Tea Estate

Let's leave the malls and markets of Bangkok for a bit and go way back to the tea estates in South India. The last post on this was all about Munnar's tea museum, which was very interesting but not relaxing at all and not even all that pretty. The surrounding countryside, on the other hand, might be the most beautiful place I've ever seen.

Bright green tea growing up the mountain slopes, flowering trees, mist rolling down from the higher altitudes ... breathtaking! These photos don't really do it justice. John said it felt like a fairy tale, and it's true. It would not have shocked me to see a knight in shining armor come trotting down the road, or maybe a hobbit sitting under a roadside tree.

We stayed in a homestay that was once the main house on an old plantation.

One of our rooms opened into a huge covered veranda, where the kids found this old table game. I can't think of the name of the game right now, but it's one Johnny had learned to play in his Indian Studies class at school. That's what he told me, anyway. I strongly suspect he was making up the rules as he went along.

 

Evie and I were roommates. Isn't she sweet?

The next morning before breakfast we did some walking around the still-working plantation and saw views like this ...

We also explored the gardens right around the house ...

This poinsettia plant made me think of Mexico City, where you see the big flowering bushes planted along the main roads at Christmastime ...

Breakfast was egg and toast ...

More exploring ... Johnny wasn't feeling well, but he stuck it out as long as we stayed near the house.

We put Johnny back in bed when he started swaying, and the rest of us hiked through the surrounding plantation.

 

 

 

Evie stopped to smell any flowers within her reach ...



 

Here are Samuel and Evie demonstrating proper tea-picking technique. It's all done by hand because of the way the plants follow the curvature of the land, and also because of the steep slopes and the fragility of the leaves. Pickers also have to know how to leave younger leaves behind, because tea is continually producing as opposed to plants that have only one season a year.

We saw these funny-looking flowers all over the place ...

I left the hike early to check on Johnny. Coming back to the homestay ...

Here's the sickie. He was sick all that day, which included a long drive to our next destination, Vanilla County. Poor Johnny!

After getting Johnny back to bed, I walked around close to the house ...

... where I found fresh passion fruit! Yummy!

Kareem risked life and limb to pick some of the fruit (it was growing out over a steep slope) ...

I love passion fruit, but Evie wasn't a fan ...

If we were to do Kerala again, we'd probably build in more time for relaxing at the tea estates. This time our schedule was packed, though, so after our hike we loaded up the car and took a long, winding, mountainous drive to our next destination ... Vanilla County. Stay tuned!

Central World (It's world famous in Thailand!)

So some people are really excited about malls. Bangkok was a popular destination for travel from South India, and when people came back to Chennai they inevitably raved about the great malls here, many of which are in Bangkok's main shopping district, about a mile from the U.S. Embassy.

I learned a while ago that I just don't really care about malls. I have yet to walk into a mall that didn't seem exactly like every other mall I've walked into just about anywhere in the world. Aside from the smells, that is. (The mall that's down the street from our house here smells EXACTLY like the mall we used to go to in Chennai when we wanted to see a movie. Why is this? Something moldy in the air conditioning?)

I remember being excited to go to the Mall of America the first time I was in that area. Well, it's a mall. Camp Snoopy (I guess it's Nickelodeon Universe now) is kind of fun, but really it's just a big mall with the same sorts of stores you find in every other not-so-big mall in America. Woohoo.

I say the Mall of America is big, but it doesn't even crack the top 20 when it comes to big malls worldwide. Vast shopping centers seem to be an Asian specialty. Of the top 10 largest malls in the world, 10 of the 11 (there's a tie for eighth place, hence 11 top-10 malls) are in Asia, and the other one is in Turkey, half of which is in Asia. Confused?

Bangkok's Central World Plaza (and here and here) claims the No. 6 spot. It's world famous in Thailand.

Because of a snafu in the scheduling of kids' doctor appointments (long story) the kids and I found ourselves downtown Thursday morning with almost four hours to kill before we had to be at the medical unit. We (I) decided to do a little exploring and walk from the embassy, through part of the central shopping district, and check out this ah-mazing mall.

The kids were excellent adventurers and hiked the mile and a bit with good cheer. Only a few "where IS its" escaped Johnny's lips. I think there was just too much to look at to allow time for complaining. That part of Bangkok is packed with beautiful, first-world-esque hotels and businesses, but the streets are still uniquely Thai, with little shrines and spirit houses on the corners and sidewalks packed with street-food vendors and men making little wire cars and airplanes for sale. And there's the colorful Skytrain to watch, too. Fun!

It took us about 25 minutes to get to Central World, where the kids were immediately drawn to some adorably round elephant sculptures and a dancing fountain.

They ran around the sculptures and fountain for a while until my need for air conditioning became desperate enough to round them up and head inside.

