We only had one night in Bangkok (great, now I can't get that song out of my head) ~  Hubby and I wanted to go to the world famous Chatuchak Market, or the JJ Market as it is known to locals.  Once we settled into our hotel, it was time to leave again, however the kids refused, the didn't want to leave the lap of luxury for the hustle and bustle of the worlds largest market.  Instead they opted to stay back in the hotel, order room service, watch TV and have sock races down the hall of our suite.  But really, who can blame them after 2 weeks of go, go, go?  So Hubby and I left Boy 1 in charge and headed to the market.  Now I have been to a ton of markets, but seriously, this one takes the cake.   It sits on 35 acres and has more than 15,000 stalls.  You would need all weekend to make it through the entire place.  They have everything you can imagine here, and then MORE, LOTS MORE! 

Meet Ganesha, he will sit in our garden for many, many years to come.....

The next morning we had to get up bright and early for our flight back to Seoul.  Since we were leaving so early our hotel packed breakfast to go for each of us!  I love this place!

Hubby, being the fantastic husband he is booked us in what some say is the nicest hotel in Bangkok, Lebua!  He booked two adjoining rooms, because that is how we roll (and because we have 6 people in our family).  However when we got to the hotel they were very apologetic and told us they did not have 2 adjoining rooms, but they saw how much we needed the adjoining rooms because of our small children.  Again they apologized and offered us an upgrade to a two bedroom corner suite.  WOW-WOW-WOW! That all I can say!  Check this out....

On our last night in Phuket we headed down to Patong.  We hadn't come to Patong before because we had heard it was 'seedy' and not a place for families.  Well, I agree, parts of Patong are not for the very young, but if you are traveling to Phuket, I would say you should not miss Patong, you can even take your kids during the day as there is a McDonalds and other 'western style' food places that kids would enjoy.  My kids are all really good with eating all tyes of food, but after about 5 days they would have loved a McD's hamburger.  I wish we had not waited till our last night in Phuket to visit Patong.

In the picture below check out how big those lobsters are!!  Holy cow, I have never seen lobsters that big, I swear they were the size of an overweight cat and the shrimp were the size of a normal lobster.

A take-away bar, right there on the street.  I love it.

Hubby and I went to the Simon Cabaret.  You can read about it here.  Seriously, read it.  These beautiful ladies are not as they would seem.

On our last full day in Phuket, Boy 1 and I went to the Phuket Thai Cookery School, again.  If you were reading back in April of 2009, it is teh same school we went to before. The last time I had wanted to go to a Friday or Saturday class because they take you to the local market where you buy the ingredients for what you are going to make in class that day.  The market was amazing & I am glad we had someone to show us around.  Here are some of the fun things we encountered....

I've tried looking this one up, but have had no luck.  Our guide told us this is palm sugar before it is processed ~

They showed us how coconut cream and coconut milk are made....

When we decided to travel for Christmas, we knew we had to do something to make it special.  We brought a small tree from home and each person picked an ornament from our collection to decorate our 'Thailand tree'.   While at the Sunday Market in Chiang Mai, we bought the Santa sitting by the tree in the picture below.  Another thing we did was we draw names when we boarded the plane to Thailand.  We tried to keep the names a secret. We were each given $10USD to spend on 'our' person.  We didn't bring wrapping paper, so we just wrapped our gifts in plastic bags!

After opening gifts we headed down to Rawai beach and caught the long boat over to Coral Island to spend the day on the beach!

This is why it is called Coral Island ~ there is SO MUCH coral!!

Christmas lunch ~

Girl really wasn't drinking that beer, just playing with the bottle!

CRAB RACES!

Christmas dinner, Thai style~

This is one Christmas I will never forget!

On Christmas Eve we hopped in a tuk-tuk and headed down to the Kata shopping area  where we played a round of miniature golf with dinosaurs!

We did a little shopping, and then we stopped at a western restaurant for Christmas Eve dinner where the kids had hamburgers, steak and chicken nuggets. After lunch we headed back to the hotel for little swimming, and then we decorated our Christmas tree and wrapped gifts in plastic bags and made cards for each other.

After putting the kids to bed Hubby and I walked up the street to a local restaurant where I SPANKED him pool! (So what if I made up my own rules!)

We had this amazing spicy beef salad!!

This was a family owned and run restaurant, so this little guy was our waiter ~

We had two meal, four beers & a couple games of pool all for about $15USD.

We ended the night with 1 hour Thai massages, both for $14 USD total.

Man I love Thailand!

This is something Hubby wanted to do the last time we were in Thailand, but we never go around to it.   Here we are walking to Rawai Beach to catch a long boat over to Coral Island.

Hubby hired a long boat to take us over to Coral Island for 1,000 baht. This is a private charter - they take you over and stay with you all day, then bring you home whenever you are ready.

We had fun hanging out on the beach burying each other in the sand....

We saw a bunch of komodo dragons!

Played in the ocean...

and just had a fun and relaxing day!

Something to make you go "humm....."

We spent our second day in Phuket on our favorite little beach on the island, YaNui Beach!

We even had our own personal cabana boy....

Funny story:  Boy 2 came over to Hubby and told him he needed to go potty.  Hubby told him to go in the ocean. Boy 2 looked at him funny, but did what his dad told him....he went way over to the far side of the beach, by the rocks in the picture below, stood in the water, pulled down his pants, aimed and went pee-pee right in the ocean.   In the picture below he is pulling his pants up and walking back to the part of the ocean he was playing in.  The people in the picture below got out of the water right after Boy 2 was done.

We had fun playing in the sand.....

So if you can believe it, we were only in Chiang Mai for 4 days & 3 nights!  On Dec 21 we hoped a plane down to Phuket....

As soon as we arrived at our hotel in Phuket, we threw on our swimsuits and jumped in the pool!

On our first day in Phuket we had a totally lazy day, we just swam and lounged at the hotel.  In the evening we ventured out for dinner. We ate at the restaurant right next door to Phromthep Muaythai Boxing and Fitness Camp.  Once we were done with dinner the owners of the restaurant told us the kids could go play in the boxing ring.. by the time it was all over with the boys had the boxing gloves on and were being cheered on by their sister (who video taped much of this event) and by some of the students of the camp!

After a fun filled night of the children beating the crap out of each other we headed home, but not before we stopped to buy sparklers for the kids!

We wanted to eat traditional Northern Thai food so Lasana at our hotel recommended this place, Huen Phen.  She said it was the best Northern Thai food restaurant in the area.  The decor was so fun & the food was great, however I must say I like 'normal' Thai food better.

We went to Chiang Mai's Original Monkey School....

I have never seen as many in one place as I saw in Chiang Mai!  Everywhere we went there were monks.  Seeing them around made us very curious, so when we saw the 'Monk Chat' program we decided to stop in and have a chat. 

The monk we chatted with was very shy and not very confident in his English, although he spoke much better than I would expect him to.  He answered all of our questions and ask a few questions of us. 

MIL, this picture is for you.  On our last morning in Chiang Mai Hubby and I woke up early & went to Starbucks to buy a coffee mug for you.   Here I am in front of the Starbucks with our tuk-tuk and driver.