Bangkok Day 2

On Monday Riley woke up around 5am in good spirits. I left Elise to sleep for a bit longer (Riley tends to crawl all over her in her sleep, making it difficult to get much uninterrupted sleep) and took Riley downstairs to walk around and get an early breakfast: cereal, milk, and some fruit. (She doesn’t seem to like papaya, but that’s reasonable enough, given that it usually tastes a bit like vomit.) There are some birds (parrots of some sort?) in a cage at the hotel that say a few words: good morning, hello, and some Thai. Riley was pretty into them, except when they hid in the shadowy bits of the cage (it was still pre-dawn) and make loud noises.

The plan was to get to the Grand Palace by 8:30am to beat the crowds, but it ended up being more like 9:30 or 10:00. It was pretty crowded at that point, but there were no lines at least. It was pretty impressive: lots of temples in different styles, and lots of statues all over the place. Most are covered with little squares of colored ceramic or bits of mirror, which Riley had a great time touching: She kept asking, “Can I touch something? Can I touch something else?” When we agreed she would reach out with one little finger and say “Touch!” with a devilish grin on her face. We touched a beast-like statue and Riley excitedly reported back to Dallas, Vida and Sage “I put my finger in the beast’s nose!”

By the time we left the crowds had really picked up and it took us some 10 minutes to get far enough away to stop and get our bearings. We went back to the boat dock and (after some confusion and delay) caught a water taxi to Wat Arun, which is just across and down the river. The water taxi’s are pretty fun: they’re long skinny boats with repurposed car engines mounted on the back and a crazy long propeller shaft sticking out the back: fast and very loud. (And a little dangerous… I saw one with a fully exposed radiator fan, patiently waiting for the pilot to trip backwards and get his face chewed off by the blades.)

Wat Arun was pretty low key (relative to the morning), with minimal crowds and pretty low key street food and souvenier vendors. We had a selection of ice cream bars, water, and chips for lunch (perfect!) and then climbed the crazy steep stairs up the tower to get a nice view of the river. Riley played a bit on the grass, collecting seed pods and giving them to Elise and me. She wanted to give one to Vida, and after a bit of coaxing went over to give it herself. The last one she wanted to give to Dallas, but she was too shy… she kept saying she wanted to give it to “someone” while looking coyly at Dallas, or “that guy” when pointing at him. She showed it to him, but then chickened out and gave it to Vida to give to him. (Of course we started laughing, which didn’t help… she loves to entertain.)

We caught a quick ferry across the river and then a (long, slow, but thankfully air conditioned) cab to Vimanmek Teak House, a mansion built for the king around the turn of the century. It’s claim to fame is it’s the largest golden teak building in the world (which just makes me wonder if there is a larger non-golden teak building elsewhere?). We were a bit worried about Riley since its a guided tour, but she ended up having a great time: the group moved along just fast enough to keep her interested, and give her enough time to step over the door thresholds between each room a few times. They’re maybe 3-4″ high (to keep scorpions, small children, and evil spirits from passing, we were told) and just novel and tricky enough for Riley to really get into them. The
house itself was really cool: hallways on the outside, two main wings, and a big octogonal section with a cool spiral staircase. And varous artifacts: lots of crazy old Chinese ceramic, elephant tusks and such, and strangely large selection of old typewriters (English and Thai), and other random gifts to the royals.

By the end (4 or so) we were pretty spent and made our way home (taxi to the river, then a river ferry… much better then suffering through Bangkok traffic!). Riley fell asleep on the way home, and I ran off to a department store to get some slacks: Elise and I made reservations at Le Normandie, a rediculously fancy french restaurant in the hotel (one of the reasons we chose it) and the dress code excluded jeans (that’s what you get for packing too light!). It was a bit hectic and I made it back just in time to make our reservation, but it was well worth it: the meal was amazing and delicous. We got the chef’s tasting of some 7
courses, one with the wine pairings and one without, and between the two of us were just barely able to keep up (we’re lightweights these days). Elise had just remarked about how much the meal reminded her of the French Laundry when after the meal the maitre’de started telling us about the restaurant and (upon learning we were from California) mentioned that Thomas Keller (who apparently never works abroad?) had spent two weeks working in the kitchen a year or two back. All in all, a delightful evening to celebrate the (approximately) 3 year anniversary of our engagement.

