So what did we do after that very long nap since waking up at that God forsaken hour of 3am in order to catch that red flight?

SWIM!!! Well, only to give in to T1’s request. She’d been harping on about swimming ever since she saw that the hotel had a pool. She was so busy having fun playing ball with her cousins that she could barely stay still long enough for me to catch a picture of her smiling at the camera. Bah.

And there I was lying on the sun deck gazing up towards the Chiang Mai sky…….expecting to see a clear blue but mostly all I saw were green trees. I wasn’t complaining.

Which is when I spotted our hotel room on the far right and wondered how many people could really see us naked through all those windows at night.

More relaxing thoughts crossed my mind when I chatted to my parents and in-laws watching T1 swim whilst the Hubs was forced by T2 to take her for a walk around the pool. She really wanted to join her Che-Che for a swim but neither of us wanted to get into the pool after such a long day. So she made him walk continuously instead.

And soon after that swim, we were famished. Dinner was at a golf driving range. Weird place to have dinner you might wonder? Like I said earlier, we don’t go to any touristy places at all for food. We get taken to the most authentic places (not necessarily the most glam!)…………

The most amazing Tom Yum soup below was very spicy but so rich in flavour. Sweet, spicy, sour, bitter and a few more new tastes that I couldn’t quite identify with. It was deceiving because who would have thought such a clear soup could shoot your ass out to the golf course. And I’ve just read that balance is very important in Thai cooking, hence the spicy, sour, sweet, bitter and salty all at once.

The Thais have a similar habit to the Indonesians and that is they both eat raw vegetables called ulam with chilli prawn paste (sambal belacan). I love ulam whether it is Indonesian or Thai. The Thais have some gingery thing which is supposed to be VERY good for health but it is not ginger. It’s crunchy like a turnip yet isn’t. Anyway, raw Thai vegetables rock with sambal.

The chilli paste that went with the salad.

We had mushrooms with tofu because we had kids to feed…..just T1 and T2 and a 15 year old Aussie who wasn’t good with chilli.

There was an awesome lemon grass, peanuty salad (likened to Kelantanese Kerabu) which we ate with some raw leaves. Who knows what leaves they were, I certainly didn’t. I just EAT!!!

And EAT!!!

And EAT!!!

We ordered a fried fish, again for the kids. It was Ikan Bulus – you can find the same fish at Raju’s Banana Leaf restaurant on Jalan Gasing. Very yummy.

Thai chilli sauce – love it. Even if the bum burns after…..blek.

I wasn’t fond of this chilli eel dish below only because I used to go through an unagi fetish and ate unagi at every opportunity whenever we ate Japanese in my teens and since then, after a few years of eel and nothing else, I’d grown to be very sick of eel. And now it makes me feel really geli….

The dish below was a fermented fish – EWE. Just the thought of it made me not want to try it. I am totally against anything fermented, yogurt included. I am just mentally allergic to such things.

But the next dish was a favourite – sambal petai prawn. I like my Mom’s better though…..

By then, we were stuffed but they still brought out a plate of guava and Thai ‘apple’ (I’ve forgotten now what they call them but they’re really not apples, they just look like them) and are not very sweet. It’s like an apple’s cousin.

Last but not least, despite how full I was, when I found out that they had home-made ice-cream, I opened up my secret dessert compartment and allowed a home-made coconut ice-cream.

After dinner whilst the adults yakked away, T1 got bored and started playing the Ipad.

Nana had T2 who was starting to get some attention from some little girls nearby.

And as soon as T1 saw that the little girls were touching her baby sister and going ooh and aah over her, she quickly got off the Ipad and approached them to mark her territory. THIS IS MY SISTER. MINE!! Do you understand English? This is MY sister…..Nana was rather amused, and so were the rest of us. Thankfully, those girls had to leave soon after or there might’ve been a girly gang fight.

After dinner, I sent the Hubs out to buy some coffee as I didn’t want to pay for hotel coffee so off her trotted down the street (only 100 meters, I’m not THAT mean!) but that green place was closed!!! At 10pm??? He brought us back some cold chocolate instead. Guess what the picture below is?

It is ice from T1’s iced chocolate!!! The Hubs couldn’t even get her a hot chocolate because they’d shut their machines off for hot drinks, can you believe it? And look at that amount of ice!!! I didn’t want her drinking so much ice and I certainly didn’t want to myself what with asthma and everything, so I chucked it down the sink. Just look how little iced chocolate there really is after the ice is gone? Half.

After the chocolate drink, T1 read to herself (yeah, instead of reading to her now, she’d rather read to herself. I still read to her though, depending on timing and T2’s moods!!) and then it was beddie-byes again.

Check back for what we did the next day!

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Who is Mamapumpkin?
Mamapumpkin spent 7 years in London committing crimes to gain her Bartlett degree in Architecture. She then spent 7 years as a Stay At Home Mom raising her children as documented in this blog of over 15 years thereafter returning to the Corporate World stronger than ever as the Country Director of a British Multinational. She sets out to prove to all, that you can have anything and everything that you want; if you have that fire of desire burning within and the drive to work hard. Even better with much love.

Mamapumpkin has not only grown corporate businesses successfully in the past but has grown not one but TWO network marketing businesses in the notorious MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) industry, achieving success in under 2 years. She believes in the MLM business model but realises the DRASTIC PITFALLS and great stigma attached to it, understanding EXACTLY WHY the majority would shy away (or RUN for their lives) from ANY MLM business. But open your eyes and take time to understand it intellectually, remove your hang-ups, confirm your research, and you may just want to seize an opportunity. She did. And no, she never went about chasing people for sales. She had a sophisticated system work for her through technology and a smartphone.

She now impacts lives authentically with proven strategies amassed through the last decade of her own transformation offering online coaching programmes and always supports the underprivileged. She believes that we can all have a life of our own desires to enable real contribution into the world. But first, one needs to understand what this all means.

A beautiful life without limits.

If you wish to learn some tools to propel your life forward guaranteed, be brave enough to make contact as her life's purpose is to build people. She operates through a discovery call after which she will commit to helping you. Or not.

Most lose out on an opportunity because they are afraid they would be sold to, conned or whatever fear resides in their brain without even trying. And that's on them.

Mamapumpkin is a living testimony that women really can have a lot. Being financially and time free has enabled her to travel the world anytime, anywhere, doing anything, and she spends most of her days with her children, having fun, and supporting others wherever she can. Also having fun.