Well what a crazy couple of days we have had.
Lets start at the beginning.
Thursday morning we had to work like crazy to get all our furniture out of the house and clean it before handing over the keys to our real estate agent. We argued and got majorly stressed out. I have never seen Marcus work so fast, however he did forget simple things like taking the keys to access the storage room, twice! He didn't stop though, not even to eat McDonald's, he swallowed it whole and kept going. At the end of the day as we were leaving our old life behind I wanted to take a moment and say goodbye with the kids to our home, the only one Judd and Lillie have known. But Marcus was so keen to get moving I barely had time to shut the car door before he was reversing down the driveway.
However once we got to the airport it was much easier and our stress levels dropped dramatically. We we said our final goodbyes to friends and family and got some much needed sleep.
Friday morning, D Day. We were up and raring to go. We piled our luggage trolleys high with what essentially was our whole life packed into 3 suitcases and 5 carry ons. The babies portacot and their car seats. We looked like gypsies. Surprisingly we checked our luggage and we weren't even charged a cent for excess! This was great, I spent many hours the day before unpacking and packing to make sure we weren't over the 20kg allowed to each case and try as I might, I just could not get it any lighter. How do you ask someone to reduce their life into a 20kg suitcase?
I advise anyone who wants to travel, do it with a baby! We got preferential treatment everywhere, we boarded first, got the best seats with extra leg room. They saved our meals for us when we couldn't eat because the baby was climbing all over the place. It made our trip much less painful and I am very grateful for it. We flew with Singapore Airlines on the new A380. Great plane, huge, we barely felt the thing take off.
Lillie was a big hit with the staff and passengers. We even had some Thai ladies pick her up in the airport lounge and take turns having their photos taken with her like she was some sort of Hollywood celebrity. So funny. She was just looking at them like they were mad. Poor Judd had to start doing tricks to get some attention. He is usually the one in the spotlight, but as he is not a baby anymore the Thais seem to go straight to chubby little Lillie. Even staff at the hotels would stop and pick her up and even just walking past they would stop and give her arm a little rub, like a lucky charm or something. Of course it has gone straight to her head, she is very cheeky and demanding now. I will have a real little diva on my hands if this keeps up.
Once we landed in Bangkok after a brief stop over in Singapore, we sailed through immigration, which surprised us as we are intending to live here for at least 12 months. I was expecting some sort of questioning. But nope, we just got a big smile and "welcome to Thailand".
Collecting our luggage was another matter. As Judd was asleep in the pram and Lillie was wiggling and squirming in her sling on my hip, Marcus had to gather all of our bags and car seats then pile them up onto 2 trolleys which he then had to push both through customs, he looked like a twit but at least it made us laugh. The lovely customs official just smiled and waved us through, I even asked him if he wanted to put our stuff through the xray. Amazing.
And just like that we had made it to Thailand to begin our new expat adventure.
We wandered outside after meeting with our friend, Mr Thailand. And we hadn't even walked 10 steps when we saw a sign for a shuttle bus straight to our hotel. What luck, Marcus could barely push the 2 trolleys without crashing and I was already sweating like mad. Within minutes we had all our bags into the bus and we piled in and off we went. The lovely bell boy promised me he would take all our stuff to our room all we had to do was check in.
By now I had just about run out of energy, I purchased a movie on the pay TV for Judd and put the baby to sleep, had a shower and crashed on the bed. Marcus wandered in a little bit later after having a couple of beers in the lobby with Mr Thailand. Poor guy he was exhausted.
Day 2, Saturday 24 July 2010.
Of course Judd woke us all up at dawn, so we got in an early breakfast and a swim in the lovely pool, which of course I forgot to take my camera so I have no photos. I recommend the Novotel to anyone in transit through Bangkok, it is very, very nice. I was just about to waste some time in the lobby shops when our friend Mr Somchai arrived with his 2 cars to take us all to our new apartment in Amata City, about 1 1/2 hours drive. Of course I wasn't ready as we had got a late check out of 2pm so Marcus and the kids were asleep and we had clothes everywhere. After a bit of a rush we once again piled all our stuff into one car and piled all of us into another and we were off again on the final part of our journey. We stopped for a lovely lunch at Laem Chabang Golf Course, a fabulous buffet which costs us about $10 each for all we could eat. Of course I ate way too much. Then back into the car to our apartment, The C House. It is in an industrial area called Amata City. There are alot of factories here of companies from all over the world and of course there needs to be alot of apartments and houses for all the workers as well. Most of the Thais commute from Bangkok and stay during the week then head back to their families on the weekend, but there are a few expats who live around here, and now we are one of them.
Our apartment is lovely, fully serviced daily. Laundry service, full gym, restaurant, daily breakfast and of course a huge pool. It is about 3 years old so everything is still nice and new. We checked in then of course had to go shopping for supplies. So we piled back into the car and drove about 20Min's to Sri Racha to a shopping center, very similar to what we have in Melbourne. We grabbed a trolley and hit the isles. All good, except every 5 steps I had to stop as people wanted to touch and play with Lillie. It was so busy. I was very happy to find that even though most of the products were in Thai I was able to find alot of familiar foods that we used at home. There was Heinz baby food, Milo, coffee, imported cheese from Australia and imported apples from New Zealand. I was so relieved as this was a concern for me as to what I would be able to feed the kids. Ideally I would like them to learn to eat Thai but I know how fussy some kids can be and introducing a new country with new people and a new language is pretty full on for a 3 year old, let alone me, a 30 year old. So much to Marcus' horror I piled the trolley high with groceries and ignored his protests about buying too much. Managing the family and the house is my full time job, so I know exactly what we need and how much of it to buy. In the end after all of our buying, including some new toys, towels and cutlery we didn't even break $300 Aust. Not bad for starting from scratch.
However I must say that everything in Thailand is in miniature form. The yoghurt's are half the size, the drinks are smaller and the bread is tiny compared to what we are used to in Aust. Everything is also very sweet, even the milk is sweetened. The bread is very sweet, I don't particularly like it. But it is our first shop I am sure as time goes on I will learn about the food more and what we like and don't like.
Luckily there is a 7-11 just 2 Min's walk down the road and it stocks all the necessities we need plus more.
I also think there is a child care out the front of the apartment, as it is a long weekend here at the moment I will check it out next week. It will be good to get Judd introduced to some kids early on.
Tonight we will have dinner in the restaurant downstairs, it seems very cheap. A main meal is about $6 Aust. Hopefully its nice, as I can't cook too much here in the apartment as we don't have a microwave or an oven. Just a 2 burner stove. And much to Marcus' horror there isn't a dishwasher. We thought we had no hot water, but we discovered there is only hot water in the master bathtub and in the kids bathroom shower. Unfortunately none in the kitchen so we are stuck boiling water in the kettle which is OK as I have to do it for Lillie anyway. We had a swim in the pool, it is lovely, clean and there is a pool bar as well. We tried to buy some beer but it is Buddhist Day long weekend so the sale of alcohol isn't allowed.
Marcus will start work tomorrow so I will have my first day alone. It is a bummer we don't have our car or driver yet so I am sort of stuck at the apartment. There aren't any shops within walking distance so I will have to keep the kids amused with traditional parenting techniques, DVD's and swimming in the pool. No, honestly I am hoping that living here will force me to connect more with the kids and really try to start focusing on their development and learning. It was starting to become to easy to distract them with trips to the shops or watching a movie or putting them into a childcare to keep them entertained. Now we are alone here with no friends or play dates I will have to take a very active role in being a mum and a sort of kindergarten teacher.
I had better start Googling to get some ideas.
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