Thailand is now the 8th country on our world tour! Although it is more of a travel through than a proper experience of the real Thailand. There are a few reasons for this – the first one was that myself and Craig had both travelled here in our younger years. I spent about a month here in the noughties and spent much time on the beaches and the full moon parties. Secondly, Thailand is all about the beaches and temples and we have learnt that we are not a beachy family and the girls are a bit ‘templed out’ for now! Thirdly, we are short on time and Chinese New Year is looming so we need to speed up our journey East as we have booked our next couple of flights based on the cheapest days available.

So from Hat Yai we took our first sleeper train with high hopes as we all love a train and the girls loved the sleeper bus in India. It started off well and we were pleasantly surprised with the quality of the train. Unfortunately as we had booked at short notice we were not sitting together but the seats were big enough that the girls could share. We also had top bunks (not next to each other) so I planned to sleep with Sophie, which turned out to be the best decision when she started puking in her sleep around half way through the 14 hour journey. What felt like minutes later Phoebe suddenly ran past towards the toilet, couldn’t open the heavy door in time then chucked up all over the floor. The rest of the trip passed in a slow motion blur of non-stop puking, climbing up and down bunks, stealing clean sheets and trying not to wake everyone else up! We were so relieved (and delirious from not sleeping) when we arrived in Bangkok the next morning but due to the girls delicate state and an afternoon check in time we spent the morning hanging out in close proximity to the public toilets and coffee machine in the train station. The girls are now fine and we can look back on this night as a story to tell in our grand adventure!

So the first few days in Bangkok were a bit of a write off with the girls spending their days on YouTube and Netflix and getting back to health and Craig and myself taking in turns to explore. Craig went out sight seeing on behalf of the family and got some good shots. He visited Khao San Road at my request and I was disappointed to hear that the street is no longer lined with backpackers bars playing pirate copies of The Beach and Friends on a loop! I can’t pretend that I had a particularly Thai experience as I chose to spend my solo time in Starbucks, eating ramen and jeans shopping in H&M (colder climates pending!).

Phoebe is becoming rather skilled at a Google Map search of the vicinity for fun activities and found a pet cafe nearby to our apartment in Ekkamai where we hung out (after parting with many baht) with birds, rabbits, ducks, guinea pigs and chickens. For our final day In Bangkok the girls had recovered enough to head into the city and skipped the famous sights in favour of a trampoline park in a mall. We had a fancy dinner in a sky top restaurant (thanks to Amex perks) and stumbled across a beautiful roof top garden with random meerkat statues, which reminded us of my sister Jo who is famous for her love of meerkats!

This ends our brief venture into South East Asia! Our original plan was to spend 6 months in SEA but this morphed into a round the world loop with our next adventure heading onwards to East Asia. As I am writing this we have arrived in Taiwan to a cooler climate, those jeans are coming in handy!