New Year's Eve

We all got ready and decided to explore the street stalls and shops along the beach. We bought huge coconuts to drink on our way. 

We found a restaurant with delicious Thai food and a view of the Andaman Sea. 

Tables here have one of my favorite things - Maggi sauce!

Drinks along the beach come in these interesting glasses. 

I got the Phuket yellow noodles. 

Afterwards, Lindsey, Lauren and I got $12 back massages. The ladies crawled on our backs and massaged our backs with their feet at points. Great massage! They gave us tea and Kit Kats after. 

We then bought a floatie and boogie boards and headed to the beach!

Two Thai children gleefully took over Lauren's floatie and had a great timing playing on it.

We headed to the pool after. There are a lot of Russians staying around here. In fact, most of the signs and menus have Russian and English. 

For dinner we went to the Thai place next door. On the the way we found our condo complex covered in scurrying geckos. 

The restaurant had their fresh seafood laid out in this boat. The lobster looking thing is actually a king prawn. 

They gave us celebratory hats. 

My pad Thai, Tom Kha soup, and a watermelon shake. 

Atif's whole fish:

We then headed to the beach to count down until New Year's. We bought a Chinese lantern to light. You write down the things you want to let go of and then let the lantern fly off. 

The night ended with fireworks on either side of us. 

Traveling to Phuket and First Day in Naithon

We got up early this morning to pack and headed to the smaller domestic airport in Bangkok. It was the babies' first flight and they did great. We received a chocolate filled pastry snack on board our Nok Air flight. 

Yes, that is an Auntie Annie's bag. 

We arrived at our condo at Nai Thon beach, just 15 minutes away from the airport. It's a smaller, quieter beach. The condo is two stories, very spacious, and super nice. 

Ocean view from our large patio. 

Orchids in the trees. 

We took a taxi ride to go to a Tesco Lotus to pick up groceries. Photos from our ride:

Imagine a Costco sized grocery store in a building that is sort of like a mall with other stores. 

We saw many water buffalo grazing on the ride to and from (sorry didn't get any photos). 

Here's Auntie Yuliya hanging out with the twins. 

After a long day we headed to the beach for a sunset swim. 

Day 1 - Bangkok and the Reclining Buddha

I arrived in Bangkok after two smooth flights. Here's a view of the plane landing:

Justin gave me some instructions written in Thai so that the taxi driver could find the apartment. Here's the apartment and view from the 18th floor:

We (Atif, Justin, Yuliya, Lindsey, Lauren, and the babies) had some Delicious thai food next door for lunch. 

Amuse bouche:

They like to garnish with artistically carved food. 

No idea what any of this food was, but it was great!

After lunch I rallied enough to join the girls on a trip to Wat Pho to see the giant reclining Buddha. It was in fact giant and reclining. 

Giant Buddha foot:

You can see each toe is the size of  person's head. 

Marigolds on an altar:

We then spent some time exploring the temple complex. 

We had some time before dinner so we went to a nearby park called Saranrom. It seems to be used primarily for a place to jog. It was nice and shaded, and well landscaped. Here are a people jogging behind a monk:

We found these really cool exercise machines in the park. They also had weights you could lift just sitting outside. 

We also saw Komodo dragons swimming in the pond. 

We headed to dinner after (slowly, it took about an hour to go six miles in traffic). There we met up with Justin, Atif and their babies as well as Justin's Thai "family" who were very generous and bought us dinner. We ate at a restaurant in a gigantic mall that was 7 stories tall. At dinner I almost passed out from jet lag, but somehow survived. 

Next day we fly to Phuket!