Super Dad

Our guest house is a wonderful, colorful, homely, friendly, welcoming oasis in the middle of busy, bustling, grubby Bangkok. It seems to be a place where well heeled hippies come to stay. People who remember their backpacking days fondly but don't want to stay in those hovels any more. It's a family guesthouse so there are loads of spaces and games and workshops and toys for kids to play. The walls are covered in murals and there are displays of old phones, sewing machines, radios and cameras. It's retro and eclectic and tasteful. The boys and Rich said "it's very YOU, Mum" which I took to be a good thing.
Leo immediately befriended all the lovely women working at reception and knew all their names.
Unfortunately Richard was woken at 4:30am by a dog that was barking loudly and constantly below our window. Rich has a self diagnosed highly sensitive auditory condition that drove him to go down to the alley way below to try to stop the dog barking. Jed later informed him (not for the first time) "you're not superman, dad". Alas, our bionic eared super hero could not fix the problem and we all woke up with his scuffling around. So combined with our jet lag and exhaustion from the flight we were in for another scratchy day.
We set off for the enormous weekend market that has 15,000 stalls and an estimated 200,000 people go through every day. It was hot wondering through the maze of stalls. Jed blew some of his spending money on a watch and we bought Leo a beautiful ukelele so we could have some music on our travels. We stopped regularly for coconut ice cream and foot massages.
We then navigated our way across Bangkok on the sky train and then back up the river on a crowded local ferry where the boys fell into a deep, sweaty sleep.
We arrived home just in time for our massages which were a welcome relief after a busy day.
We set off in a tuk tuk for dinner at a local restaurant Thip Samai Pad Thai and queued with locals for its famous pad Thai. Boys were keen to catch a taxi home as the tuk tuk ride was rather hair raising with the driver nearly mowing someone down on a pedestrian crossing and tearing up the wrong side of the road when there was traffic (which is always). They are also very nervous about being scammed which they seem to have heard a lot of stories about.
After my foot massage and my evening massage I had had my toes cracked twice in one day.. Now that hasn't happened very often. Or ever. Things are looking up.
Love you to the moon and back.