Backwards Blog: Krabi, Thailand

In June 2010 we made the trek back to the good old United States for the first time since moving to Singapore in 2009. The trip home was a whirlwind of family, friends, food, shopping, and more food. We literally ate our way through two states.

In July we hopped over to Krabi, Thailand. We took advantage of a holiday weekend and I found a great flight that allowed The Man to come without having to miss work. I think Thailand is one of the best places for a family vacation for several reasons: 1) You don't have to buy a travel visa to enter Thailand and you don't pay an exit tax to leave. Travel visas and exit taxes annoy me to no end. 2) Food and hotels are good and cheap 3) Kids are welcome everywhere 4) There is something for everyone. If you're bored in Thailand, you're just not trying. 5) The beaches are awesome and the waves are a good size for both adults and kids. 6) Flights from Singapore to Thailand are ridiculously cheap.

When we arrived in Krabi it was misty and overcast but it wasn't monsoon season so I thought the weather would probably clear up. It didn't. We had been blessed with perfect weather on every trip we had taken thus far but, apparently, Mother Nature had decided it was our turn to deal with some adverse conditions. The weather gave us a good excuse to not really DO anything except swim with the kids, take long walks on the beach, read, and enjoy some good, cheap Thai massages.

Our room was a small cottage that had a porch with steps straight into the pool. This type of room wouldn't be appropriate for families with small children as there wasn't any type of barrier between the porch and the steps leading to the pool, but it was perfect for our family. I managed to find some good books in the lobby that other guests had left behind so The Man and I sat on the porch and read while watching the kids swim. My kids came up with the idea of pool wrestling and The Man was more than willing to partake. The pictures speak for themselves:

One of my kid's favorite things to do is take long walks on the beach. They can entertain themselves for hours outrunning the waves and exploring whatever treasures they can find. The poor weather meant they had the beach all to themselves and they enjoyed every minute. The beach in Krabi was unusual in that it was covered in crushed sea shells. I dug my foot about 8" into the shells but never hit actual sand. It was interesting but not too comfortable to walk on for very long.

We did a good bit of hiking on the cliffs and saw signs like this one everywhere:

My kids often remember the strangest things about our trips. They'll mention a specific dog we saw in Indonesia or something a street vendor said in China long after the trip and it'll take my 33-year-old brain a minute to retrieve the information that is readily available to them. Baby Girl and Miniman both remember the beaches and the hiking and the massages but what really stands out in their minds is that Krabi was the place where they got to order anything they wanted at Swenson's. I guess an ice-cream sundae that's bigger than your head is as memorable to kids as great beaches are to parents.

Australia!!!!

May's trip was to Cairns, Australia. Cairns is a sleepy town on the east coast of Oz and is where you want to go to dive the Great Barrier Reef. Cairns isn't as cosmopolitan as Sydney but we were looking for a family adventure not a wild night out and Cairns fit the bill. My sweet sister was visiting us in Singapore and I was delighted when she agreed to tag along.

Driving a car for the first time in a year was a joy. In Singapore cars are very, very expensive (like $95,000 for a used Honda CRV!) so we walk or take the bus, MRT, or taxis everywhere. While I had enjoyed not paying for gas or car insurance for a full year, I did miss the freedom of having my own car. It was odd to drive on the right side of the car but we quickly adjusted. The man at the rental car company said he knew we were Americans as soon as we tried to use the turn signal and activated the windshield wipers instead. Our trip to Australia also gave us a break from the unrelenting heat of Singapore. It was about 80 degrees during the day and slightly chilly at night in Cairns in May. In Singapore it's basically 92 degrees all day, every day.

Ariel view of the Great Barrier Reef

The first day we drove up the coast to the zoo where we watched a bird show, fed kangaroos and held koalas. The drive up the coast was amazing. We had mountains on one side and miles of beautiful beaches on the other. After the zoo we stopped by a crocodile farm but were so tired we couldn't hardly keep our eyes open. We had taken an overnight flight from Singapore and no one had slept very well on the plane so by late afternoon we were dragging.

The second day we dove the Great Barrier Reef. The water was so clear you could see just as much snorkeling as diving and we got to see our first shark, tons of tropical fish, and some really nice coral. A giant wrasse stays close to the dive platform and followed us around wanting to be pet like a dog. Miniman was the only member of our group that wasn't a certified diver but he was able to free dive fairly deep and stay down long enough to see many of the characters from the movie Nemo. We had dinner that night at a restaurant called the Naked Nut and it was some of the best food I've ever eaten. Australia produces much of the world's wine supply and we enjoyed a glass or two during our visit. Actually, all of the food we ate in Oz was fabulous. One thing I noticed was that even places geared towards kids had real food on their menus - not just junk like nachos and hot dogs. They had healthy salads, grilled meats, and so on which was appreciated. I've noticed that my family travels better when we eat well and sleep well so I'm more than happy to pay a little more for better quality food. I tried Vegemite but won't be buying any of my own any time soon.

My sister and her adoring nephew

The third day we went jungle surfing. Jungle surfing was zip lining through the jungle in Cape Tribulation and was something we all really enjoyed. Half of the drive to Cape Tribulation was following the coast line and the other half was through the rain forest so the drive was enjoyable in and of itself. Miniman was quite brave and insisted on going first. Watching my children jump off a platform several hundred feet off the ground is one of those times where I just had to have faith that everything would be ok. As a parent I was at the mercy of a harness to keep my offspring in the air and worrying wouldn't have done any good so I didn't waste my time. We did chuckle at all of the cassowary warning signs in Cape Tribulation. Cassowaries are very large, colorful, flightless birds found only in northern Australia and New Guinea. Cassowaries are shy but extremely territorial and aggressive with razor sharp claws that can seriously harm or even kill humans.

