lost4good

Narda’s notes in italics – the other few scribbles are Terrell…oh wait I have been prodding Narda to write more, actually, anything. Let’s hope for some groovy notes.

We disembarked from our wonderful cruise of the Suez Canal – see previous blog into the Saudi Arabia city of Jeddah.

Historic Jeddah is situated on the eastern shore of the Red Sea. From the 7th century AD it was established as a major port for Indian Ocean trade routes, channelling goods to Mecca. It was also the gateway for Muslim pilgrims to Mecca who arrived by sea. These twin roles saw the city develop into a thriving multicultural centre, characterized by a distinctive architectural tradition, including tower houses built in the late 19th century by the city’s mercantile elites, and combining Red Sea coastal coral building traditions with influences and crafts from along the trade routes.

Dec 05 to 8 Overnight 3 nights Jeddah 

Historic Jeddah is situated on the eastern shore of the Red Sea. From the 7th century AD it was established as a major port for Indian Ocean trade routes, channelling goods to Mecca. It was also the gateway for Muslim pilgrims to Mecca who arrived by sea. These twin roles saw the city develop into a thriving multicultural centre, characterized by a distinctive architectural tradition, including tower houses built in the late 19th century by the city’s mercantile elites, and combining Red Sea coastal coral building traditions with influences and crafts from along the trade routes. Dec 05 to 8 Overnight 3 nights Jeddah.

We had/have no choice in life but to move forward. This is what specialises travel. At home feeling crap we just pull the blanket over our head and suffer in our special bubble. An absolute bubble.

Travel so changes the context. Here we are in Jeddah. Off a wonderful cruise. Absolutely ill. Weak, can barely swallow, headache, burst bubbles. We don’t have a sim card yet giving us no interpretation of where we are where we are going who we are. An existential issue – without ChatGPT telling us about our position in life who are we really? Both of us. We see these ads about eSim – one sim for anywhere in the world. Oh wait! Our phones even though a year old and costing $800 don’t take eSims.

We share a Career Uber type car service to Sherry’s high-class hotel, her phone takes eSim –  Ritz Carlton and get a salad consisting of lettuce with very little anything else for $75 USD. We use the hotel’s Wi-Fi and ring a Career Uber type car service and show where we want to go. We haven’t gotten any Saudi play money yet and the taxi dude wants funny money to take us to our flat, an Airbnb Narda found on Booking.com. He gets us to an ATM which gives 4-500 domination bills (500 Saudi Riyal=$126.55USD) which the driver doesn’t have change for. We try a petrol station who doesn’t have change, but who sells us some drinks on our credit card and gives us enough cash to get the driver whistling Dixie or some sort of happiness response and we are deposited to somewhere, where the driver thinks we want to be. Actually, he says Insha’Allah – which is what Muslims like to say. My issue with that of course is – hey just drive the bloody taxi to our building we don’t really need divine intervention – damn! We have a GPS – so Google willing we will find our address.

Allah willing” is the English translation of the Arabic phrase “Insha’Allah” (إن شاء الله), meaning “if God wills,” used by Muslims and Arabic speakers to express that future events depend on God’s (Allah’s) permission, signifying hope, humility, and acknowledgment of divine will over human plans. It’s used for future plans (“I’ll see you tomorrow, Insha’Allah”) or can sometimes casually mean “hopefully” or “maybe,” though sincerely it’s a statement of faith (Google) Terrell says “Google willing”.

The flat is fine. It has two bedrooms which is good as we are constantly coughing sneezing complaining. We just go to bed though it is only four pm. A couple of hours later we drag our sorry asses out of our sick bay bubbles and head outside in search of food.

Luckily a couple of blocks away we find Pizza Hut. Not quite the Ritz Carlton but affordable.

Back to our flat. Yeah! He has large screen TV with YouTube, so we watch an episode of our Super favourite show, itchyboots then cough sneeze complain ourselves to our personal sick wards.

We did stop at a pharmacy after Pizza Hut and got pills. Like two prescriptions for antibiotics which are supposed to be from a doctor but why be concerned with such stuff. We got other stuff too. Of course, weeks later nothing had helped.

