The tooth fairy came to Thailand! Spud was so excited to get gummy teeth, a little hamster toy, and a 10 baht coin.
Long long travel day today to get to our next destination… First we packed up & checked out of our rooms. A van from the Hua Hin Taxi Company came and picked us up & we loaded in all of our luggage. The drive back to Bangkok and the Don Muang Airport is about 3 and a half hours long. The driver spoke no English and drove like a true Thai taxi driver– scary! He weaved in and out of lanes, tailgated and slammed on brakes, and dodged cars left and right until we were all feeling car sick. I was writing blog posts until I got queasy so I thought I’d take a break and look out the windshield… That didn’t last long because it was too scary to see how many close calls we had with other cars, motorcycles, and huge trucks. Somehow, miraculously and with lots of prayers, gum, and games on the ipad or phone, we made it safely to the airport with our breakfasts still blessedly in our stomachs.
It was well past lunchtime by the time we got checked in for our flight – the kids spotted a McDonalds and were so excited to take a break from Thai food. It tastes about the same as fast food from America… Not great. Haha.
Our flight was delayed for an hour and a half and we were a little early checking in anyway, so we had a long time to sit and wait and explore the airport. Nixi Ray found some bookshelves in a shop and was so excited to find the newest release from her favorite author. We checked the exchange rate and discovered that it was cheaper here than we could buy it at home off of Amazon. She was sooooo excited and suddenly didn’t mind spending the afternoon waiting for a flight! She had read half of it by the time we boarded. Thanks Shannon Messenger for the diversion!
The little kids were antsy though, so we did a lot of walking around looking at stuff and running in the halls. Finally we were able to take off for the short hop to Phuket (1 hour 10 minute flight). Littlest had ear trouble this time, but thankfully the pressure released soon after we landed. Pro tip: telling her to pretend that her hand was a balloon that she needed to blow up was very helpful in relieving the pressure, more than plugging her nose or yawning.
We picked up a rental car at the airport in Phuket and found a night market that was just closing up shop, but we were able to get enough street food for dinner. Seems like everything closes really early for a tourist town on a Saturday night… 8pm and no restaurants open?
We are staying in a nice complex of condos in Kamala Beach – much softer beds than we had for the last week, we were all excited about that!! It’s also in a quiet section of town and off of the main road so we don’t hear traffic noise. The kids are also excited for the pool and especially the washing machine (except it won’t start!!).
You have to love translation mistakes – just look at this piece of artwork hanging in the girls room. It doesn’t even make sense!
I bet I could fill a whole book with photos of funny translations and mis-spellings seen on signs everywhere in Thailand. Always makes us laugh! (Side note: We found out later that Thai does not have standard spelling of words – they spell phonetically however they feel like it, kind of like how they drive. Even the government will spell words like “City” differently in each city. So we think they do the same thing when they translate. Who cares about spelling?)
We ended the night being able to talk to our Argentina missionary and told him about our service week – he thinks it’s crazy that we paid to go work for free. It’s kinda like a mini-mission.