Click here for pctures of Day 2 in Bangkok

Bangkok Day 1

We flew from Portland to San Francisco where we met up with Vida and Dallas. The flight from SF to Tokyo was about 10 hours, followed by a 3 hour layover then a 6 hour flight to Bangkok. Sounds kind of like a nightmare with a 2-year-old, but surprise surprise Riley did remarkably well. She played with her little bag of toys (which has expanded and improved since the Japan trip), did her puzzles, cut up the airline magazine with her cute ladybug scissors, read books and sang a lot of songs. And she slept. Something about takeoff and landing makes her really sleepy. The ears thing doesn’t seem to be a problem as long as she has something to drink and raisins to chew on. I think she cried once for about 2 minutes when she was really tired and didn’t want to
sit down for landing.

We arrived in Bangkok at midnight (3pm California time) and headed to the Oriental, which is an amazing hotel. There were flowers everywhere and fountains and elephant statues. Took a while to get Riley to sleep but she eventually did. We woke up pretty early and raised the curtains to find a whole wall of windows looking out onto the river. We somehow got a free upgrade to pretty awesome rooms… more like a suite then a room really. Breakfest buffet was included, and so delicious. Fresh fruit of all sorts and just lots of yummy, pretty food. We met up with Vida and Dallas and ate and ate and ate and watched the boats go by at our table right along side the river.

When we finally headed out, we decided to take the Skytrain to Jim Thompson’s house, who’s this guy who got rich by bringing Thai silk to the west. He built a big traditional Thai house and filled it with beautiful art and ceramics. Riley’s favorite part was all the big ceramic vases filled with fish. The women working there kept giving her little origami animals that she enjoyed as well. After we had a delicious Thai lunch (so good) of noodles and spicy soup and salad made of pomelo (big citrus fruit similar to grapefruit), peanuts and fried garlic (I know that doesn’t sound so good, but I couldn’t get enough). We then headed off to Wang Suan Pakkard (“Palace of the Lettuce Garden”) where Princess Chumbhot of Nakhon Sawan used to live. It’s a collection of teak houses centered around a garden with a private canal (Klong) through the middle. They gave us fans, and Riley had great fun throwing them off the second floor of one of the houses down into the garden. On the way over a lady on the train had given Riley little orange hair bands with animals on them, and Riley enjoyed flinging those off the balcony as well. (She seems to be just as popular here as in Japan, only here it’s not just the women who are interested, everyone seems to want to touch her cheeks.) We were pretty hot and tired, so we sat around quite a bit and then decided to head home and enjoy our hotel. The rest of the day we spent lounging by the pool and swimming. In the evening we went on a dinner cruise down the river, which would have been great except we were SO tired. Riley promptly fell asleep across my and Sage’s laps at the table, and by the end I was sleeping with my head on the table as well. Cruising down the river was nice though. We all noted the similarity to Burning Man… the boats on the river were all lit up with somewhat gaudy lights making them seem similar to Art Cars on the playa. Apparently the king is turning 80, so they were all plastered with “We love the king” and various birthday messages in vivid color. Even the temples beared resemblance to those that get built every year. (Hope that’s not too sacriligious!)

Riley had some trouble falling asleep that night, despite being so tired.