Our second day we just lay about indulging ourselves with shades of living intruding on our feelings of death warmed over. Though we did get a taxi to a shopping centre to get a Sim card for internet for two weeks. Seven US dollars for 14 days and 5 gig of Wi-Fi. The shopping centre was horrible. Big, spread out in-personal. We even bought some almost non eatable lunch. Narda seemed more effected by the almost totally covered up women with barely slits for eyeballs to peer through. Saudi Arabia hits you when not used to such a culture. Women walking behind men totally covered in black men in white. Like the wild west American movies with the good in white then comes along the Lone Ranger and shoots all those in black leaving them laying on the shopping mall floor with blood and dreams pouring in rivers of illusions.

Now that we had sim cards we were free to travel and explore and do wonderous things, like know where we are and where to purchase a fridge magnet. Our one tourist experience was going to old town, Al Balad.  

Day three we dragged our sorry asses out into the Jeddah world.

Al Balad is the old deal. It is the historic centre of the City of Jeddah. We explored a house that allegedly was/is 500-years old – see our slideshow below.

We stopped in for a coffee at a friendly looking café. Three young folks invited us to sit with them. We had long conversations. Apparently, they are uni students studying tourism. Here is a photo of us having a laugh… that is me in the back having the biggest laugh though I do not recall what.

The boy spoke very good English, the girl on the left was leaving Saudi to marry a German and move out of the country though she was a bit unsure about whether she should. We told her she was very pretty and should finish uni and not rush into something like marriage. The third person, girl on the right, spoke little English but we communicated via Google translator and had lots of laughs over miscommunications or the fact that I am just funny. Insha’Allah.

A humorous moment in Al Balad whilst waiting for a ride home. We made it perfectly clear to the mob that we could not take them with us amongst a lot of whining and remorseful sounding clicks along with stomping their hind legs and growling. Even to the extent of throwing things at Narda out of their pouch including marbles, pencils, photos of me, clowns, sandwiches, prayer rugs…

As we are in the Corniche area, we had planned to walk along the shore, but two things prevented it. One we were super sick. Two we couldn’t walk across the highway in the area we lived. Google says – A “Corniche” area refers to a scenic waterfront promenade, popular for recreation, featuring walkways, beaches, parks, and dining, famously seen in cities like Abu Dhabi, Jeddah, and Doha. We did the Corniche thingy in all those cities. Especially in Doha as you would of course have had read in the Doha blog https://neuage.me/doha 

Dec 8-12

Abu Dhabi XD Cosy Apartments 4 nights

We were to get a Careem Uber type taxi to King Abdulaziz International Airport

Sidenote: everywhere one goes in Saudi Arabia it is obvious some king (maybe a prince or princess) has been in the area as something will be named after them. For example, King Abdulaziz was a Najdi statesman and tribal leader who became the founder and first king of Saudi Arabia, reigning from 23 September 1932 until his death in 1953. So of course, the airport is name after him, King Abdulaziz International Airport. And as most of you would know (though I must admit I was in the dark and did not know) there are a few other places named after King Abdulaziz.

• King Abdulaziz Air Base
• King Abdulaziz Center For National Dialogue
• King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture
• King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology
• King Abdul Aziz Historical Centre
• King Abdul Aziz Hospital, Mecca
• King Abdulaziz International Airport
• King Abdulaziz Medical City, Riyadh
• King Abdulaziz Medical City, Jeddah
• King Abdul Aziz Military College
• King Abdul Aziz Mosque
• King Abdulaziz Mosque, Riyadh
• King Abdulaziz Naval Base
• King Abdulaziz Park, Riyadh
• King Abdul Aziz Port
• King Abdulaziz Public Library
• King Abdul Aziz Road, Kuwait
• King Abdul Aziz Stadium
• King Abdulaziz University
• King Abdulaziz University College of Health Sciences

Lots of sand – pretty much looks like Australia from the air.

