Christmas in Krabi

I know it's 2 months after Christmas, but I am a slacker, and haven't written anything in 2 months. So here we go.

Christmas in Krabi, Thailand was awesome, very relaxing.  Not sure we could have relaxed anymore. The above picture is the view from our patio. Pretty sweet, right?  Since we weren't going home for Christmas and we had some other friends not going home for Christmas we all decided to go somewhere together.  We settled on Krabi, as we wanted a beach destination and it was one of the cheaper options we could find :)  We went with Chantal, Scott and their daughter Ashley and Jaime and Liam.  The 7 of us rented a villa on the beach.  The villa was a three bedroom U shaped house that wrapped around a pool in the middle.  Very nice all the way around, the beds could have been better though.  Eric and I had to push together two twin beds that were super hard mattresses..fun..Other than that though, no complaints.  We got in and had our driver stop by a grocery store for us to stock up for our 5 days at the house.  We got breakfast, lunch, a couple dinners, snacks and of course a lot of beverages. (I wasn't drinking though as we were waiting to find out if I was pregnant!) The beverage situation was a disaster at Tesco.  Apparently, they only sell alcohol at certain times and if you are out of that time frame you have to purchase something like 10L worth of booze.  We were 3L short I think and they were giving us a HUGE stink about it.  We didn't want to buy anything else (of course we should have, because the guys ended up needing some more later), but I think on principal they argued with 3 or 4 different people that barely spoke English for about 30-45 min or so.  Crazy, we were all getting cranky and wanting to leave.  Finally they let us buy it all, I think to shut us up and get us out of the store.  So, off we go on our way to the villa and get settled in. 

Our second day we headed into town to check it out and stop by a dive shop as everyone but me and Eric were going out on a boat to go snorkel or dive over the weekend.  I didn't go because I thought the boat ride would be too bumpy for me if I was preggers, and my loving husband stayed back with me :)  We stopped by the shop so everyone could get fitted for flippers and the like and we walked around a little bit and grabbed a bite to eat at a little restaurant across the way before heading back and getting a little lost on the way.  We also had rented a car, and the 7 of us crammed into anytime we all went somewhere :)

 

 Most of our time was spent hanging out at the villa, playing cards, swimming, reading, laying out...just whatever we wanted to do.  It was great!  Eric and I got up early one morning to walk on the beach and pick up seashells! We got some good ones too!!  The guys also attempted a little skim boarding, it didn't quite turn out that great.  There were a lot of falls, some scrapes and sore bones, and a little hurt pride I think, lol. 

 

Christmas morning! Woohoo! It wasn't the same as being at home with family, but it was still really good.  It was weird not doing the family thing all day, this was our first Christmas away from home :(
Which is why we wanted to do something with friends and go somewhere, so we weren't sitting in our apartment by ourselves all day!  I'm so glad we went away with friends, it was nice.  We had previously picked names for a secret santa gift exchange and decided to buy a present for a white elephant as well.  Luckily we had a kid in our midst, so it was a lot about her.  She had tons of little things to open and took a good portion of the morning doing so!  Then we all took our turns opening and then guessing who had who, and then we did the white elephant exchange which was fun.  It was a fun Christmas morning and a relaxing day in all.  I think our first relaxing Christmas ever, lol!  We cooked a nice breakfast and all sat around and enjoyed it!  The rest of the day was spent laying around some more and playing games.  All followed by a delicious Christmas dinner we cooked! 

The next day we shut it down and headed home.  We all had a blast and Eric and I are so thankful to have such great friends here to enjoy the holidays with when we are so far away from home.  We had a great, relaxing trip.  Oh, and Eric actually read a book! haha! It was about 500 pages about Slash (his guitar idol).  An early Christmas present from me for him to read while we were away, and he actually read it! I couldn't believe it :)  I don't think Eric has ever relaxed so much in his life.  It was well needed for him.  We really had a great time! :)

HaPpY aNnIvErSaRy!

Well, we have been in KL for exactly one year now, crazy! I can't believe it.  This has been one amazing year.  Living over here and traveling to the places we have been are things that I never thought I would ever be doing, not in a million years.  We are so lucky to have this opportunity.  This blog is going to be a little recap of the fabulous year we have had living abroad.  Sorry if this one will sound a bit like bragging, but there's no other way to put it, we had a good year :D

January we moved, said to goodbye to friends and family and moved literally across the world.  Not an easy thing to do.  It was a little rough in the beginning, more so for me as I had stopped working and moved away from everything over to nothing as it had seemed.  It was lonely in the beginning, but that went away after a month or so, luckily, and I was able to start enjoying myself.  We moved into our place, a high rise condo, onto the 37th floor with an amazing view of the city. 

