Hong Island

Thailand has fantastic diving near Krabi, and you can take a longtail boat to famously beautiful islands like Ko Phi Phi or James Bond Island to see fish. When we considered day trips, though - with Lucinda, a good swimmer, and Arno, who can't swim and is fully capable of whining his way through the most delightful scenery - we decided to take a much easier snorkeling trip to Ko Hong (Hong Island).

We hired a longtail boat for about 1200 baht (33 baht = $1, so that's about $40 for the day), including lunch. Our captain, who said his name was Jack, met us after breakfast.


We arrived at Ko Hong a half-hour later, the second boat to anchor - and the beach was almost empty (see top photo and below).


Lucinda, almost always willing to try new things, enjoyed snorkeling; Arno was predictably a bit anxious about the novelty but enjoyed looking for shells on the beach. Then some beer-drinking Germans (beer at 10 a.m.!) gave us some slices of bread to feed colorful fish who swarmed around us in a frenzy.



A little later, we walked into the island's interior and learned, by way of wooden boats flung 100 meters into the jungle, that Ko Hong was slammed by the 2004 tsunami, causing some deaths and injuries. (Here's one person's account of it.) There hadn't been any tsunami damage at our hotel or in Ao Nang, as (I think) that slice of shoreline was protected by Phuket, to the west.


Ko Hong has a neat geology: limestone formations that make the rock look like dripping candle wax.


After lunch, when it was high tide, "Captain Jack" took us around to the other side of the island to see its lagoon. Quite beautiful views, as you float through the narrow entrance.



The water was very warm and only a few feet deep over flat, soft sand. So Lucinda, Arno (buck-naked by that point) and I climbed out of the boat and walked around.



It was an easy adventure, without being too much adventure, for everyone.

The Beach

We flew south from Bangkok to Krabi province (a quick hour on a packed Airbus) on Thailand's west coast. Krabi is vastly more sedate (I'm told) than Phuket, with pleasant beaches and massive limestone rock formations for climbers. This is what we saw on the way to our hotel.


The Sheraton Resort in Krabi was comfortable and well-designed, though a bit dull - a fine place to decompress from Tokyo life. There's a good breakfast brunch, a small "kids' club" with arts and crafts, hammocks, free internet, and a powdery beach on the Andaman Sea. The downside to the resort was the $100/night (!!) fee to borrow an extra twin bed; last year, the Westin in Bali didn't charge anything.



The best features were the resort's two huge swimming pools. They were wonderfully warm with varying depths; I swam laps and the children spent hours playing in them, often with an 8-year-old American girl whose family (from Michigan) lives in Shanghai.


There wasn't much to see near our hotel, just a few restaurants plus laundry, tchotchke and massage shops, so we twice went to Ao Nang, a touristy beach village with long rows of shops selling counterfeit stuff and handmade suits.


Fortunately, Ao Nang's beach is quite picturesque, with traditional "long-tail boats" anchored offshore and cliffs in the background. We took a stroll and the children hunted for quality shells.


Then we had supper (twice) at Ao Nang's beachfront restaurant row.


Our Lonely Planet guide suggested Sala Bua & Lo Spuntino, which has Thai and Italian menus, and it was fantastic. Every restaurant has an ice-filled "boat" at the entrance to show the daily seafood catch: massive prawns, shiny clams, mussels, fish, crabs and Andaman lobsters.


We ordered crab and prawn pasta one night, and seafood pizza the next...


...and Lucinda and I indulged in shockingly good, fresh "watermelon shakes."


We all enjoyed the sunset (behind Phuket island in the distance).

Day in Bangkok

Our flight to Bangkok was right between Ho Chi Minh city and Taipei on this Narita Airport departure screen. (If I'm taking a photo of it, it's still a thrill to live here.)

And Thailand: we loved it! I found Bangkok a bit overwhelming with children, but we had a nice work/life decompression at Sheraton's beach resort in Krabi province (southeast of Phuket island) and especially enjoyed Chiang Mai, a mid-sized city in the north. I'll write several posts about it.

The flight to Bangkok: 7 hours, arriving at midnight. Here we are, headed to a Mercedes that took us to Le Meridien hotel. (Posh 5-star hotel at the "bargain" rate of $160/night deal on Expedia!)


The morning view from our 16th-floor room:


We took the very clean Bangkok subway to the Chatuchak weekend market to see some neat stuff. First stop: Coconut ice cream, scooped into a coconut shell, with raw-coconut scrapings underneath.