We arrived at Zayed International Airport, also known as Abu Dhabi International Airport (no king names here) in the country of the United Arab Emirates. Here places are named after sultans. The main one is Abu Dhabi features many places named after its revered founder, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. including the iconic Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque (a wonderful place to visit more of that later), the Zayed National Museum, the Founder’s Memorial, Sheikh Zayed Sports City, and even Sir Bani Yas Island (established as a reserve by him). Other prominent sites, like King Salman Street, honour ruling sultans from neighbouring Saudi Arabia, while the Sultan Bin Yousef Mosque recognizes local Al Nahyan family members.

Being a different country, again no sim card. The airport is one of the largest in the world and is quite the thing to look at though not when sick and not having a sim card.

Darkness was rapidly closing in on us and us on it upon arrival.  Some people foolishly suggested that we could easily hop a bus for little of the local funny money, but we needed cash.  Being amongst the elite of the ATM clowns we gleefully shoved our credit card into where the sun refuses to shine which spit out lots of Dirhams. At the bus stop hanging out with all the other losers looking for a way to save a Dirham that’s the name of the AED currency, we were told the bus we wanted 2A would arrive in seven minutes so I ran to some random though proper counter and got two plastic bus cards with ten shits on each $2.61USD which apparently was heaps. Ran back. Bus barely stopped and went on. Why? Some said it was the third not to stop due to being already full of losers trying to save their funny money. If we waited another half hour and we’re extremely lucky we might get on. Being exhausted close to collapse, really, we went to the Uber/Career car share area and paid the $35 USD to get to town an hour away. We got lucky, a new big BMW.

That was the easy part. With ten minutes to arrival, I asked Narda if she had the instructions to get into the flat. She had no idea. We had no Wi-Fi. Panic. Fortunately, the driver overheard us, bloody eavesdroppers, and offered his Wi-Fi. I sent urgent notes to Booking.com and lucky for us the flat host answered and as we arrived we received the instructions of where the apartment was and the door code to get in.

We were too tired and sick to complain except Narda was adamant that this did not look like the flat in her booking. We had a small flat with a small bed in a small room and a poky kitchen and a little area with a dining table. On our third night we found our booking and the image with a large living room was through a door locked from the entrance area.

After contacting the host, he came by opening the door. We complained a lot, bottom line, by six pm of day three we got one night with a proper apartment.

We managed to get sicker if that was possible. On day two we did walk to the Corniche Area which was the waterfront area and that was great. On the way we had tea and sweets at an Indian place, seems we are in the Indian area, lots of folks from Karla here. Anyway, Narda got chatting with a person from Bangladesh and told her story about her hand being in Bangladesh last year. The story is toward the end of this blog https://neuage.me/2024/06/18/guwahati/

We took lots of photos of the World Trade Centre Building on the way to the Corniche – The Abu Dhabi World Trade Centre complex has two main towers: the residential Burj Mohammed Bin Rashid, 381-382 meters (1,251-1,253 ft) 92 stories, and the office tower, the Trust Tower, at sixty stories. Burj Mohammed Bin Rashid is the tallest building in Abu Dhabi. 

The Corniche is a very long waterfront promenade, 8-kilometer (5-mile), alongside the Persian Gulf (also known as the Arabian Gulf). We had thought of walking far enough to have stated we walked a long way but got about a block before sitting down then went back to our flat and took a nap.

After Corniche we walked, dragged our sorry asses, home. On the way we stopped at Lulu Hypermarket and gathered food for dinner and breakfast. Lulu is huge. We liked Lulu shopping centre in Koche India too. The 99 story World Trade Centre two of them tower over the market. Lulu has one of the widest varieties of foods from so many places I have ever seen.

10 December Wednesday

Abu Dhabi hospital – Feeling beyond normal we went to the LLH Hospital which was a couple of blocks away. We spent a good amount of time there – getting swabs and blood tests and I had an EKG. We got some scripts and dutifully went off to the nearest pharmacy where the pharmacist filled our script and then said we should take a high dose multivitamin which we bought. Only after getting to our flat did I look at the bill. The bastard sold us vitamins for $75USD per bottle. As we had already taken one, I couldn’t take it back. I curse him every day when I take one even now back in Australia a month later. Is there something wrong with me? We went back a couple of days later and got our results and everything seems to add up to a throat infection probably bronchitis and it gradually away.

