This school holidays I’ve headed up to Singapore with my friend K and her 7-year-old, M.
We hit the ground running in Singapore. After the midnight flight, we were pretty tired, but couldn’t check into the hotel straight away.
Phuket
L and I flew with Bangkok Air down to Phuket to spend a couple of days relaxing before heading back home to go back to work.
Gluten free breads at the Movenpick!
A random seafood restaurant
Dinner on our first night in Phuket
Filed under Thailand
Chiang Mai and homestay
The train station at Chiang Mai isn’t too hard to navigate (and has platforms long enough for the train!) so we found it easy to find our transfers to the hotel. We were staying at the People Place Building 2, which is near the night markets, but quite a walk to the old town and the main drag.
Leaving the Chiang Mai train station
Filed under Thailand
Ayutthaya
Leaving Kuchanaburi, we headed to Ayutthaya to spend the day before catching the night train to Chiang Mai. We stopped into a grocery store for obligatory Thai coffee (espresso and sweetened condensed milk poured over a few cups of ice, then sipped over the next few hours) and snacks for the train.
Yummy spicy chips
Chocolate flavoured cheezels
Icy coffee
Filed under Thailand
Kanchanaburi
Leaving Bangkok, we concentrated on the outskirts for a while, visiting a couple of different markets before heading up to Kanchanaburi, where we stayed for a couple of days.
Our first stop was the Railway Markets, where we fortified ourselves with Thai coffee before heading into the markets.
Various food for sale
How much is that kitty in the window?
Always a few kitty cats
More food
Fruit
First: coffee!
Seafood
Filed under Thailand
Thailand – Bangkok
After way too long without international travel, my itchy feet prompted me to book another food tour with Intrepid, this time to Thailand on the Real Food Adventure.
I flew out of Perth far too early on the first day of school holidays, not terribly well assisted by attending a wine tasting event the night before. Thankfully, all went smoothly, and even though Perth Airport is undergoing renovations and the Customs and Passport Control people are now called Border Force (replete with new uniforms), I managed to bumble my way through. The flight was a bit bumpy, but we landed in BKK without incident, the only danger being the length of time we were unable to use the bathrooms because of turbulence!
The long queue at the BKK taxi rank.
Filed under Thailand
Los Angeles
We alighted from the train in Los Angeles just in time to see the last of the Day of the Dead celebrations in the area around Union Station. A very different vibe to the Halloween and World Series celebrations in SF!
We were staying at the Checkers Hilton, which was pretty central and easy to find public transport. This was great, because our first stop in LA was to go to the Californian Science Center to see the space shuttle, at Exposition Park.
The Jeffersonian… uhh, Exposition Park
Filed under USA
San Francisco
After recovering a little from the double-whammy of hangover and tummy bug in Wuhan, R and I headed to the airport. We had planned a quick sojourn on the west coast of the USA before I returned home to do some work, and R bounced to Washington DC for World Fantasy Con.
Everyone watching the game…
San Francisco was a really interesting place. We arrived just in time for Halloween and for the home team to win the World Series baseball competition, which meant the whole city had a weird vibe mixing celebration, dressing up and drunkenness!
Filed under USA
Wuhan, China
Breakfast street
We only had a couple of days in mainland China, and most of that was taken up with wedding preparations for G&L. L took us to “Breakfast Street”, a street food area where we tried lots of yummy snacks and soup. One of my favourites was the grilled squid legs — tasty!
Squid man!
Yummy (and hot!)
Filed under china
Macau
Macau
My brother and sister-in-law organised a wedding in China to celebrate with her family and friends, so the family headed over to take part. On the way over, Mum and I had a few days of R&R in Macau before hitting Wuhan for the wedding.
First impression of Macau
Two Weeks Away 