A Buddha shop.


Frosted cupcakes!


Gigantic prawns, gray, alive and wiggling (at left) or pink and boiled.


Feather duster salesmen.


And a shop full of baskets.


After a few hours in the heat (December is the mildest month to visit Bangkok but we are wimps), we returned to the hotel to swim in the swanky 6th floor pool.



More on the way...

Happy New Year!

Happy 2010! We went to Thailand for 12 days, a wonderful and entertaining vaca, returning on Dec 31, and I'm just now catching up on non-immediate business after sleeping in, doing heaps of laundry, and tossing out ancient art projects and other clutter.

After 2 weeks with the children, Blaine and I escaped tonight for our Saturday date: to see Avatar. Wow. I'm not a "big movie" person, usually hate them, but I thought it was great: plot, special effects, action, flying dinosaur-like creatures.

Winter concert

Tonight was Nishimachi's annual winter concert, and most songs had a "peace" theme. Peace and mutual understanding are key elements of the "Nishimachi values" they promote at the school, which was founded in 1949 by a US-educated Japanese woman, Tane Matsukata, to promote international understanding. That's one reason all students study English and Japanese.

The school song is called "Let Peace Begin with Me," and most students seem to take it to heart - or Lucinda does, anyway.

Lucinda wore a lovely red dress that we bought last summer in Denver. She was very composed at center stage during the song "Hanukkah Shalom." And the school borrowed our little menorah for that song, which was fun for our 2nd grader, too.


The school's only Christmas tree is decorated with origami cranes, also a symbol of peace in Japan.

Reading and children

I just heard this fascinating National Public Radio (US) story about reading and a child's brain. Lots in there, about how kids who struggle with reading have different brain pathways - but they can be rewired with intensive reading classes. And a quick mention of how playing a musical instrument also builds these pathways.

Blaine's latest...

... is an excellent story on the impact of global warming in Australia.

Headline: "A lingering pool of disbelief: Despite a decade of record drought, Australian farmers refuse to buy into climate change"

It's timed perfectly for the Copenhagen conference on climate change.

Don't forget to check out the amazing photo gallery that goes with it. One photo shows how eucalyptus tree trunks and roots have been exposed by the near-disappearance of Lake Hume in southern Australia.

Trailing spouse: Health edition

Blaine is in Seoul this week to report the last story in his yearlong examination of North Korea. It's a valuable time to be there because the Obama administration has sent its special envoy, Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang this week. (Here is Blaine's preview about that.)

Unfortunately, though, Arno has been sick since last Saturday with a very bad cold, low fever, congestion and general unhappiness. He skipped 4 days of school and only today - Day 6! - he felt well enough to trade his horizontal couch position for a trip to the grocery store to buy some Japanese candy that is packaged in small boxes. He actually doesn't care much about the candy but wants to use the boxes for "junk art," an obvious sign that his brain is working again.

So I've been tethered to the house for days and days! I can't wait for Arno to go back to school tomorrow, Friday, so I can get of here, go swimming, do some holiday shopping - or just hang out in Tokyo.

La vida loca

Proving again that our expat life is la-la land, Blaine and I went to a black-tie "casino night" benefit last (Friday) night, the first time Blaine has worn a tuxedo since our 2002 wedding. The photo could be better, but, hey, it's evidence!

We were guests of some Tokyo-Seattle friends whose company paid for the table at the Westin Tokyo in Ebisu. After supper, I had a superfun spin at the benefit blackjack tables, especially after Blaine arrived to end a long streak of losing hands. I'm the second pile of orange chips from the right - worth about $7.


I've never gambled for real, and I'm clueless about the odds of this or any other game. Fortunately, there was a very bossy, busty American party guest at the table who claimed that she'd been a dealer in Louisiana. (Alas, no photo.) Somewhat drunkenly, but not irrationally, she repeatedly overruled me and everyone else about when to "hit" or not - and she was right most of the time. I more than tripled my $30 in chips by 10:30pm, when we flaked out and bet it all on a losing hand before hopping in a taxi to go home.

Bing Maps

Our supercool Seattle friend Blaise Aguera y Arcas is in charge of Microsoft's new Bing maps, using Blaise's "Sea Dragon" and "Photosynth" inventions.

Here are stories about this in the Wall St. Journal and Seattle P-I.

I've posted about Blaise's genius before - like in this lecture to the TED audience a few years ago. Microsoft, which bought Blaise's company and Sea Dragon a few years ago, is smart enough to put Blaise in charge of more and more of its real estate.