11 December Thursday

We did one super tourist thingy. We hopped a bus to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, constructed between 1994 and 2007. It was an hour ride but well worth it – and cheap too. It was about a USD buck to get there. I believe there is a free shuttle, but who is going to spend the day for something free when they can get it for a dollar.  The mosque holds about 41,000 worshippers. I only saw a handful of tourists going ‘wow’ the day we were there.  See our clip at https://youtu.be/QSmZGZ3zn0g?si=zG67Fm7n8fhlDYpM Of course it is small compared to Masjid al-Haram, also known as the Sacred Mosque or the Great Mosque of Mecca which holds four-million Muslims. We were not allowed to go to Mecca because.

Narda had to purchase a dress to cover even her ankles (I always thought she has such sexy ankles that they should always be covered from the perverted gazes of whatever pronoun is in the area at any given moment). Some shop tried to sell her one for about a hundred bucks USD, but we managed to get one that was about $12.

Some fun facts for the groovy Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque – one of the only few in the region to be open to non-Muslims:

• Home to the world’s largest hand-knotted carpet and some of the most elaborate chandeliers adorned with gold.
• Features 82 domes, including the largest dome in the world.
• Largest chandeliers made from 40 million crystals,
• Sheikh Zayed was buried here after his death in 2004,
• The courtyard, with its floral design, measures about 17,000 m² (180,000 sq ft), and is the largest example of marble mosaic in the world

And lots of other stuff that makes it all worth while

Abu Dhabi airport

Sitting at Abu Dhabi airport listening to “Someday we will be together “Supremes, takes me back to December 1968, now is December 2025, 57 years like yesterday. I was at the airport in San Francisco with my friend, Carolann and her daughter, Desiree, age one. It’s a complex story; we were living at the airport in a child’s change room. We put a blanket over the window so we wouldn’t be seen. We were in the cafeteria serving flight and airport crew, no-one stopped us. We did this for two or three days then I don’t remember but then we had the money to fly to Honolulu where Carolann’s brother met us. A week later we were in the strange cult Order, The Holy Order of MANS (masters illuminated knights of spirit). Damn! I was trapped in that for more than a decade. It still gives me the heebie-jeebies. See my story of this at https://neuage.org/LeavingAustraliaBeforeTheAfter/Hawaii.html.  Other songs have transportation effect on me too. Like Janis Joplin takes me to 1968-1969s San Francisco and Dylan to mid-1960s Credence Clearwater to New Orleans days and so on and so forth. Simply put I like experience repeats which is what music does for me.  About the only time I listen to my old music is when I travel. At home I listen to classical stuff if the radio is on. Sixty years of travelling and still only living in the sixties.

 Dammam – Tyler

12 December Friday
Flight Abu Dhabi to Dammam, Saudi Arabia 2.15 to 2.45 Tyler collected us from the airport.

Narda’s music co-pilot at Dalian American School in China has been a music teacher at Saudi Aramco School (SAES) for the past seven years. He has three children one of whom Narda taught at Dalian School. Tyler’s wife died a year ago and at the time Narda said we will come and visit which is how we added Saudi Arabia to our trip after our six weeks in the Netherlands. At the time we were just going from Utrecht to Dammam for a few days then back to Adelaide. One day I saw a good price for a repositioning cruise to Aba Dhaba which is close to Dammam and I thought that would be a good way to see Tyler then go home. Two-week cruise. Then of course, the second week got cancelled as rambled on about in the previous blog due to naughty folks shooting stuff at ships in the Red Sea. So, the chip tossed us at Jeddah leaving us to figure out the rest of our trip. Which obviously, we did and now we are in Dammam. Aren’t you glad you asked? And why the hell didn’t I get ChatGPT to write this in a concise and easy to follow way? Never. I have tried these various AI re-writes for various things: poems, age-reductions, make me sound sensible etc. and it all sounds stupid so bear with me.

Arriving at the airport Tyler met us. The landscape is like South Australia desert. Looking for camels like visitors to Australia look for roos. Did not see any.

Tyler’s home reminds me of the movie The Truman Show. Very neat – spotless streets – houses all looking the same. We were told how easy we could get lost so one day when Tyler went to work, we walked around the block, fearful of getting lost.

