Mason turns 4
Happy 4th Birthday! Here are a few facts and photos of Mason.
4 Facts about Mason
-He still loves dinosaurs
-He loves being around babies
-He loves to cuddle
-He loves to play Lego Video games…as well as Skylander
Happy 4th Birthday! Here are a few facts and photos of Mason.
4 Facts about Mason
-He still loves dinosaurs
-He loves being around babies
-He loves to cuddle
-He loves to play Lego Video games…as well as Skylander
Matt has business trips every few months to other parts of Asia. He was in Thailand in November and then again for the last week of January. He really wanted us to be able to visit Bangkok with him, since it is one of our goals to travel Asia while living in this part of the world. We left a few days before his meetings and were able to explore Thailand with a top notch tour guide. After our wonderful experience of having a guide in Cambodia, we decided to book one for our time in Bangkok, and found “Nok.” She was fabulous and well worth the $50/day. We had a 3 day tour with her and enjoyed our itinerary and would recommend her to everyone. After that, my sister-in-law (Felicia), the kids and I explored Thailand on our own while Matt had a few days of meetings. It was a fabulous vacation!
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Train Umbrella Market…A train comes through here twice a day and the vendors move their items while it passes
Wat Bang Kung Wat Bang Kung…a small chapel that is completely enclosed within the roots of a banyan tree
Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua or The Tiger Temple. Also pigs, deer, antelopes, water buffalo, peacocks and maybe a few other animals roam the grounds
Day 4 & 5
Sky Train of Bangkok…we took almost every form of transportation while exploring Bangkok (walking, van, taxi, tuk tuk, sky train…just missing the underground)
Cobra out at the Red Cross Snake Farm in Bangkok. There is a show at 11am & 2pm where they bring the snakes out
Kalani asked and answered questions at the snake farm and then willingly went up to have this python around her
More photos from Thailand here.
When we found out that we were going to live in the Philippines for a couple of years we wanted family and friends to come visit us. And our first guest was my brother (that our children call Rah Rah) who arrived December 3 and stayed with us until January 10. He got a first hand experience to figuring out how to live in the Philippines with us since we were still very new to living here. He was with us while we were living in our serviced apartments and then helped us move into our condo. Rah Rah has traveled with us through Europe and also done his own traveling with friends through Europe, but this was his first time in Asia and in a developing country. I think he enjoyed his time in Asia and we all LOVED having him visit us.
We all got a foot massage and Robbie’s lady asked him to take off his pants so she could massage his calves…it was awkward, but gave us all a good life.
Christmas starts in September in the Philippines. They decorate all during the “BER” months (SeptemBER, OctoBER, NovemBER, DecemBER) and the decorations are pretty nice… it’s almost ridiculous how beautiful the Christmas decorations are when you remember that the Philippines is a developing country! And during the second week of January they start to take down the decorations. So, for a third of the year Christmas is “celebrated” in the Philippines with music and decorations!
There are over a million people who live in downtown Manila. During December that number increases as oversea workers return to the Philippines for the holidays. And then the number decreases as all of the Manila residents and oversea workers return home to their provinces for the holidays. We decided to go to “our province” as well for Christmas…that being Siquijor island where my grandfather left around 1925 to go work on a sugar cane plantation in Hawaii. However, he also left a wife and 2 children in Siquijor, whose descendants we recently made contact with.
We spent 5 days on the island with family. We rented a car and our cousin drove us around. There were no presents, no Christmas trees, not even cold weather. But, we all had a wonderful time enjoying the company of our family and seeing the beauty of the land. God must really love us to have blessed us with wonderful family members.
Tia and Mason getting ready to jump off the water slide. Water doesn’t run down the slide unless you pay extra for it…and after Typhoon Pablo many areas of this water park got destroyed
While the village volleyball game was going on, our kids were introducing the local kids to an iPad. Not sure if more people were watching the volleyball game or the kids with the iPad.
Butterfly Sanctuary – Sadly Typhoon Pablo destroyed a good portion of this…and we discovered that there is a local fee “donation” and a foreign fee “donation”.
Cantabon Cave – Exploring where there really were not any rules (swimming and breaking off a stalactite for a souvenir) and our cousin carried Mason the whole time.
Matt and Robbie watched this cockfighting where our cousin had a rooster competing. That rooster lost and I’m sure ended up as dinner for someone.
Our cousin’s finance invited us to his village disco (a yearly celebration) where ages ranged from toddlers to elderly.
Christmas dinner at our cousin’s house warming party. Family was put into a separate room while neighbors ate in the living room area. There was also a “brown out” during dinner so we ate by candle light.
We spent time doing family history. Our cousin would point out a relative while driving who was sitting on the side of the road and we would pull over and Tia would interview them. This old lady is my grandfather’s niece.
Our cousins introduced us to Julie’s Bakeshop and we love it. When our ferry boat got cancelled to leave the island, we hung out here to figure out what to do since we had plane tickets to reschedule.
We were able to leave Siquijor the next morning at 5am and some cousins went back to Dumaguete with us and made sure we got to the airport.
Siquijor isn’t a tourist trap but more of a hidden treasure. We look forward to visiting again and spending more time with family and enjoying the beauty of the island.
More Siquijor photos here.
We knew we wanted to spend Christmas with our extended family in Siquijor (the island that my grandfather is from). The first time we visited Siquijor we flew to Bohol and took a 3 hour ferry to reach the island of Siquijor. This time we decided to fly to Dumaguete so our ferry ride would only be around an hour! An added bonus is that we have a cousin that is living with her daughter in Dumaguete. So we made arrangements to stay a couple of nights at the Pura Vida resort and meet up with our cousins before taking the ferry to Siquijor.
More photos of Dumaguete here.