We were welcomed at the entrance by a concierge? security guard? in a crisp white uniform, which was ... different, but after that, well, it's a mall. If you're really in to designer stuff and high-end names like Zen and Calvin Klein and Coach, then you'll love it. I felt like I'd just walked into Tysons Corner again, which just isn't super exciting.

That said, it wasn't a bad place to kill some time. Like most malls here, stores are generally organized by floor, meaning that you'll find most electronics stores on one floor and most clothing stores on another floor. We saw on a map that the children's stores were all on the sixth floor, so that's where we headed.

We found a pretty cool play area with a great indoor slide. The kids loved it, and we were there early enough to have it almost to ourselves for a while.

 

Then we ogled the Legos at Toys R Us. All three of my kids are absolute Lego maniacs. Since I'm such a softy, I let them each pick out a mini set. Samuel found and is now obsessed with a Millennium Falcon Microfighter, Evie got a Lego Friends mini set, and Johnny chose a Ninjago something-or-other.

Here are Samuel and Evie with Lego Geoffrey ...

They also had a Lego Central World Plaza! (at least, I think that's what it was)

After some more wandering, we had lunch (the kids chose Burger King ... yawn) and a scoop of ice cream from Swensen's, and then we walked back to present ourselves for inspection at the medical unit. One morning successfully squandered.

The real adventure was our trip home.

We generally try to time our appointments downtown so that we can ride the family shuttle that (on Tuesdays and Thursdays) leaves Nichada (our neighborhood) for the embassy at 8:30 a.m. and then leaves from the embassy for Nichada at 2 p.m. It's handy dandy, since our housing complex is miles from a Skytrain or Metro stop and pretty much unknown to downtown Bangkok taxi drivers.

Alas, because of the aforementioned snafu, which had something to do with a doctor's temporary duty assignment, canceled flights, and who knows what else, our perfectly timed appointments got shifted later into the afternoon, well after the shuttle's return to Nichada. Taxi time!

I'm sure grabbing taxis to and from everywhere will become old hat at some point, but this was my first try at it, and I was nervous. Taxi drivers don't know Nichada, so the thing to do (according to Those In The Know) is tell the driver you want to go to Central Plaza Chaeng Wattanna, which is the mall right near our house. Then when you get off the freeway for Chaeng Wattanna (that's a major street in our area) you direct them turn by turn to the Nichada gate.

Sounds easy, but there are some complications. One of them is that most taxi drivers speak very little English, if they speak any at all. Another is that Central Plaza Chaeng Wattanna is a 20-minute drive from central Bangkok in no traffic ... and there's ALWAYS traffic, especially in the late afternoon, so the actual drive time is anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Many drivers will simply refuse to take you that far. Another complication is the crazy route from the Chaeng Wattanna expressway exit to the Nichada gate. I've never seen anything like it! You have to make sharp turns between concrete barriers, drive down a little alley that leads under the expressway ... Any sensible driver might suspect you're leading him off to his murder.

Oh, yeah! AND "Central Plaza Chaeng Wattanna" has to be pronounced "Centan Plaza Jaing Wattanna" or the driver won't know what you're talking about. Almost forgot about that. Anyone planning to visit me should be taking notes.

So Thursday afternoon I stood in front of the embassy, took a couple of meant-to-be-calming breaths, and started hailing cabs. The first driver said no way. The second driver said he'd do it if I gave him 500 baht. I said no way. I want the meter. (This is why you do research. I knew that it should only cost about 200 baht.) He said no way and drove off. The third driver hesitated, and then said "traffic, traffic, OK?" which I took to mean "You do understand it will be heavy traffic?" I said sure, double-checked that he was going to use the meter, and loaded the kids into the car.

Between my limited Thai (numbers, left, right, straight, I don't understand what you're saying, etc.) and the driver's few words of English, we managed to get through all the toll booths (the passenger has to pay the tolls), off the freeway, around all the crazy turns, through the Nichada gates, and to our house. YES!!!

The driver was a friendly guy, and though he was obviously baffled by my weird directions after getting off the expressway, he had a hearty laugh about it with the Nichada guards. I had no idea what they were actually saying to each other, but I got the impression it was something like this:

TAXI DRIVER: "I thought this crazy foreign lady was leading me to my doom! But now I see it's a hidden ex-pat enclave! Ha ha!"

GUARD: "Yes! These foreigners are hiding out under the expressway. Ha Ha! They're so strange!"

Meanwhile, I was breathing a sigh of relief. "Back, safe, home again," we all said together (to paraphrase Richard Scarry).

I gave the taxi driver a gigantic tip (and still came nowhere near the 500 baht that other crook had asked for), he drove off laughing, and the kids and I were happy to be home.

