Chiang Mai Trip Log

Our trip to Chiang Mai is quite an experience.

Day 1 is basically a rest day, we spent almost the whole day on transport and reached Chiang Mai at Noon. Girl girl seems to be a bit excited by the new environment. She has been running around at my apartment, exploring everything on sight. She also likes to run along the corridor outside and play with Ronnie's Cats. By the way, Ronnie is a dear retired lady from US staying just next door to my apartment. It's been almost a year since I saw her and she has not changed a bit. Though she had a new cat though.. hehe.. We went for a quick lunch downstairs and went to Kad Suan Kaew (2nd biggest shopping center in CM) to do some shopping. The shopping center is only a 5min walk from my apartment and it was surprisingly packed with people. Seems like there is a sale on.

Day 2 we went to Airport Central Plaza (biggest shopping center) to do more shopping (sianz). Wify and her friend love to shop :P. Afternoon is a swim at our condo's swimming pool. Girl scared like hell... hehe.. dare not to go into the water.. Guess its a bit windy and the water is quite cold. Took some effort to convince her to go down (wife carried her) but she seems more scared then enjoying herself, so we bailed and went home. Night time we went to the Anusan Market to eat some seafood. Oysters pretty cheap here. 15baht per piece! Ordered a fish, tofu soup, Crab, Calms, oysters and a veggie dish.. everything for 1200baht (round up liao). (Pretty expensive for local but thing quite cheap compare to SG). After dinner we went to the Night Bazaar to get some bargains.

Day 3 we visited the zoo in the morning. Went to see the Panda which we missed the feeding time. Both Panda were sleeping when we entered. BTW, Have to pay 50baht per head for local.. 100baht for tourists... hehe I am a Thai local for one day :P.. save 50baht. Luckily we stayed longer and one of the panda did woke up and jalan jalan a bit.. so we get our worth of money. Later we feed the giraffes and a small elephant.. Girl again got scared... heheh.. Thought she quite brave at home but seems to be a bit anxiety when she is at somewhere not familiar.. After the zoo we catch a Swang Tiao to Doi Suthep to Bai bai.. The temple is famous in Chiang Mai and it was actually drizzling when we reached there. You have to climb a steep flight of steps to reach the temple. Wife carried Girl halfway while I takeover. I more siong as I am carrying a bagfull of water and milk. :P Toured a bit and went home to rest. Evening we went to Kad Suan Kaew again to have dinner at Sizzler and did some last shopping.

Day 4, need to catch the bus at 1400. So morning wife woke up early and bring baby to Kad Luang (big market, they called Watroro Market for Tourist IIRC). I stayed to sleep a bit more and woke up later to clean up the apartment. We ate our lunch at the apartment. Wife bought some BBQ chili fish which taste pretty damn good. We rest a bit and then left the apartment at 1.15pm. Took the bus and reached home at 6.30pm.. damn shack...

Getting Away

Tomorrow we will be boarding a bus at 8.15am to Chiang Mai. Wife's friend is tagging along.. (so much for the romance :P). Anyway, plan to hit my Condo by 2pm. Should not be a problem as it normally should reach by 1pm.

I actually planned to use my PDA phone (HP Ipaq) to journal down my 3 night stay but the bloody 3rd party battery I bought seems to be dead on me... I only get 3% charged everytime and it needs to shutdown. Na mah...

Anyway, we are all packed.. Wify kiasu again, packed like running away from home .. :O
Managed to convince her to bring only the essential stuffs..

So I guess you won't be hearing from me till Sunday evening or night.

3 day trip

The tenant staying at my Condo at Chiang Mai is leaving. I am planning a trip down on the 23rd to check on the apartment. It has been almost a year since I last visit that place. I will be also passing the management of my lease to another agent. The current one I am using sucks.. no service and late payment of rent.

Since its a trip down, planned to take my wife and baby along for a holiday. Think wife is dying to get out of the house. Since after girl girl born, she had not gone for any trips. So its a 3 day short holiday for us. Most probably will visit Doi Suthep and the Zoo. Want to see girl girl's reactions to the animals... hehe

Baby Making Som Tham

Som Tham is a Thai papaya or mango salad. Very sour and spicy. Wife loves to eat it and girl girl seems to enjoy seeing people making it....

Ball ball!!!

Just want to update a bit on girl girl... here's a video I took yesterday... hehe

Coding again...

As from my previous post. I started work on my NAAPL website and its going on quite well for the moment. I decided to change the Content Management System from Joomla to Drupal as the latter offers more control over user managements and rolls. Not to mention its codes are actually cleaner and easier to rework then the former. One thing though is the layout.. Drupal is not very good at eye candies but thats good news for me too. As I would be forced to code according to its limitation and avoid overloading the site with too much graphics and stuff.

Still, I am getting rusty and it actually feels great when you managed to accomplish something or quash a stupid bug. Will stop coding and go to bed now.

No time!! No time!!!

Once you have a baby that walks (or runs) and have a curiosity of a cat. Then you don't get to spend time for your own hobbies or stuffs. I have tons of want to do things in my head. Most of them are mundane but I enjoy them as it is.

The first is photography, how I wished I could spend the whole day going out, taking a ride on my motorbike and get to the scenic spots to take a few photos.

The second is my military models, how I wished I could have some quiet moments to work on my tanks and LSVs. Fixed them up and paint them with my airbrush without any interruption.

The third is my club's website. Already dire of a need to update and major reconstruction but I have no strength or endurance to do it.... Its a huge task as there are tons of things to do but not sure where to start. I actually planned to take down the entire website and rebuild another one. Just that once I want to work on it, I get lazy... hehehe (excuses lah)

The last is actually to get to spend more time with my wife (only the 2 of us of course). Our daily conversations are mostly on babies and household stuff. Think there is some truth on that old saying, that "once you get to stay together and have a baby, romance is out of the equation".

I am not actually complaining about my lifestyle now. As the first two tasks I could easily continue to do it when I retire or when my baby is old enough to take care of herself. The third one is a pain in the a** though. I need to do it someday but still like finding my brains to work on it. Frankly I prefer to work on anything but programming. I used to love computer programming but I kind of like burnt out from it.

Finally, about the romance stuff... I think I need to do something about it... hehehe :P