travel Archives - Page 3 of 8

19Oct 2015

Jim Thompson’s House and Museum

In an effort to continue exploring Bangkok and taking advantage of our time abroad we decided to check out the Jim Thompson House and Museum a few weekends ago. I found it in one of the travel books we have for Bangkok we have and hoped it would be fairly toddler friendly. It’s probably worth nothing Jim Thompson House is #7 on the TripAdvisors list of ‘Things To Do’ in Bangkok.

Side note – why is the BTS Skytrain #2 on TripAdvisor? I mean sure it’s a convenient way to get around, but I wouldn’t recommend visitors go on the BTS just for the sake of going on the BTS. Okay … stepping off soap box.

The guided tour provided a lot of details about Jim Thompson who was an American and moved to Thailand after WW2. He was known not only for his silk business, but his antique collection. Touring his house, seeing the antiques he collected and learning more about Thai culture was really interesting and definitely worth the trip. It was kind of kid friendly, but the hubby missed out on part of the house tour because Jellybean wanted to see the fish. Mor’ fish, mor’ fish she shrieked. :)

After the tour and snapping some photos we made our way to the restaurant. There was a beautiful koi fish pound next to where we ate.

The hubby and I celebrated the successful sightseeing trip with a beer. It came with phet (Thai for spicy) peanuts. The perfect little snack to compliment a nice cold beer!

Seriously delicious coconut ice cream.

A few Tidbits for Visiting the Jim Thompson House and Museum:

It is located within walking distance of the National Stadium BTS station. DO NOT let a Tuk Tuk convince you a ride is required as you leave the skytrain.
Admission is 150 BHT per person (bring cash)
As part of the admission fee guided informational tours are provided (in multiple languages) and last about 30 minutes.

For more information visit the Jim Thompson House website.

Have you been to the Jim Thompson House? If you have any recommendations on where we should visit, eat, etc?? I am open to hearing any and all suggestions (even if it’s outside of Bangkok … we do plan to do some traveling around Thailand)!!

06Oct 2015

Wat Pho

by Nicole ⋅ 1 Comment

A few weekends ago the family took in the sights and went to Wat Pho for the morning. It was beautiful and truly felt good to finally ‘see the sights’. The best part was I didn’t feel rushed or forced to see everything all at once. When we couldn’t take the heat anymore we stopped had lunch and headed home. It was SO nice to know we can always go back … we have 2 years (or really t-minus 22 months)!

We took the BTS (which I can’t stop calling the Metro – thanks DC!) down to the Chao Phraya River and then took a boat up the river to the stop closest to Wat Pho. Next time I would have taken the smaller boat (see picture below) instead of the big touristy passenger boat, but we weren’t really paying attention and bought tickets to the first place we stumbled upon.

Less than a 10 minute walk later we arrived at Wat Pho. It was HOT, which shouldn’t be a surprise anymore! Admission was 100 BHT per person and you must have exact change. We just happen to have exact change, but I was definitely surprised by the requirement. We wandered around for a bit and took some pictures along the way …

As I’ve mentioned before, Jellybean is a bit of a celebrity around these parts and as we walked around her photo was snapped many (many!) times. The most interesting was when we were visiting one of the Buddha’s, pictured below, a young man asked to take a picture of her. My husband graciously agreed at which point the man’s iPhone was aggressively pushed in the hubby’s face. Faster than either of us could comprehend what was happening the man gently grabbed Jellybean, plopped her on his lap and smiled for the camera! I couldn’t help it and started to chuckle. The husband gave me the side eye to stop it. I couldn’t help, but smile back. I don’t think I will ever get used to people we don’t know taking Jellybean’s picture (with or without our consent).

The last thing we saw was the Reclining Buddha. It was truly amazing.

A few tips when visiting Wat Pho …

Bring exact change for entrance fee – 100 BHT (mentioned above)
Wear comfortable shoes, but if they easily slip on/off easily that’s for the best. You can have to remove your shoes to visiting many of the Buddha’s so it will make things a little easier.
You must cover your shoulders and knees to visit the Reclining Buddha and some of the other Buddhas in the area as well. There are skirts, robes and scarves available to wear while visiting specific temples, which is very useful. If you are apposed to wearing the provided clothing I definitely recommend wearing short-sleeves and pants/skirt/dress that covers your knees.
Bring a bottle of water! Near the Reclining Buddha you can redeem your entrance tickets for a bottle of cold water, however we were thirsty and hot while walking around. I was glad we had water on hand prior to the seeing the Reclining Buddha.