Click here for pictures of Day 1 in Bangkok

(We keep procrastinating getting these posts up, so we just decided to give up on integrating the pictures…)

Portland

After Arizona we stopped back at home to pack up our bags for Thailand, then headed up to Portland. Since Riley is over 2 now, technically she has to sit in her own seat with her seatbelt on. We’d somehow avoided it on the Arizona flights, but the flight attendant on the Portland flight was VERY insistent about the rules. We were taxiing out to the runway and about to take off. Riley was on my lap looking out the window when the flight attendant found us out. She insisted Riley sit alone, and Riley of course panicked and started crying. The woman said loudly “The plane cannot take off until THIS BABY puts on her seatbelt.” (don’t make me turn this plane around…) I managed to slip my leg under her so she was sitting on my lap, while in her own seat with her seatbelt on, and then luckily there was plenty of really interesting things to see out the window (“hey look at that little plane! look at that big truck! look at that train of trucks!”) to distract her, and she did okay. After that we made a big deal out of Riley being “a really big girl” and sitting in a big girl seat and how she gets to put on the seatbelt all by herself, and after that it was never an issue again. She also likes it when we pretend we don’t know how the seatbelt works and she has to show us how it’s done. It’s all a matter of presentation I guess…

In Portland we visited Cheyenne and Joshua and their new baby Ronin. She’s so tiny! Riley looks like a giant next to her. Highlights for Riley included tasting all the spices with Joshua (at home she loves to open all the spice jars and smell them). She seemed to really like them… oregano, cumin, parsley seed, cardamom… some of them are really strong tasting, but Riley kept asking for more. She ate some dried wild mushrooms (yuck) too. Another highlight was going to see the snow! We drove seemingly forever all crammed in the car (poor Cheyenne squished between 2 carseats in the back, Sage and I sharing the front seat) but it was totally worth it. We parked on a little off road, then went for a little walk, made a snowman, left tracks in the snow… good
times.

One night in Portland Riley apparently had a nightmare… she woke up crying so I went over to ask her what was wrong. she said something bit her. I asked what bit her and she replied, “the potomus.” (that’s hippopotumus). So random! She calmed down pretty quickly though and slept the rest of the night.

More Portland pictures here.

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Traveling! First up: Arizona

(While travelling we wrote a lot of posts, but didn’t have internet to actually post them, so the next few posts are old and I’m just getting around to finishing them up now…)

I started residency in June and haven’t had any vacation… until now! 4 weeks! We’ve definitly been making the most of it. We first went to Arizona to visit Sage’s parents (Oma Peggy and Grandpa Lester). Riley really enjoyed seeing them and exploring their house, which has lots of pictures and little things to look at at.

Meeting the dogs was also an experience… at first she was incredibly afraid and burst into tears whenever they came close, even if she was being held way above them. Gradually we got her more comfortable, until finally she was brave enough to pet them. She was so excited and started screaming. Poor dogs then got pretty scared of her. She of course wanted to chase them around
the house the rest of the time we were there. Tumultuous relationship over all.

She also really enjoyed all the birds who visit the many bird feeders outside the house, and playing with the bird seed was pretty
fun too.

More pictures, plus videos of Riley playing piano with Oma Peggy here.

Popcorn!!

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Riley turns two!

Riley turned two yesterday! We brought come blueberry muffins she made with her mom to the daycare, along with a big bunch of balloons. Here she is blowing out one of the candles:

(There are more pictures of the morning here.)

Unfortunately, Riley’s two year checkup (and flu shot) landed on the same day, so she had a bit of a rough morning (she didn’t particularly enjoy her examination). Riley is now 33.5″ tall and weighs 27 1/2 lbs, and old enough to start seeing a dentist. However, any lingering uneasiness from the morning’s tribulations was forgotten when she realized she could run up and down the walk with balloons in hand:

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Christmas tree

December 22nd, 2007 in Happenings | 1 Comment

Shopping at the Farmer’s Market

Be Still!

This is pretty old news, but it didn’t get posted earlier. Riley was Max (from Where the Wild Things Are) for Halloween! Here she is trying out her wolf suit the night before. Unfortunately we didn’t get any great photos from Halloween itself, although you can look through all of them anyway.

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Here she is with her friend Baby Keira at the day care Halloween party.

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Animals