travelators, rattling 4D cinema chairs, a glass bottom boat, paddle boats, long-tailed speed boats, public river ferries, up and down the steepest steps I’ve ever seen, and we’ve walked endless kilometers on our own two feet (or should that be eight?). And why did we do this?

All so we could get from the airport to our fabulous hotel, Siam Square for shopping, Siam Ocean World, movies, the Indonesian Embassy, a giant IT mall with every electronic gadget you could ever imagine (and some that you wouldn’t!), the movies, the Queen’s snake farm, Lumphini Park (Bangkok’s largest), the playground, Sukhumvit night markets, a candlelit restaurant, up a couple of levels at Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn, for a bird’s eye view of Bangkok, The Grand Palace, numerous temples, up and down the Chao Phraya river, and back again to our hotel for a nap.

And why a nap, you ask? Well….in a very short time we’ve seen colourful taxis, flowers, dozens of Christmas trees, rude t-shirts, every fish imaginable, a king cobra, Burmese python, green tree viper, tarantulas, lizards, an axolotl (google it), sunrises, sunsets, hundreds of reclining, sitting, laughing, and standing Buddhas, a 5 1/2 tonne, solid gold Buddha, a jade Buddha in 18 karat gold robes from the 12th century, a 15m high by 46m long reclining Buddha with mother of pearl inlaid foot soles, the King’s throne hall and reception, soldiers and palace guards, mobs of bread-loving catfish, and lots, lots more. Total sensory overload…..PHEW!!!

Following our snooze today, we’re ready to head out again for a Saturday night adventure. We’ll definitely be on the lookout for a good little reflexology foot spa for these sore tootsies…after all, we still have three more days to explore this wild and wonderful place.

Til next time,

Peace,

All of us

Well….it’s 6 pm in Darwin. We’ve checked in our campervan after packing all our bags (six of them!), used all 80kg of luggage allowance and even have some time to kill while we wait for our flight home to Bali.

It was a long morning of packing up & cleaning, sorting out all the linens and dumping the port-a-potty. Once business was taken care of, we wandered into town and had a walk around the old stomping grounds. I was explaining to Joe and Oliver that they had spent quite a lot of time in Darwin when they were young. They were both born here (in the same room even) and spent quite a lot of time getting around these parts with me in their baby pram. It’s a lovely place to hang out this time of year, before the heat and humidity set in. We had fish & chips for lunch then wandered out to the shops to buy another bag for our laundry. Things expanded in the heat :)

It’s been an amazing holiday. Now home to recover, download all our pictures then get them online so we can share those precious Kodak moments with you all. This has been the most fabulous holiday ever but I’m looking forward to getting home, having a cuppa tea with friends, a good laugh & some time for adult conversation…I hope I remember how :)

Now that all my Aussie coins have run out to keep the vending machine games going, the natives will be getting restless and before they start to make a ruckus we’ll get moving upstairs to customs and immigration. The last hurdle to jump…Duty Free Shopping coming up before we get on the plane.

I’m realising that I’m totally delirious & will stop writing before it gets even more ridiculous….heading up to the gate.

12 December - I always wondered what happened to this post and when I didn’t find it on our blog I wrote it off as forever lost in cyberspace. By the time we made it home, all was lost and I didn’t have the energy to write it again (or write anything, for that matter, for a long, long while). Easing back into cyberworld again and figured we might as well include this post to finish up in our Great Aussie adventure travelog….it was the final post.

More next week from Bangkok! Kids fun capital….another adventure!! Time to pack….

Peace,

Sherri and the Tribe