Thailand - Day five

Day five was full of beach laziness. We tried out a different beach than the one we had gone before to try and switch things up a bit, but soon discovered that it was too crowded and not at all family friendly. Apparently beach parties aren't just a Hollywood thing because there was quite the drinking, partying, bomp-chick-a-bow-wow music going on, complete with girls in thong bikinis and fat old men drooling. It was gross, so we made our way back to our cozy, family friendly, quiet beach. 

TJ and the girls on the way back to our favorite beach.

              

      

           

TJ and Hailey loving on each other by drawing hearts and writing cute messages in the sand. There was lots of love going around. While Hailey and daddy were loving on each other, Lilah and I were hanging out and eating some yummy lunch at the most relaxing restaurant in the world. Check out this view!

The restaurant had a swing. 

                                       

Sand castle time!

The wildlife we saw today aside from the crabs that are everywhere. 

Guest Blagger!! -- Thailand Day 4

Good evening everyone! Today on Our Little Joy Spot, we have a very special treat for you! Guest blogger and all-around handsome guy, TJ!

*cheers, applause, accolades, exuberance, etc etc etc*

Hi everyone, it's great to be here.

So, Day 4. 11/22/11. We got up, had some awesome (as always) breakfast, and headed over to the beach. Highlight of that was this little dude

...and his 37 million cousins. The beach is literally covered with these tiny little holes in the sand, each of which is a little hidey-hole for a tiny little crab. It's awesome to go running down the beach and see hundreds of these guys scatter under your tremendous footfalls.

At 10:00 I headed over to Ka-Ti's Culinary School for what would turn out to be one of the most awesome things I have done in my ever. Yes, In My Ever.

We heard about this place from Martin, our ever-helpful guide here in Thailand. I asked where I could learn to cook Thai food, and he said (in his awesomely-russian and thai accented english) "oh-hhh yais, yoo jhust haeed abowt toohun(dd)reaad, toohun(dd)reaad fiffty metres dhown (dd)e roaahd..." (and so on and so forth.) Either way, I got there fine, and was ushered back to an open-air kitchen and handed an apron and adorable towel.

The entire area smelled like a spice-rack exploded. I was also handed a pile of pots and pans and dishes and such, to arrange as I saw fit. Most of it went on the bench behind me, in easy reach, according to an extremely complex organization scheme that I'm sure looked like a scattered pile to the untrained eye.

This is Nuu, our instructor. By the way, Nuu means "Mouse" in Thai.

 

 Sweet. 

 Anyways, I learned a few basic things, (like the difference between Indian curry and Thai curry, namely dry vs fresh spices) and then it was off to the cooking! Nuu asked what recipe I wanted to make, then gave me the ingredients to make it and I was cooking like a pro!

Actually no, I was using a mortar and pestle to grind things.

 And grind things.

 And mortar things.

 Ooh! Then I got to stir some stuff!

 Then some pestling.

More grinding

 And some more.

 Really getting it in there.

 Scrape the bowl

Then I put it in little packets

And it was deep-fried, stir-fried, and pan-fried until delicious.

 A little fried rice here

Massaman Curry

Spring rolls and Golden Bags

Soon I will open up a Thai restaurant and call it "5-Minute Wok", and employ burly muscular men to do my mortaring and pestling.

Also, I have some advice. If you ever find yourself speaking with a wealthy European couple, it is considered rude to not ask the wife's profession when asking the husband's. 

On a related note, here are a wonderful couple I took the course with: Peter and Barbara, from The Netherlands. He is a financier, and she is a geneticist.

Ahem. Yeah. Social faux-pas.

All in all, a wonderful afternoon. I got my certificate, my cookbook, and a set of 2-foot long chopsticks (for stir-frying!)

Yep, pretty awesome.

Thailand - Day three

Elephant trekking! This is the day the Schmid family has been talking about since we booked the trip. Hailey's been telling everyone she knows (and doesn't know) that she gets to ride on an elephant. After a lazy morning of reading and sipping some much needed coffee, we headed off.

We got picked up from our bungalow around 10:30 and took a 30ish-minute ride to the elephant camp. Once we arrived we were ushered to some benches where we ate some fresh pineapple while waiting for the previous group to finish up.

He's so hot!

After our refreshments we were guided to some stairs so we could get on our elephant. Originally I thought our entire family would be on one elephant but apparently we are all too heavy so TJ and Lilah had one and Hailey and I had another. It worked out perfectly though. I think it would have been too crowded with all of us on one.

The guide took a picture of his elephants behind! I thought it was cute though.

The first 20 minutes or so Hailey and I sat on some seats that were hooked to the back of the elephant, but then the guide asked if we wanted to sit on the elephant's neck for the remainder of the ride. Of course we wanted to! The guides took us through the jungle where it looked like Tarzan lived. We didn't see monkeys or anything like that but we saw lot's of neat birds and some wild chickens. The the whole ride was full of giggles, cute 4 year old questions, Lilah snores and declarations from Hailey that this was the "best day of my life!" I was a little sore because the elephant kept smacking it's sandpapery ears on my bare knees but it's the price I'll pay for riding an elephant.

TJ's elephant kept pooping! The bigger the animal the bigger the poop, and the bigger the poop, the bigger the poopchute...it was so funny! The look on Hailey's face was priceless.

It was everything and more than what we imagined it being. Here are some of the things Hailey said during the Elephant ride..

"those ears look like butterfly wings"

"Um...ew...that elephant is pooping"

"Daddy! I'm naming my elephant Dora. Do you like it?"

"Is my elephant a boy or a girl?"

"What language does it speak?"

"It's just like Bumby!"

"I don't ever want to get off."

We were able to chit chat and interact with our guides and elephants after the ride. We even tipped the guide by giving the money to the elephant and she handed it to her trainer. It was quite a cool trick.

I got some elephant kisses

She posed for the picture!

The rocking put Lilah to sleep. He's such a good daddy!

After we got off and said hello to our guides and elephants were asked if we wanted to take the elephants for a swim in a water hole so they could cool off and be brushed. It was about a 10 minute walk from the elephant camp. We hadn't planed on getting wet so we weren't in our bathing suits. Hailey could have cared less, but TJ and I really didn't want to get in the gross muddy water with a gross muddy elephant. But I am the awesomest mommy in the world according to Hailey, so I sucked it up and got in the water. The worst part about this was as I was climbing in, one of the elephants pooped!! I was horrified! I was bathing in elephant dung! The things I do for my kid...

Mentally preparing myself to get in the gross water....

Because Hailey was the only kid in this trip, they asked her if she wanted to ride the elephant back up to camp again. She's one lucky little girl! She got not one but two elephant rides in one day! You know how all little girls go through a horse phase? I think Hailey'll bypass that all together and move on to elephants.