Stay tuned for more adventures! Now that we're mostly unpacked, I'll try to be a little better at keeping up with the blog. Ha!

Flashback Friday

Here's a flashback to Samuel a little over a year ago. Isn't he adorable?!? I want to point out the mango juice box in his hand. We went through serious mango juice withdrawal when we went back to the States, which lasted until I found a suitably authentic version in the Hispanic foods aisle at Safeway. Samuel is rather picky about his mango juice, it seems. No wimpy 10 percent real juice junk for him! Luckily, we are back in mango paradise. Mango smoothies, ice cream and juice ... all have been more than acceptable here in Bangkok.

 

 

School's out for summer!

Last day of first grade ...

... moving on to grade 2!

Last day of fifth grade (and elementary school!!) ...

... moving on to grade 6 (and middle school!!) ...

Whew!

 

Dragon fruit

The other day we tried dragon fruit for the first time. Yummy!

Here it is all in one piece (well, we had already cut it, but Evie's holding it together so you can see what it looks like whole). It's in the cactus family, and I think it looks the part:

To eat it, you slice it in two ... like this ...

... and then scoop out the fruit inside. The kids weren't big fans, but I liked it. The texture reminded me of kiwi, but it's not quite as sweet. The best way to describe it, I think, is refreshing. It would be really good if you'd been out walking for a while and were hot and thirsty. Yum!

Moving on

The end of the school year always throws me into fits of emotion, possibly because it's an undeniable marker of too-quickly passing time. The kids only had five weeks at ISB, but I'm still fighting back the tears at all of these end-of-year events. I'm hopeless!

Yesterday, Evie was an enthusiastic participant in her class poetry share and then again in her grade's music share. Today was Johnny's "Moving On" ceremony, ISB's version of elementary school graduation. He's headed to middle school! I don't know how he feels about this, but I'm a total wreck. Middle school was by far the most difficult time of my growing-up years, and it's tough not to project all those memories onto him.

Just to prove how much changes in one little year (and because I never got around to posting these pictures last year), here are some pictures of Johnny and Evie's last day of school at AISC in Chennai. Aren't they just babies?

Last day of kindergarten and 4th grade!

This is a view out of my Chennai kitchen window as they take their last walk to the bus stop ...

And picking them up at the end of the last day ...

Samuel on the playground

Evie on the playground

Ready to head home one last time ...

Fast forward one year, and look at how much everyone's grown! Evie started kindergarten very shy and a bit of a wallflower. She improved through the kindergarten year, but she's really blossomed in first grade. She loved her class in Falls Church, but she's jumped right in at ISB and seems very comfortable. At the poetry share, she performed one poem with a partner (they co-wrote it), two of her own creations, and also acted as one of the emcees. She was confident and did a beautiful job. Here she is celebrating with cookies and lemonade ... clearly not a wallflower anymore!

The elementary music teachers end the year with a music share, which is a talent show in which students can perform for the other kids in their grade. Evie wanted to participate and read the poem "Now We Are Six," by A. A. Milne, with a little "seven is really the best" addition at the end. She was great!

After some piano solos, a guitar solo, magic tricks, and far too many renditions of "Let it Go," the kids ended their music share singing a rousing rendition of Bruno Mars' "Count on Me."

Today's fifth grade Moving On Ceremony was really fun. The principal based her remarks on the Dr. Seuss quote "Today you are You. That is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You." She encouraged the kids to be themselves as they head into middle school and to not allow the opinions of others to change their essential "you-ness."

The kids sang "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World and "On Top of the World" by Imagine Dragons. The elementary music teachers are apparently big on slightly toned down versions of popular songs, because Evie and Johnny have also been learning Avicii's "Wake Me Up." It's pretty fun, actually. The teachers and some of the students play guitars and hand drums and all the kids get really into it.

Then each class lined up to receive a certificate of completion of elementary school. Here's Johnny getting his from the principal, Ms. Armitage, who happens to be married to his fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Armitage (at the podium).

After a fun slide show and closing remarks from the vice principal, the kids lined up for photos. Here's Mr. Armitage's class.

And here's one of Johnny and his two best friends with Mr. Armitage in front of the ISB panther. The other boys are Isaac and Misha, who were Johnny's roommates on the three-day fifth-grade trip to Chanthaburi. You read that right. Those brave teachers took the entire fifth grade to explore Chanthaburi's mangrove forests and coast for THREE DAYS. Johnny, Misha and Isaac are quickly becoming inseparable.

And here's a bevy of boys ...

The fifth-graders spent the rest of the school day at a pool party, which was rockin', judging by Johnny's sunburt-to-a-crisp face and huge smile when he walked in the door this afternoon.

Two more days of school! And by the time school starts again, Johnny and Evie won't be the new kids anymore. They hardly seem to be the new kids now.