Our trip to Bangkok 2013 - day 2

We shall begin our tour from Day 2 onwards... Breakfast was included throughout our trip and kids enjoyed the buffet spread...

This was a surprised location, as understood from the tour guide, the itinenary had been changed since beginning of Dec and the Singapore agent was not aware too... Nevertheless, we were glad for the changed!! As we saw this location shot on TV sometime back and thought it would be interesting to come over and have a see and indeed, here we were!!!

This is a train station in a midst of a morning market!!!...

Many tourists were here to have a look of the umbrella market, as the stall owners would move their umbrellas back once the train arrived and immediately put back their umbrella once the train passed by!!! Hahaha...

All cameras ready... Train approaching...

Keeping their umbrellas for the train arrival...

Train reached it's destination!!!

Our next destination was also a surprised one.... Bangkok's first floating market!!!

The river was really narrow and too many boats bringing in all the tourists for a feel of their floating market...

Both sides of the banks are full of stalls selling sourvenirs and other boats selling food rowing or staying put waiting for customers...

Our authentic Thai lunch... Tom Yum soup and other dishes... but my kids did not enjoy it... :p

Outside our lunch eatery...

Our planned destination, The Tiger Zoo...

A room showing tourists that their pig is feeding the baby cubs...

Live Tiger show... but the tigers do look skinny...

Inside the Tiger Zoo, crocodile show... scary... especially when the performers were putting their heads into the crocodiles mouth!!!

They had many Tiger statues inside the zoo.... no real tigers for pictures, but fake ones... LOL...

Our dinner restaurant....

This is the first time the kids were exposed to Ah Gua show!! They were amazed at how beautiful all the lady-men were.... But we had to pay them for a photo to be taken!!!  The 2 young ladies kept going around them for a photo taking, till the parents shouted stop! hahahaha...  It's really amazing how pretty they were and the show was much better than a decade back... it was really entertaining and kids had an awesome time watching the performance!! But I guess it's an eye opener for them and it's a kind of 'been there done that' mentality!! :)

Our trip to Bangkok 2013 - Day 1

This is another super overdue post.... I had been saving all my photos into the draft, so I can fill in the details when I got the time....

First time for us to have a family trip together with Ashley's childcare friend's family... As we (me & Ashley's friend's mummy) thought that the girls as well as their siblings would be able to enjoy a trip with their friends... Many destinations came to mind... but we also need to make sure that there's things or fun for the kids to enjoy while we adults plan for the trip... As I am not an adventurous person, so I am not going for any free and easy tour... As I hate to do all the reading before and trip... and hate to plan for any thing am not familiar with... Furthermore it's traveling with my 3 kids!!!

We had breakfast after checking in at the Mei cafe before boarding... My Alvan days before he turned 2 years old, so we can still get baby rate for him rather than paying for toddler's fare! Hahaha... Cheapo! :p

These are the 5 kids for the trip!! Haha...

We were picked up by a mini bus to send us to the hotel after we touched down in bangkok...

A big white Xmas tree at the hotel lobby... And my Alvan was soooo happy whenever he sees a Xmas Tree!!

It was our free and easy day after we reached Bangkok, so we decided to go to Madam Tussaud, since we had bought the combo tickets for it with the Underwater World... And since there's no demonstrations due to the King's birthday and the places we were heading to was actually opposite the Police headquaters where the demonstration had been taking place for the past few weeks!!

Anyway, there were not much variety for lunch when we reach the building of Madam Tussaud, and we would preferred to go for local food, so here we were, a local restaurant....

This is a Pork Stew meal, mainly for my Alvan... Nice and not spicy and most importantly, he's enjoying it! :)  

Daddy had a seafood spicy soup, nice too!! Can't find such soup in Singapore though... guess it's authentic Thai food!!

We head right over to the musuem after our lunch, as it was pretty late and hope we have enough time to see all the wax figurines!!

This is one I like... Princess Diana... I remembered we went to the Madam Tussaud musuem when me & WL went to London for our honeymoon, but did not enjoy as much as we did here in Bangkok... and amazingly, the kids had an awesome time too!!! :)

Tiger woods and our kids!!! Hahaha...

My rocker kids!!! Hahaha..

Alvan and daddy trying to beat the drum set!!! :)

The combo tickets include a wax hand too... so Adwin and daddy doing a wax mold together!!!  Mind you, the wax is hot!! I really didn't expect it to be hot, especially when no one complain about the heat after dipping into it!!! OMG...

Spraying some gliterings to the mold...

We had our dinner at the Paragon there... Japanese food!! The food court was really huge, but surprisingly, mainly were serving Japanese food rather than local food... Yes, they do have many food kiosk selling local snacks...

As usual, my son enjoying his cars!!! :0

This was the restaurant we dine in... food was ok, but pricey compared to Singapore...

This was another thing we tried, their Beef noodles... and it was really yummy!!! Hahaha... :p

Fruits... glorious fruits!!! We bought back Guavas, pineapples and mango back to our room for supper!!! Even my kids enjoyed them!!! Nice and not really cheap though... hahahaha....

3rd visit to River Safari - boat ride!

We are finally here again for our first boat ride!!!  And as the day was a public holiday, Good Friday, we left early as we need to get the tickets for the boat ride!

They have about 230 seats for each 30 minutes boat interval. But by the time we reached the counter to get our tix, it's only for 11:30am onwards slots... The boat ride starts from 10am... But the sad thing is, my Alvan is not allowed due to some his height!! For a child to get onboard, the height limit is 95 or 100, forgot!! Hahaha...

Anyway, this time, we caught the mascot right at the entrance and my Alvan is not afraid of it at all!! Unlike his korkor and jiejie, they got scared of mascots from young...

Our first selfie using my monopod and my shutter button!!! Hahahaha... Dunno what we had as background but it was kind of fun!!! And my Ashley was snatching to press the remote shutter button!!

Father and sons catching the big alligator!!

Another selfie with super big fish behind us!!  Finally we 'caught' the fish as background!!! Lol...

As usual, Jia Jia is always out of sight, so took a shot with the statue!!

The weather was not so good when it's time for our boat ride and we had to buy their ponchos to get on the ride. And since Alvan can't get onto the boat ride, we need to alternate our rides, each of us with one child at a time, Alvan, Ashley and WL were at the waiting area, so once we are done, WL and Ashley will get on the boat ride from the waiting area, no need to queue at the main queue, which I  thought is a nice thoughts from them!

The back view of the poncho!!!

This is the map of where the boat ride will be going and what we can be expected to see!! It's actually a very short ride, but the queue was pretty long and given the bad weather condition, we (me and Adwin) were in the queue like for an hour!!! As there were some lightning, the ride was stopped for awhile... But there's still come drizzling when we hoped onto the boat...

The boat will be elevated once we board it, this is about a storey high only and my children were disappointed, as they thought it would be like a roller coaster ride!! Hahaha... But anyone seated on the first row, were expected to be wet from the splash!!! So my Adwin refused to be seated on the first row, except for Ashley!

This is the priority queue from the waiting area, as opposed to the main queue directly opposite us!

We left for a late lunch after the boat rides and along the way home, we passed by this Sembawang country club along Sembawang road, I remembered seeing some restaurant banners outside so WL thought to go in for a look!!

And only a small cafe was spotted, and a Pat's school house, and a big helicopter was on display!!! So impromptu decision to get out of the car for another selfie!!! Lol... But didn't managed to get a full view of the helicopter, it's blades were missing!!! Hahaha... :p

End of our fun Good Friday holiday!!! :)