The Tjapukai by Night show was touristy but entertaining none the less. The show consists of Aborigines telling ancient stories and performing traditional music. The food was good, the performance was good, but best part of the show was that every child in the audience got to participate and received a nice gift. BGC walked away with a wood boomerang and Miniman scored a set of clapping sticks (which are now hidden in my closet to preserve my sanity).

We left Australia with a lot of good memories and a didgeridoo that our neighbors now hate.

Backwards Blog: Baby girl and I get certified

Baby Girl Castello turned 10 in April 2010 which meant she was officially old enough to get her dive certification. I decided to bite the bullet and join her so we went through the certification process together. I made a few calls to different dive companies in Singapore and picked the one that seemed to have the most experience with junior divers. Diving is safe but when it comes to the only daughter I'm ever going to have I want the person in charge of her survival to have a lot of experience with children and their limited attention spans.

BGC and I passed the written test and the pool work so the only thing left was the check out dive. Our dives were going to take place in Tioman, Malaysia over the course of a weekend. We left Singapore for Mersing, Malaysia late on a Friday night and woke up early Saturday morning to board a speedboat to Tioman. I'm convinced the speedboat ride was the most dangerous part of the whole weekend. Our boat bounced off the waves and spent as much time in the air as on the water. I was assured that it was impossible to sink the boat but that's what they said about the Titanic and we all know how that turned out.

Dive camp in Tioman.


I have an unfortunate history of getting sea sick on boats so I thought it would be a good idea to take some medicine beforehand. I picked up the Asian equivalent of Dramamine at my local pharmacy and took two on the morning we were supposed to take the boat to Tioman. Because, you know, if one pill is good then two pills are better, right? Two pills turned out to be one too many and I couldn't hold my head up all morning. My vision was blurry and it seemed like everyone was speaking in cartoon voices. The only thing that kept me from laying down in the dirt and going to sleep was the fact that this trip meant the world to my girl. She had traded a 10th birthday party for the opportunity to get her certification and I wasn't about to let her down.

Tioman, Malaysia


There wasn't any time to sleep once we reached Tioman. We threw our bags in our room and it was time to dive. Thankfully, most of the drowsiness had worn off and I stopped seeing double of everything. The first day was in more shallow water and was all about getting the course requirements out of the way. On our second day we saw sea turtles, stingrays, a banded sea snake, and a mixed bag of other tropical fish. BGC and I both passed and had a little time to just relax and enjoy our new underwater freedom before it was time to head back to Singapore.

Baby Girl Castello is about to fall over.


BGC was the only child getting certified but she did really well. Everyone in our group went out of their way to help and encourage her. By the end of the second day she was exhausted but delighted to be the youngest diver in our family. Since Tioman, BGC has gotten to dive the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, a WWII shipwreck in Bali, and a marine sanctuary in the Philippines. In 2012 she'll be old enough to get her advanced certification so we'll do that together as well. Four years after that, it will be Miniman's turn.

I hope that diving is something we will always enjoy as a family and gives us a way to stay connected to our kids as they get older and realize that we are the least cool people on the face of the earth.

Sweet dreams, Baby Girl.

Backwards Blog: Easter in Thailand

I have to give The Man (my husband) credit. He works hard. Not kind of, sort of, maybe hard - he works seriously hard. It is not in any way unusual for him to put in 7 days a week for weeks on end and he's been known to log 96 hours of work IN ONE WEEK. That's just crazy.

By April of 2010 The Man had finally been on the project a year and could take a day of vacation so I put together a trip to Thailand that would celebrate Easter weekend and BGC's 10th birthday. The Man needed to see more of Asia than his office and we needed to see more of him. This time around we were going to stay in Nai Thon which is another area of Phuket with great beaches. I started looking for things to do and found something called Snuba. Snuba is similar to scuba diving except your tank is resting on a raft above water rather than on your back and you don't descend as far. The company had a great reputation on tripadvisor and the owner seemed to really have his stuff together. The only bad thing was that Miniman wasn't old enough to participate and I wasn't sure I would be able to equalize. The Man had tried to introduce me to scuba diving several years before but my ears would kill me every time. BGC (baby girl Castello) and I were scheduled to begin scuba diving lessons a few weeks after Easter so I thought Snuba would give me a chance to see if my ears were going to cooperate or not.

Snuba wasn't exactly cheap but was worth every penny. We LOVED it. The Man went down with BGC while Miniman and I swam and then we traded places. There were fish everywhere and the water was absolutely beautiful. Miniman was getting sad that he couldn't see Nemo and Dory like we all had so The Man decided to introduce him to free diving and he took to it immediately. Miniman would be pushed underwater about ten feet and swim around for as long as he could hold his breath. When his lungs were about to pop he would tuck his arms by his side, propel himself to the top, and repeat.

After the first dive we stopped at Racha Yai island for lunch and they surprised BGC with what was supposed to be a birthday cake. Something got lost in translation and the birthday cake was delivered as a huge pancake. No matter, BGC was thrilled that her birthday had been acknowledged and gladly shared her "cake" with everyone participating.


This day was truly one of the best days we've ever had as a family and has inspired all subsequent family vacations. The following month BGC and I became certified divers and Miniman is still an avid free diver.