To travel or not to travel.....

We are back from our very relaxing time in Thailand. Beautiful beaches and very friendly people.  Overall we had a pleasant stay and traveling with a 2 month old was not as bad as we could have imagined.  I can not tell you how many times throughout this trip I said "WOW" to the customer service everywhere we went.  It started with the plane trips, we had three different flights in one day mind you, so a lot of shuffling around.  China Airlines was VERY accomodating with Addison and made sure we had a row to ourselves, even the front row with more leg room, let us bring her car seat on board, and even set up this cool bassinet for her to hang out in while traveling (who knew planes provided such a service?? ) They also had changing tables in the bathrooms!

Relaxing, relaxing, relaxing.  I think the mid-day rains (or occasional monsoon) helped us out a bit with the relaxing part, but hey, we ate it up.  I guess there is a reason they say this time of year is the 'rainy season', speaks true!  Addison enjoyed hanging out with Mom AND Dad.  If I was not holding her than Brad was.  She had a little trouble with the two hour time difference, but that just meant earlier dinners to get her to bed and time for us.  We went to the hotel's tour desk to see all the fun things we would get to do.  There were a lot of options: a Safari where you get to ride elephants, see how they are trained, ride on a 4-wheeler, another trip took you on a speedboat and snorkeling to a smaller island...but when we asked what we could do with a kiddo, we got a pretty crazy look.  Apparently, the Thai don't take their children out until they are a minimum of 1 year old.  So, needless to say we still are a little naive when it comes to the whole parenthood activities options.  Once we realized this was going to be a relax by the pool, take walks on the beach, and take many a naps as your child naps kind of vacation, we were not too disappointed.  The other fun part of the trip was that we're supposed to think Addison is the cutest thing in the world, but it is fun that all the locals seemed to share our opinion and loved to say hello / look at her at every opportunity.  Anytime we would go out someone was walking over and loving all over her, waving really big to make her smile, or just staring at her. It got to the point towards the end that when we sat down to eat, I would be eating pretty quickly so we could continue on our way, horrible huh! 

We went exploring down the street from our hotel and there was a small strip of outdoor restaurants and cheap massage parlors. It was lunch time so we strolled into the 'Butterfly restaurant" to get a bite to eat.  We sit down to eat and Brad was carrying Addison in our Baby Bjorn and as Brad is taking her out one of the waitress' is cooing all over her.  Brad says (what every Mom thinks twice before saying) "Do you want to hold her?"  The lady swoops Addison out of his arms and starts loving on her and walking her around.  Now, I am a pretty trusting person (Brad I am sure thought this was not such a good thing at times during our trip), BUT, the whole time she is holding Addison my jaw is clenching.  Thankfully we were the only ones there to eat and the service was really quick, so we ate or food (which I think we both ate a little faster than usual), and she walked Addison back over to us and we headed on our way.  

Now to the FUN part of our vacation.  At 2AM on the 29th I get up to go the restroom and a letter is under our door.  I pick it up and with half open eyes try to read what is says.  "Dear Guest, Please be informed that the Phuket Int'l Airport has been closed since 3PM due to political protests. Because of this ALL flights inbound and outbound have been canceled until further notice"  I stopped in my tracks thinking, ohh I am dreaming, so I sit down and take another look at this letter. It said the same thing the second time.  There happened to be a big protest group in Bangkok that camped out on the Prime Ministers lawn for a few days with their own protection so the local police could not do anything about it.  Once they were not getting what they wanted, they headed to 3 Airports in the south, Train workers went on strike and Bus stations talked about striking as well...effectively shutting down all transportation in and out of Phuket!  I heard through the grapevine that they were actually standing on the runway to shut the airport down, can you imagine!   So, as I figured out what I read to be true I thought, should I wake Brad with the fun news or let him sleep.  The nice person that I am, let him sleep as I now could not get back to sleep thinking...HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET HOME!!  Once Brad woke up I let him read the letter and after a lot of messed up phone calls, calls that would not go through, no one having anymore information, we decided to stop stressing and take it one day at a time.  If we ended up getting stuck a few more days, it was not so bad, we had relaxation at our fingertips.  So we did what anyone would do in this situation, we bought travelers insurance and went about our vacation  =-)

On the 31st, the day we were supposed to leave, still no news about the airport opening up as of 11:00 in the morning.  We headed to the pool, had a late lunch, long nap, etc.  At about 4:00, I ask Brad if he would mind calling China Airlines out of Bangkok to try and find out info for another flight back or to just figure something out.  He comes back in at about 4:45 in a hurry saying, the airports are up and running and we are confirmed on the 6:40 flight.  WHAT!  I have a nursing child attached to me, the room a mess with all of our things, AND it takes 45 minutes to get to the airport from our hotel!  That was the fastest packing I think I have ever done.  Thankfully our initial plan was to stay over in Bangkok that night already so we did not have a very long night ahead of us....or so we thought.  We get to the airport with 20 minutes before take off, the airport is obnoxiosly crazy.  After blatantly cutting in line, we get our bags through and got on the flight.  It left an hour late waiting on everyone to get on as they were packing every flight FULL to get caught up with those passengers whose flights were cancelled.  Once we get to Bangkok, we need a hotel, (we had cancelled our previous one thinking we would not be needing it).  I talk to this nice lady and she gets us a close hotel to the airport as we will be heading back in the AM to go home and a taxi to the hotel.  This is where the too trusting part comes in with me.  Brad has no clue what I just did or what is going on, but goes along with it.  We pull up to the hotel and Brad is giving me his look.  We get inside the room and I could feel his eyes burning in the back of my head.  Picture small one bedroom dorm room, maybe even smaller.  There was a lovely mildew smell, balcony door that wouldn't close all the way (or lock),  a ROCK hard bed, and a bathroom with a shower head in the corner - no shower stall or curtain, just a tile floor / wall & drain right next to the toilet... So, needless to say I did not get much sleep that night either.  

After an early wake up, we ended up making it back safely and truly did enjoy our vacation.  (I am hoping for a quick Bejing Trip over Thanksgiving, but I will have to work on Brad a little more to make that happen.  Or just make him forget the few troubles we encountered this trip.)

For a few more pictures of this trip, click on our photo album.  Another thing with being new parents, ALL pictures seem to be just of the child....who knew!