February, we took a little trip to Pangkor Island.  Our first vacation after arriving.  We went for Chinese New Year, a huge celebration over here, Eric got two days off work!  Pangkor Island is a short drive away, and we are planning on going back soon for a little weekend getaway.  It's so much fun, and a nice relaxing, beautiful spot.  We can't wait to go back!  We also attended our first ball, fancy! ;)  It was the American Ball, and we had a blast! It's always fun to get all dressed up :)

 

In March we held our first party, a St. Patrick's Day party, A Green Tie Affair was the theme and it was a hit! We had a lot of fun partying it up with all our friends. March also took us to the Gold Coast, Sepang Formula 1 Racing.  We had another little weekend getaway at a hotel with water bungalows.  We went with Scott and Chantal.  This hotel was about as far as the airport, in fact it was on the way to the airport, but you head towards the coast instead, not too far.  We spent the weekend there and hung out and went to the Formula 1 races, I just went Saturday, Eric went both days and we had a really good time.  He's planning to attend the races again this year, I think I'll skip. 

 

April, we headed to Penang, Malaysia.  A little island off the west coast of Malaysia.  Another beach vacation :)  We had a great time, and even ran into some friends of ours from KL (originally from Houston too) there, crazy, small world!  We sat on the beach, went into town, enjoyed the culture, the temples, and a train car ride to the top of a hill with an incredible view of the island.

May brought us Mitch!  Our good friend Mitch from Houston came to visit us. Woohoo, we LOVE visitors!  Our very first visitor too, we figured he would be as much as he loves to travel!  We showed him around KL a bit, I went with him to Singapore for a couple days while Eric worked.  Singapore was fun, we got to go in the pool on top of Marina Bay Sands because our friends Dave and Leah happened to be staying there while we were there, small world again! We checked out the Singapore Night Safari and worked our way around a bit to see the sights.  After we got back to KL we left the next day, with Eric this time, for Bangkok.  We got to see some amazing temples, the palace, cruised the river, went out on patpong street, and checked out the huge market there.  All fun stuff, good times!

 June, we decided to take it a little easy.  Went for a little hike to see a waterfall, hung out with friends, and our one little 'trip' was to Genting Highlands on a whim.  It was Cynthia's birthday and we were trying to figure out what to do, so we hired a cab to drive us the hour or so up the hills to Genting Highlands, where the weather is actually cool and awesome, to gamble at the casino for a few hours and drive us back home.  Awesome.

July we had our white water rafting adventure with Dave and Leah, and what an adventure it was. Holy crap.  A little scary as we flipped our raft pretty much right out of the gate, a little rocky at times after that, but a lot of fun and something I will never forget.  Eric had a work trip to Singapore and I tagged along to go see some of our other friends that live there from Houston.  We also took a little weekend away to Melaka with Dave and Leah.  We stayed at a nice resort for the night, went into town, saw the sights, went out and explored at night with dinner and bars, saw what looked like a pimp my ride Malaysia in a parking lot there (turns out Pimp My Ride Malaysia is now a real thing and airs on MTV starting this Jan, lol).  And the end of July brought us the arrival of my Aunt Brenda and Uncle Steve, YAY!!! More visitors!!

My aunt and uncle were here mostly in August, they came at the very end of July.  We had a great time with them.  I showed them around the sites, and all the fun stuff, had them try new things in the way of food and we were very proud of them. They were great, especially since the farthest they had traveled was the Caribbean previously and even that was 10 years ago!  Hats off to y'all for coming all this way and enjoying yourself!  We took them to Phuket, Thailand.  We couldn't let them come all this way and not see some amazing beaches!  Phuket was awesome.  We did a zip lining adventure through the jungle, way cool, and my aunt's idea, and we did an all day boat trek to different islands and a floating village.  We had a blast there, and Eric and I want to go back to see what else Phuket has to offer. 

September had us getting ready for our three week trip back to Houston.  But first, a stop in Dubai!  We spent 3 amazing nights in Dubai.  Dubai is a cool city, hot, but cool.  The beach resort we stayed at was beautiful, the water so blue and completely clear.  The Burj Khalifa, amazing, a stunning piece of architecture, the desert, beautiful.  We loved Dubai. Oh, and the food, delicious!  Can't wait to go back here too!

October was Houston.  We got to see family and friends and eat all the food we had been missing for 9 months!  We also went to Orlando to see Eric's mom, and I went to Chicago to see some friends while Eric played in his old courses member guest tournament with all his golfing buddies.  Our trip home was fun and exhausting, it was so nice to see everyone, but it was also nice to get back home to KL and sleep in our bed.  That was long time to be sleeping all over the place.  It was a great trip home though.

November was our trip to Cambodia.  Cambodia was amazing.  The temples there are out of this world beautiful.  So old and fragile and marvelous to have stood the test of time as many are about 1000 years old.  The people are so friendly and everything was so cheap there.  We had so much fun seeing the sights and celebrating my birthday there, but we haven't even scratched the surface of seeing everything, maybe another time ;)

December was Christmas in Krabi, Thailand (as you may have just recently read).  Krabi was a blast, and we were so fortunate to be able to spend Christmas with friends since we couldn't spend it with family.  We all just hung out at the villa we rented for 5 days and played games, laid out, walked on the beach and just relaxed. It was so nice. 

I think the best thing about the past year was the friends that we made.  They are all amazing and we would not have survived without them!  <3

Well, that's our year in a nutshell and we are definitely looking forward to the new adventures and places that 2013 is going to take us (we start off with a trip to Bali at the end of February!!).  We can't wait!