13 December Saturday

Dammam- with Tyler – out to lunch Shakshuka is a popular one-pan North African and Middle Eastern dish featuring poached eggs nestled in a simmering, spiced tomato and bell pepper sauce grape leaves – hummus – falafel. to Lulu groceries afternoon – Narda feeling ill still mainly head stuffy –

14 December Sunday 
Damman – Narda slept a lot – out to dinner for pizza 

15 December Monday
Damman

We thought of driving over to Bahrain lying off its eastern shore on the Persian Gulf but sometimes the bridge can take several hours to cross sometimes and 20-30 minutes other times. And with customs and immigration checks on the King Fahd Causeway between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain it could be long waits so I just took photos and pretended I was there.

Train Saudi Arabia

16 December Tuesday

five hours of desert

Riding train through Saudi Arabia who could have guessed such a caper. Listening to Dylan to Leadbelly to Joplin women across from me totally covered in random consciousness black and narrow slit for eyes staring at me with obstructed thoughts probably wondering if a 78-year-old American/Australian would be a good… I stare back shaking my head no and they turn to look interested in the thoughtless desert passing past window fast, alarmed that Allah would allow such thoughts.  I did try to make contact. Smiled even thought of telling them one of my very funny American jokes (transparency – don’t know any) but no response. That is the most difficult thing in Saudi Arabia there is little communication through facial expressions. Even males I found very dead pan – no emotional response. Saudi Arabia is the first county I have been in that I don’t try to be funny. Of course, folks seldom think I am funny in any other country but I laugh at my jokes whereas in Saudi I won’t even tell them. Even if I could remember the punch lines.

 Whilst looking for wi-fi access – no free ones but our sim card from the week before that we got in Jeddah worked fine. I did see one connection for “thanks my allah” but as thankful as I was it didn’t work even with my password-guesses.

Final analysis of a train ride through Saudi Arabia. Boring – food like the view outside the window is quite bland and no one smiled (that I could ascertain) and it is an average train. Cleaner that an Indian train, much less interesting – otherwise probably like Amtrak in USA.

Riyadh

Our video clip for Riyadh is at https://youtu.be/sVQIKMDi95A?si=m2GuDVl6ZjUE-Oa0  this shows the metro and much of the museum.

We only spent two days here. Took random buses ended up at a bit of a strange restaurant – walked for a while – saw a big museum and spent the rest of the day there. It was very impressive and free which made it more impressive.

At the museum, they had many of King Khalid’s cars on display. He is referred to as the people’s king. A very humble and moderate dude. Here are a few of his cars. Obviously, what the common man (women couldn’t drive) would scoot around town in.

What I found most interesting in the museum was the history of writing. Having done as PhD on chatrooms I explored writing from thousands of years ago to now. This museum has a lot on this.

For example, this is from my PhD “Conversational analysis of chatroom talk” at https://neuage.org/thesis/all.htm in the introduction (1.1 Evolution of language from early utterances to chatroom utterances) with a slideshow of some of the displays, with some original things – most are in the Cairo museum.

We took the metro around the place, a new opened a few months ago, setup. In 2025 we got to see two new metro systems just as they opened. The first was in February of 2025 in Saigon. See https://youtu.be/5t6L4-cCEPI?si=2lKsq21ef8FwZgko and the second new one here in Riyadh

We had a good hotel here for our couple of days, Golden Dune Al Malaz. Nothing extra fancy, probably about two and a half stars but an OK breakfast buffet and friendly staff. The main claim to fame was it is a few steps from the bus that goes to the metro that goes to the museum.

View from our room on the fifth floor

Narda pointing the way to the nearest vegetarian low-carb organic Hindu-influenced Rabi-blessed food court.

