I was lucky enough to meet up with my mom abroad not once, but twice during our RTW journey.
First, she and her partner, Terry, joined us in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. They had originally told us they would meet us wherever in the world we happened to be in February and we had left home thinking it would be somewhere in South America. We didn’t make it that far, of course, but we had a great time together and appreciated their flexibility.
When they told us they wanted to meet up again this February (making it perfectly clear they wanted it to be in Southeast Asia this time) we decided to be the flexible ones and changed our itinerary to work with theirs.
Seeing my mom after a year apart was fabulous. We had had our challenges travelling together in Central America (mostly due to very different travel styles and budgets), so this time we opened up our budget and let them choose our hotels. We ended up paying about double our typical rate, but it was worth it to be close to them without the hassle of searching for accommodation that everyone could be happy with in each new place.
We met up with them at a less than favourable hotel in Bangkok (the thing with booking hotels online from home is you can never be quite sure what you’re going to get) and explored some of the city sights with them – the Royal Palace, the Reclining Buddha, China Town and Khaosan Road.
Then, we all caught a bus with them to Hua Hin. The beach here was ok, but there was way too much development and too much city encroaching on it for my tastes. When I picture a Thai beach, there definitely aren’t any skyscrapers to be seen. Large swathes of the beach were littered with “pay-for-the-privilege-to-sit” beach umbrellas – they took up so much space that at high tide there was actually no beach left to sit on.
We all beach-bummed around, explored the malls and night markets, and just enjoyed being together again.
Way too soon, our time together was up. Mom and Terry caught a train back to Bangkok to catch a flight to Bali and Mike and I took a fabulous (yes, this is sarcasm) night bus/ferry combo to Koh Tao for some diving.
Must have been great to see your mum after such a long time. Great pics 🙂