Have you been to Wat Pho?

13Sep 2015

Life Lately

by Nicole ⋅ Leave a Comment

We’ve lived in Bangkok for over month now. That just sounds weird out loud! Seriously, how does the time go by so quickly? Overall we are still getting adjusted and slowly finding a new routine for the whole family. Jet leg was killer and I reverted back to when Jellybean was just a wee one and ‘slept when the baby slept’ for the first week or so.

After only about a week here a bomb went off in downtown Bangkok. It gave the hubby and I a moment of pause. Did we do the right thing moving here? And if I’m being totally honest I had the ‘OH $H!T’ moment and seriously considered aborting this whole living abroad thing for a few minutes (or hours … whateves!). Things are scary at home and abroad. It’s the world we live in, unfortunately.

Being a stay-at-home-mom has been even busier than I imagined it would be. Between exploring the city (indoor playground, outdoor playgrounds, museums, swim lessons and playgroups), running errands and keeping up with the general housework I am totally pooped at the end of the day. The hubby thinks his job is tiring, but I’ve got him beat. :)

Here’s what we’ve been up to lately …

Jellybean and I hit up Ocean World on our first day out just the two of us. It was a total success – not only did we both love the museum, but I managed to get there on the BTS without getting lost! Let’s just keep it between us, but I spent 5 plus minutes trying to figure out which BTS exit to take, hahaha.

I don’t have any pictures, but we’ve gone to a few playgroups and Jellybean takes swim lessons once a week. The swim lessons are amazing. A vast improvement over the classes we took when she was little. We took a little break from playgroups due to Jellybean getting a cold, but I hope to get back into the swing of them soon. I’ve located a few new ones I think will be a good fit for Jellybean and me.

Indoor playgrounds are all the rage here. They are super fun and honestly as I already mentioned, we should adopt this kind of play area in the States. Jellybean and I had a blast at Molly Fantasy. We plan to try out a new indoor playground called Funarium soon.

If you are okay with sweating (seriously you are in Bangkok, just OWN the sweating) then Benchasiri park / playground and Benjaritti park are both fabulous places to take the little ones. I would also mention here both parks have workout areas, which kind of reminds me of Rock Creek Parkway. At some point I will have to go to the parks on my own so I can take advantage of the workout stuff.

And, last, but certainly not least … we’ve had some DELICIOUS food!

What have you been up to lately?

For more on our adventures in Bangkok, please click here or follow along on Instagram (#BitsOfBangkok).

09Sep 2015

Bits of Bangkok

by Nicole ⋅ Leave a Comment

Saw-dee-cha from Bangkok! We are having a great time here and slowly getting adjusted to the Expat life. Despite it being rainy season it hasn’t been nearly as bad as I had feared. I’m sure now that I’ve thrown that out there the monsoons will get their game face on and show me who’s boss. Hahaha.

Saw-dee-cha means hello!
The Thai drive on the wrong LEFT side of the road
Speaking of driving the traffic is insane. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. A drive that took 10 minutes one day can take 35 minutes another. It’s miserable to sit in the traffic … not to mention as someone who’s clearly not from here we’ve been ‘taken for a ride’ out of our way on more than one occasion.
And before we move away from motor vehicles, let me just add it’s like playing double dutch when trying to cross the street. There is NO yield to pedestrians like the States!
Thai food is fantastic and actually closer to the Thai food we have in American than I thought it would be, but obviously there’s a lot more variety.
Sidewalks are virtually nonexistent. I was told by many people who have visited or lived in Bangkok we should leave our stroller behind … and they were right. The sidewalks are extremely arrow if they exist at all. While I’m glad we put our big stroller into storage our little umbrella stroller has come in quite handy {when you have a child who won’t hold your hand and is on the move constantly, it’s important to have a way to, shall we say contain them!}.
With blonde hair and blue eyes, my daughter attracts the attention of many most of the Thai people it seems. They smile, wave, stare and often try to touch or pick her up. Jellybean isn’t a fan of this unsolicited attention and often say “no, no, no” very loudly. I have had to ask people not to touch her, which has been a bit interesting.
Pretty much anything you can buy in the States your can buy in Bangkok. The grocery store closest to us has Jiffy peanut butter, McCormick’s onion gray as well as Sorrento cheese. I was almost disappointed {for lack of a better word} to find everything so similar to home, but not to worry I quickly stocked up on all our go-to brands/foods. :)
The heat isn’t what get to me … it’s the HUMIDITY! Everyone I spoke to and everything I read mentioned how HOT Thailand is. Don’t get me wrong it is hot, but the humidity makes the heat less bearable. Just standing outside for 10 minutes caused me to break a sweat {attractive – I know!}.
Mall Life … or at least that’s what I’m calling it. The malls in Thailand are huge, beautiful and clean. They have everything you could ever possibly want to purchase and hanging out in malls is kind of the thing to do, which makes sense since it’s insanely hot outside. The indoor playgrounds are amazing. Seriously, I think it could be a huge money maker in the States, and if it was in my wheelhouse I would totally put together a business plan and open one of these play-areas as we move home.