One of my goals, not Narda’s was to see their super tall building. The Kingdom Centre (or Kingdom Tower) is  a 99-story skyscraper, known for its distinctive inverted arch and parabolic opening, housing offices, a Four Seasons Hotel, luxury apartments, and the Al Mamlaka Shopping Mall, featuring the world’s second-highest mosque and the Sky Bridge for panoramic city views, symbolizing modern Saudi development. But not feeling well, we decided not to go to the top, and instead went into Ibis Hotel and had lunch and took the metro + bus back to our hotel. BTW the Al Mamlaka Shopping Mall was crap. Only a McDonalds and a lot of lingerie stores which I found interesting…of course, but to see women fully covered but for slits for their eyes and all these shop windows displaying close to naked models (not real, unfortunately) with their frilly underwear seemed strange. BTW I make my own giggles by visualizing the males dressed in their fancy white sheets wearing these lingerie thingies beneath their lily-white sheets. I wouldn’t last an hour in one of those suits as I would spill food and strange thoughts all over the front and people like me would just laugh at me.

Riyadh Airport = King Khalid International Airport. Back to an airport named after a king.  Full Name: Khalid bin Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, which is what I say when I stub my toe and I am in a hurry.

As everyone (except me) knows, King Khalid refers to King Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the fifth King and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, who reigned from 1975 until his death in 1982, with the major international airport in Riyadh named in his honour to recognize his role in modernizing the kingdom. He was the son of the kingdom’s founder, King Abdulaziz, and was known for overseeing significant development and infrastructure projects during his rule, like the airport itself.

18 Dec-21 Phuket

18 December Thursday

Fly Riyhad to Phuket (Etihad EOU9YR) 10.30am -1.15pm (Etihad 554) arrives Abu Dhabi (one hour stopover) 2.15pm – 11.35pm (Etihad 414)

18 Dec-21 Naiyang Park Resort 34/5 Moo1, Tambon Sakoo< Amphour Thalang, Sa Khu Phuket

I thought they meant half of my clothing because it was so hot – so I did. Because our first six-weeks of this three-month trip was in the Netherlands I filled my suitcase with all the winter stuff back in Australia and now I have to drag it through the tropics. What I had planned to do, and did a bit, was leave winter clothes behind. I left my winter coat hanging on a pole in Abu Dhabi last week and hope someone will make use of it in that warm climate. Still, my suitcase was over full. Of course, Narda agreeing that we toss some of winter stuff in Holland worked for a moment. Then she bought a winter coat for six dollars at a thrift store and a large scarf. The winter coat is twice the size of the tossed coat, so we are back to where we started. Too much stuff.

Flights and airports were fine. My only complaint was that the music playlist only had one Dylan album. Which of course, is one more than I have ever seen on any flight. Ever.

This is our second trip to Phuket. Two years ago, we stayed in a different area of Phuket, staying at the Deevana Patong Resort which is more of the night scene. See https://neuage.me/phuket This time we just wanted/needed a quiet beach place and we got it.

We got to Phuket at midnight and saw only one taxi driver so we went with him to the Naiyang Park Resort https://www.naiyangparkresort.com/ and got to our room tired but no longer ill. Not much to say about this place where we stayed for three days. It was a great place, and we would happily stay at the Naiyang Park Resort again.

I did not fly my drone in Thailand as there are heavy fines for anytime anyplace of such fun. Of course, in Saudi Arabia I didn’t consider it. For whatever reason that country scares me, so I just was quiet and invisible (sort of).

Meals were good and the resort was tricked out for Christmas. Breakfast buffet was included and was really good with a large variety of stuff good for a vegetarian and mystery meat and roadkill for the non-vegans.  

The sunset was fantastic across the road from our resort. The resort is in a national park with great beaches and a bit of a somewhat forest or at least a lot of trees. The swimming pool was the temperature of a warm bath. We loved the place but it became time to move on to the main event of this trip. Christmas with Brendan, Sofie and the baby so we were off to Koh Samui for a week then New Years and a week in Bangkok with Brendan, Sofie and Arhun. Phuket to Koh Samui on Bangkok Air was a decent flight, about two-hours.

21 December Koh Samui

We were lucky and had an assigned seat in the first row – the exit row. And lucky for us they did not notice we could have been pushing the elderly envelope as elderly people are not allowed in the exit row. Surely, we can open the bloody door and jump out and hope that the others follow us.

I liked the Koh Samui airport from the get-go (to use an American word that Narda doesn’t care for). It reminded me of the Maui (Hawaii) airport in the 1960s-early 1970s. A small tropical unassuming airport. More outdoors than indoors.

