The Bangkok hit-list. How many nights is enough?
Admission… Bangkok wasn’t on my hit-list of must-see places in the world.
The line in the song, “One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster” was enough of a deterrent. I hate oysters and my expectations of the city itself were deep-sea low.
However, when your husband makes a surprise holiday booking to visit friends in Singapore, those friends return to Australia after a decade away, and you’ve been to Singapore numerous times, serendipity becomes the travel agent of choice and Bangkok became our destiny.
So, we changed our flight, went for more than one night, (in fact five) and it just goes to prove that fate is best left to work when it’s not on a hit-list.
View from the river cruise
More towel trouble in Paradise.
There’s been a re- shuffle in our house.
One of the five childrens’ bedrooms is the Taj Mahal of teen sleeping spaces.
It is as large as the master bedroom, but without the ensuite. It’s spacious enough for a couch, on which to slouch and hang out with friends, and has a built in desk and robe so you sizeable enough for a small party.
Needless to say it’s the most coveted of crash zones.
To win this room, it’s easy.
Aussie Brady Bunch does the U.S!
We are about to depart on a once-in-a-lifetime overseas family holiday. All seven of us to the United States.
I am hoping that the only similarity between us and the “real” Brady Bunch is that we are also a blended family TERRIBLY EXCITED to be taking a holiday in America.
Because when Carol and Mike took their tribe on a trip there was some sort of disaster.
Fascinating Find..in time for Melbourne Cup.
Meet Georgette de Vil.
She (feminine, like a boat) is elegant yet cheeky, sophisticated but slightly wicked, and what’s even more striking yet surprising is just where I met her.
ONE DAY IN NEW YORK! This will be hard to beat.
A sneaky photo with Hugh Jackman backstage after the Boy from Oz, snaps with transvestites on floats in the gay Mardi Gras, the New York baseball local derby, breakfast at Balthazar, window shopping on Spring St, cheering Aussies in the New York triathlon in Central Park, a visit to the Guggenheim Museum and a trip to the top of the empire state building.
These are just some of the many things my fun-loving friend Teena and I experienced and did on a two-woman trip to the big apple.
Except we did all on that list and squeezed in a few drinks and a curbside cafe lunch all in just ONE DAY!
I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts!!
He didn’t scale the palm tree with his bare hands and feet.
The modern ladder was a much more efficient method to reach the top quickly and stand there safely, while he machete’d the ring of green coconuts to the ground.
There was no denying however, his traditional Fijian coconut gathering and chopping skills.
It took just seconds for him to spin the coconut in his hand and slice off the top in equi-distant portions and puncture the perfectly formed crater, to then present to us a full-to-the-brim green cup of coconut water. The kind we now know to be chock full of electrolytes and about five bucks or more a bottle. We just added ice (ok, some added vodka) and drank the refreshingly, pale liquid pretty much all day.
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KINGY…The beach is back!
International tourists may never have heard of it.
Many in Australia would hazard a guess it’s in the UK, based on its royal reference, but for a fortunate number of those-in the-know, Kingscliff or “Kingy” is an irresistible lure to an immediate slow down and an astonishing strip of coastal beauty on the east coast.
For a while now its shine has been on hold, with glimpses of it’s former glory poking through ravaged pandanus trees and some scaffolded shoreline.
Mother nature, in her cycle of teaching us to appreciate our environment, lashed the Kingy coastline, stripping away sand, eroding vegetation and leaving a glum tarnish to this otherwise pristine patch of coastline.
Her mood didn’t last too long thankfully and in an upbeat change of heart the beautiful beach is back.
So, as our aussie autumn sun beats down with temperatures more akin to summer, it’s time to return or if you’ve never been there, consider Kingscliff for a visit.
Photo from Jo E
TITS on the Track (Milford)
It’s almost embarrassing, that the stand-out, remarkable memory of hiking one of the world’s most famous and spectacularly scenic hiking tracks is, collectively, strapping tape, shoelaces and a rubber band.
That’s not to say it’s my favourite moment, rather the one that instantly flicks to mind when I’m asked to recount the four day trek.
The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow
An aussie school teacher in England sets out on a sailing/rowing adventure, leaving the border near Wales and like Dr Dolittle, who set sail and bumped into Africa, kept going until he bashed into the Black Sea.
In this travel memoir, A.J Mackinnon (Sandy) rows, sails, struggles, hauls, wades and drags his way for a year and 12 countries along canals, up and down locks, rivers and creeks. He writes beautiful prose about his many adventures on board his tiny boat, Jack de Crow, sometimes too poetically and verbosely that it hurt to continually conjure up the images of the people and places he describes so vividly and often so humorously.
That’s not FAIR!!
I have a super- amazing photographic memory!
I can recall exactly what chores my now 13 year old had to do when she was 7.
I can remember the ages each of my 5 girls had to start emptying the dishwasher, making their own lunches and ironing their own uniforms.
I can remember how much spending money each was allocated on family holidays, how many dances they were allowed to go to each term, how much time they were allowed on msn, now Facebook, and at what age they paid for themselves to go to a movie.
I am also a clairvoyant.
I can tell you when each of my children will be paying their own mobile bills, board and vacuuming their own rooms.
Karryn Wheelans 