Congratulations, Blaise!

Tokyo garden

I recently saw this container garden outside a house in Seijo-Gakeunmae, a neat university neighborhood west of Shinjuku. The house was just across the street from a train track and the pots dressed it up quite a bit.

Procrastination

A very pleasant game to waste time: Obechi.

Karaoke with 2nd graders

Last Saturday afternoon, Lucinda and I met school friends and their moms for two hours of karaoke. We went to a place in Roppongi, the famously sleazy nightspot where Americans get robbed after imbibing spiked drinks. But it's perfectly harmless in broad daylight.


I've never sung karaoke and had no idea what to expect; a stage with a microphone? Totally wrong. We took the elevator up to the 4th floor and found super-mod living rooms, each with shiny couches, cocktail tables and a flat-screen TV on the wall.



Ours had couch seating for 9 people and 2 shiny silver microphones. Btw, each mother-daughter pair paid a very cheap 1000 yen (about $11) because one mom joined the karaoke club.


You choose the songs out of this enormous phone book-sized listing, with songs in English, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog for Filipinos (click the pic for a close-up view)...


...and you punch the song ID numbers into this wireless device.


The television queues up the songs and shows the words over very cheesy B-roll video. Among our selections: "Summer Lovin'" from Grease, "Piano Man" by Billy Joel, a few songs from High School Musical, "Stop in the Name of Love," "Holiday" and "La Isla Bonita" by Madonna, and a bunch of others.

Lucinda loved it (she'd gone with a friend once before), and so did her friends. Here are a few pix...



...and one potentially headache-inducing video of the high-speed "It's a Small World."

"Sugoi" Circus

Lucinda, Arno and I went to the Cirque du Soleil tent tonight near Yoyogi Park to see its "Corteo" production. I managed to snap one photo of the stage before being instructed to put my camera away.


I thought the Corteo storyline - something about a dead guy, a funeral, angels, reliving his life, lots of singing, whatever - was lame. But the acrobatics were seriously impressive, especially the trapeze-less trapeze, the high bars, the chandeliers, the enormous metal rings, and the woman who swung a man in the air by her very long ponytail!

Lots of "wow!" or, as the Japanese say, with great enthusiasm, "sugoi!"

Arno and his friend Max, in almost-matching striped shirts, loved their caramel corn and the flashing CdS logo lights in the lobby.

November activities

It's been a very busy month here. My mother and stepfather came to visit (her 5th trip to Tokyo!) for a few weeks. Blaine traveled to Australia and South Korea and covered Obama's visit to Tokyo and Seoul. I had an interesting corporate assignment, to research, conduct interviews and write a report about Japan's foreign aid policies.

Also this month, Lucinda really learned to ride a bicycle and sang karaoke with several friends and their moms (including me). Arno turned 5 and will have his birthday party this weekend. Blaine took the children to Mizuno, a huge sports store, to buy baseball mitts. Both schools had parent-teacher conferences in recent days, when we get a vague sense of how much Japanese the children are absorbing. And today, the last of a 6-day school vacation, the children and I went to see Cirque du Soleil.

Based on this month alone, they seem to be the luckiest children alive, though I don't think they've realized that... yet?

Trailing Spouse: Obama edition

Blaine has been quite busy in the past week covering President Obama's visits to Japan and, today, to South Korea.

Here are some of his stories, often with WashPost White House correspondent Anne Kornblut:

Hiroshima: The dreaded invitation
Obama declines offer to visit the bombed city on his first trip to East Asia

In Japan, Obama stresses Asia's role in U.S. economy

Obama, Japanese premier at odds over air station negotiations

Obama to discuss vexing N. Korean behavior with S. Korean leader

In Seoul, Obama will confront trade and security issues

Red letter day

Today was Arno's 5th birthday, which seems like a pretty big milestone in childhood. He loved his presents, especially 2 Star Wars Lego sets from my mother and stepfather and a motorized build-it-yourself dinosaur from Lucinda. And he loved his gingerbread cake (served with cinnamon whipped cream), which is suitably sugar-free for me to take to his school tomorrow. A party at home w/his friends will happen in 2 weeks.

Lucinda was less than thrilled about Arno's birthday but she rallied for her own achievement today: She really learned how to ride a bike! Last summer she could pedal if Blaine ran alongside to get her started, and so far this fall, she'd resisted riding at all. But today, Blaine suggested that she give it a try - and she was off in a flash. Then she went around the block about 20 times, no problem.