We were on a propeller plane just like the 1960s to Maui

The airport is visible in our clip along with some other stuff from our week in Koh Samui https://youtu.be/-FnSLkNXy1I?si=YFuhRMFHtXKuMB2H

The main even – Narda meeting her grandson. We saw him last in Lahore when he was four-months old, now he was getting old and will turn two-years old in another month.

We had a beautiful room – cabin – whatever –  and across the park was Brendan, Sofie and Arhan.

Six days. The beach was always there and I went in a couple of times, Narda once…the waves were a bit big.

We hired a taxi for the day which in our world turned out to be two hours. We stopped in to see the sexy rocks: Hin Ta and Hin Yai (Grandpa & Grandma)  located on the coast between Lamai and Hua Thanon, known for resembling male (Hin Ta – Grandpa) and female (Hin Yai – Grandma) genitalia.

And we stopped ion at this really groovy waterfalls

the street in front of our resort – the resort itself is set back and on the shore – but once to the main street it is full of noise and humans and usually no room to walk – this was in the morning . Of note; Burger King had a wonderfully tasting plant-based burger that was not mystery meat though it was mystery veggies.

These trucks go back and forth all evening…interesting the first dozen times then OMG shut up mate

We had Christmas day at our pad… Arhan was the main receiptent of so much stuff – we dragged lots of Bluey stuff from Australia: crocs, books on Bluey, other stuff – it was good to empty our suitcase after three months of travel. Christmas dinner was at an Irish Pub. I tried to make a joke but never came up with a punchline: A Pakistani, an Aussie. A Dutch mum, and a Yank walk into an Irish pub in Thailand for Christmas…

27 December Bangkok

oh look Narda started writing….

Then came time to leave. We took a short flight to Bangkok.

The hotel there was very nice, luxury by our standards. We each had a room on the tenth floor. It was located on a street which took us to a supermarket, and then to the train overhead which we made good use of.

Sometimes we looked after Arhan and one time he asked “Where’s oma?” That made my day.

We ate the street food (I always had spring rolls much to Brendans disapproval :)

Wow – so much to say – and I have run out of puff so this part will be short even though we had a full week of stuff. It could have been a blog on its own, but now we are home preparing to go to UK for a month in five weeks then USA for a month then probably Pakistan – who knows? So this will be cut short now on 22 January.

Our hotel was at Adelphi Grande Sukhumvit – we were on the tenth floor down the hall from Brendan and Sofie and Arhan

We spent one day doing random buses and another day doing random metro.

As seen in the video above we sent to the The Grand Palace. a complex of buildings at the heart of Bangkok. The traffic around the palace was shocking and the huge lines of people wanting to get in went for several blocks. Not sure how he did it but Brendan just went to the front of it all and got us tickets and in we went. being a very hot day there was no way we were going to wait in line for hours. Inside was amazing – see the video. We lasted for about an hour then Arhan a month away from the terrible twos decided now was the time to exercise his ability to perform ahead of time so home we went. that was quite the job getting through crowds and finding a taxi but we did, obviously, because I am here writing this a few weeks later.

but if you do not like you tube or my videos here are a couple of photos of the palace

sidenote here – we love buses and fantasize how to make one into an RV and drive around Australia in it – so I took a couple of photos to remember when we are home what we want…

New Year’s eve we had baby sitting duty, of course, which ended up with Narda asleep with Arhan and I went out to see the fireworks. See the video above.

At the end of the week Narda and I left at noon and flew to Singapore then on home. Brendan and Sophie and Arhan left a few hours later for Lahore. We may see them again in May and they will be in Australia for Christmas 2026 along with Chris and family over from DC.

This is our last photo together – breakfast together before flying off

This is our lawn when we got home after three months

We added the magnets from this trip to our fridge

Overview of our other trips – the rule is we have to stay at least one night in a place to get a magnet. This trip was 1o countries (Netherlands, Germany, Egypt, Turkey, Singapore, Australia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Thailand) and 13 airports.

See you in Truro (Doc Martin & Fishermen’s Friends) territory. next month.