Our Saturday - part 1

Today we had planned on going to the Bangkok Children's Museum since we finally have our car!!! We left the house around 9:40am and were just about at the museum when Dan got called into work! So, instead of continuing to the museum, we headed down to Dan's work! The kids and I couldn't go into work with him, so we walked down to Lumphini Park instead. (oh, and we were all dressed alike in navy shirts and khaki shorts so that I could find us easier...I know I sound like the Duggers.)

Lumphini Park is a large, beautiful park located in the heart of Bangkok (and the site of Dan's monitor-lizard siting in December 2007). The kids and I brought a bag of pretzels and a bottle of water, our camera and walked down to the park. We found a nice bench in the shade (it was 10:40am and probably 90 degrees). We snacked, watched people and decided to find the playgrounds. At this point, it's continuing to get hotter, we are in a HUGE park and trying to find the playground. You know that if we are in a park where there are trees, but definitely not a forest, and a huge lake that doesn't obstruct the view, but we can't find the playground, you know it's a HUGE park. So, we started walking, crossed 2 bridges (dealt with Kylie's fussing about not wanting to walk), watched people go by in ducky paddleboats and finally found the playground! The kids had fun playing, going down slides that were deadly (big drops in the slides, more of a "free for all" than a slide) and doing the see-saw. We are now 1 hour into waiting for Dan, out of water and in direct sun for the past 30 minutes. So, we headed to find a way "outside" of the gated park. You can generally find a slew of street vendors right outside the gates selling all sorts of foods, noodles, lunches, drinks and fresh sliced fruit - we finally made it there, bought 2 waters, a bag of pineapple and a bag of watermelon, sat down inside the park and snacked! The fruit is awesome! It cost us 20 Baht (approx. $0.60) for both a 1/4 watermelon sliced in a bag with a skewer to spear it with and a 1/4 pineapple! SO FUN! And my first time to buy fruit from a street vendor!

Then, we began the trek back to Dan's office, found the car, cranked the A/C and watched 12 Dancing Princesses and hung out for the next 1 1/2 hours in the car until Dan was done! The temp was now 98 degrees and it was 1:40pm. No one had had naps and no one had eaten lunch! Dan was able to head out and we decided to still go to the Museum since the kids really wanted to go there and had been great (for the most part) in the waiting for Daddy to be done with work :) It was an unexpected detour for us (and Dan) but turned out to be a fun morning! I'll update you on all the fun we had at the museum tomorrow...