We are learning a lot and trying new things. I started taking Thai classes today and well, I am TERRIBLE at languages in general and this is, unfortunately, no different! Despite my lack of natural talent for picking up new languages, I am going to stick with it and hope to learn enough Thai to carry on a simple conversation. Got to start somewhere, right??

I will share more tidbits about living in Bangkok soon, but if you have any specific question, please do hesitate to leave a comment below!!

20Oct 2014

Jet-setter Baby

by Nicole ⋅ 8 Comments

A the ripe ‘old’ age of 9 month little miss Jellybean has been to the east coast, west coast and Midwest! Pretty well traveled baby don’t you thinks?!?! Between the age of 3 and 9 months we’ve flown with Jellybean a number of times and taken two long car trips. During each trip I learn of something new I should pack as well as what not to pack. Finding the balance between enough and not enough stuff has been challenging.

The ability to wash clothes at the grandparents’ houses was clutch! When we were in Seattle clean clothes were hard to come by and, yeah, we totally ran out of diapers … the trip was only 4 days. The husband admitted (after the fact) he thought I over packed, and was completely befuddled when he had to hand wash a onsie and go buy more diapers on the last day of the trip!

Let me put my cards on the table here. Traveling with a baby isn’t as bad as I thought it would be! Do I want to travel with her weekly or even monthly?! No, not really. But all in all flying with an infant isn’t all that bad — even when taking into account the blowout we experienced on Mother’s day.

Traveling with all of the baby’s STUFF …. now THAT, THAT my friends, that is another story. :) For such a little person Jellybean’s suitcase and carry on bag {aka diaper bag} is overflowing every time we travel.

I did my share of Googling and surveying friends when planning how to best travel with our infant. While I am clearly not an expert when it comes to traveling with a baby I did want to share what I’ve learned so far!

Tips to make Flying with an Infant Easier

Gate check the stroller and car seat. It’s free so there is no reason not to bring them with you. Yes they are clunky, but the ability to put JB in her stroller/carseat and walk through the airport was amazing. While a baby carrier is great I find carrying the baby plus carry-on bag to be a bit much! If you little one is out of the car seat already you can check it for free after obtaining your boarding pass. Not shlupping that thing through the airport is SO nice.
Change baby’s diaper just prior to boarding. Even if the diaper is just a tiny bit wet it’s best to start fresh.
Boarding early . When able, that is, apparently United doesn’t do early boarding for families, boo! It’s nice to get on and get settled without having to navigate around others … or hold up the boarding process. Better yet, when traveling with another adult, have one person get on early with the gear and then other board last minute with the baby.
Allow for extra time to go through security. TSA is super chill about carrying on formula/pumped milk, and purees/food. TSA does do an extra check so it adds a tad bit of additional time for them to do the check.
Place the diaper bag and ALL baby related items under the seat in front of you. Inevitably something I thought we would not need became a MUST HAVE RIGHT NOW item during take off or landing – clearly if it’s in the overhead one will need it when we can’t access it. :)
Bring a baby carrier. For most it seems like the baby carrier and stroller are an either/or travel item. For me, BOTH are a must. The carrier was clutch when we were flying to Seattle. It was the only way I could have my hands free and allow Jellybean to take a nap. I wouldn’t ever travel without it again.