Drizzle, rain, storms and downpours! That’s all we seem to be getting for summer this year so it’s been a real treat to look back at our Thailand Family Travel Photography and remind myself that it’s not all bad, just over a month ago, we were soaking up the sun and the culture in Thailand!
This was our first long-haul adventure as a family. I’m not the most decisive of people so it took us ages to settle on Thailand with Bali, Sri Lanka and Vietnam being discussed over every family dinner for months before!
But 2 weeks in Bangkok, Khao Lak and Thailand won in the end with the combination of sun, sea, sightseeing and food winning us over!
We started our adventure in Bangkok, staying at the beautiful, boutique Shanghai Mansion Hotel in the heart of bustling, vibrant Chinatown.
Our first night saw us being picked up from the hotel by Artty from With Locals, a private tour company operating all over the world.
It’s a great option in a new city – you pick your host, who, as the name suggests, is local to the town you’re staying, choose the type of tour you’d like to do, we chose to do an evening street food tour and pick the number of hours you’d like to spend with them.
We were so lucky with our lovely guide, Artty, who made the suggestion to start our tour with a drink overlooking the city at a little secret rooftop bar he knew about.
It was the perfect start to tour that began with bugs and ended with mango sticky rice!
Frankie was in her element – never one to shy away from a challenge, she tried meal worms, silk worms and grasshoppers with Jason showing off his manliness by chomping away on a scorpion.
I’m not quite as brave but did try one of the little worms and a bit of grasshopper – the mango sticky rice was more my style!
Obviously with a dairy allergy, me and Frankie have to be careful – I’ve never had to worry less! There was only one thing that we couldn’t eat on the street food tour which was bread and custard based so that was an obvious one to avoid but for the whole holiday, this was the very least of our worries! 🙂
Having Artty along made our first evening so much more enjoyable – jet lag, a new city, a different language, mental traffic and the dark would have made life pretty tricky but we just ambled along behind our guide, sampling gung pao (huge grilled prawns the size of Frankie’s head!) Som Tam Salad (with just one chilli and even that almost blew our heads off, glass noodles with fish balls which didn’t do it for me but Frankie loved it, gyozas, smoothies and I’ll say it again because I couldn’t get enough of the stuff – mango sticky rice! Double yum!
Thailand Family Travel Photography
Day 2 started off at 6am and our little body clocks were not happy!
Khanom Travel had organised a full day for us with our guide Suwat.
First stop was the Maeklong Railway Market, an amazing experience!
Little market stalls set up along the lines of a railway track selling fruit, fish, eggs and other produce.
4 times a day, a not-as-small-as-we-thought-it-would-be train comes chugging along the tracks with tourists and stall holders pinning their backs to the wall as it passes and travellers on the train waving happily out of the window as we all hope and pray to come out of it alive! 😉
It was one of my bucket list places and it didn’t disappoint!
From the railway market we travelled to the Damnuen Saduek Floating Market but stopped along the way at a temple and also a little house at the side of the road selling items made from coconuts, we got to see a typical Thai household, see how coconut sugar is made and randomly, Jason and Frankie got to hold a chicken…
I went to the Floating Market when I was younger with my parents so I had an idea what to expect but for Frankie this was amazing! She sat at the front of the boat and every time she turned around her little face was a picture – she loved it! I was in photo heaven too!
We were pretty shattered when we got back to the hotel but eager not to miss anything, we headed down to the ferry station, jumped on a passenger ferry and travelled up the Chaophraya River to check out Khao San Road which was exactly what you’d think Backpacker Street would be like.
The ferry trip was fun though, we passed the temples that we didn’t have time to visit (Wat Arun and The Grand Palace) and got to watch another sunset over the river – the perfect end to an amazing two days in Bangkok! 🙂
When choosing the beach part of our trip, I was pretty spoilt for choice in this amazing country but we decided on Khao Lak for the family friendly element.
Unfortunately, the area we were staying in had very strong currents and massive waves so although the beach was stunningly beautiful, it wasn’t great for swimming in the sea and there was no way that I was letting Frankie go in there! Over protective maybe but luckily we had a fantastic pool at the hotel so we didn’t miss out.
We stayed at the X10 Resort.
In one of the Facebook groups that I’d been obsessively reading in the planning of this trip, I saw this restaurant being mentioned a couple of times and knew that it was exactly the kind of place that would add to our little adventure.
Baan Srimruang – Chic On The Lake – a beautiful stilted restaurant built over a lake in the middle of nowhere! Even our hotel hadn’t heard of it!
The restaurant sent a taxi for us, which was lucky as we’d have never found it and we were guided down a little path in the dark through the jungle!
And then this appeared in front of us!
This beautiful place with the friendliest of people and the most amazing food!
Halfway through the meal, the rains came and we all ran undercover which meant that us and the other table in the restaurant – a Thai family having a reunion – all ended up together for the rest of the night, chatting, finding out about each other, sharing drinks and laughing.
Frankie made a pen pal too, a little girl called Praw who spoke fluent English, all learnt from watching Peppa Pig! See, I knew it was good for something! 😉
This will go down as one of my best nights ever!
(A few of the photos here are Frankie’s, she took my camera off with Praw and did her thang!
Bang Niang Night Market.
Ah, the elephants! I knew that this was something that we just had to do but finding somewhere that was both fun and ethical proved to be tough. I didn’t want anywhere that let people ride the elephants and I wanted to see that they were being well looked after.
We found that at Khao Lak Elephant Home.
On arrival, we were given little bags filled with bananas and assigned our own elephant to look after – Frankie’s was called Wassima.
We walked through the jungle to the bathing area where we all got to wash the elephants, give them a mud bath and avoid large football sized floating elephant poos!
Such an amazing morning and again, the little look on her face! Completely and utterly priceless!
ON the way back, we got to go to the Sai Rung Waterfall. I’d like to point out here that although I’m not very adventurous with the bug eating, I did get in and was one of the only people to swim in here! It was bloody freezing so they probably all had the right idea but hey! I think I redeemed myself here!
After a rather eventful night in an airport hotel in Bangkok, thanks to a very poorly Frankie, we arrived a little worse for wear in Dubai!
Our hotel, the Rove Marina, cheered us up no end – it was one of the more budget friendly options so were weren’t sure what to expect but it was perfect – clean, friendly, modern and fun!
And luckily for us, we have an amazing friend who lives in Dubai and knows it like the back of her hand so with our very own personal tour guide we were in good hands for our final few days!
Phew! Did you make it to the end?
I know it’s a little bit of a different blog post for me this time – no brides in beautiful dresses or grooms in snazzy suits but honestly, these Thailand Family Travel Photography photos make my heart sing!
To see my little girl smiling from ear to ear and to see Jason relaxed, happy and loving life and to feel that warmth inside your heart and know that this little family right here, this little group of amazing people experiencing this epic adventure together is your little army. That’s everything right there! Everything.
So, now we’ve got the bug! We’re looking forward to more treks through jungles, weird and wonderful foods, beautiful beaches and stunning cities.
We’re open to suggestions! Where next?!
