Bangkok with children – part 3

While Thewet is probably the most kid-friendly part of Bangkok, and Banglampu has the best family-friendly budget accommodation, we also had fun staying off Sukumvit Road and exploring the downtown attractions with Tash on our last visit to Bangkok in January 2009.

We stayed at the Federal Hotel in Sukumvit Soi 11, which has been around forever – or at least since the 1960s – where Roo and I had stayed long before Tash came along. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s good value and in a great location. The pool is pleasant, though you’ll want to turn a blind eye to the pink-skinned men breakfasting poolside  on Singha beer from about 10am.

Staying near Sukumvit and surrounds puts you near the Skytrain and Subway, both of which are great for getting around, although be warned that the many stairs make it a hard slog for little legs and pace yourself accordingly.

The Siam Skytrain station is the jumping off point for Siam Square, home of our favourite ‘old school’ coffee shop, the New Light; and the Siam Paragon shopping complex, which houses Siam Ocean World in its basement, the largest aquarium in the southern hemisphere. Ocean World is not cheap but, as described here, it’s an entertaining way to spend an afternoon with kids; the food court on the ground floor is good value, too. And there’s usually something kid-friendly going on around Siam Square: in our case it was a Snow White-themed Christmas display (best not to think too hard about it).

Both the Skytrain and Subway will take you to nearby Lumpini Park, which is about as kid-friendly as it gets in downtown Bangkok. The park has several kids play areas side-by-side: as the equipment is modernised, it seems that rather than replace what went before it, a new play area opens up. The park is Bangkok’s largest and a great place for picnics, Tai Chi, outdoor gym, and that rarest of commodities in the Thai capital, peace and quiet – if you’re not accompanied by a small child, that is.

We hired a pedal boat shaped like a duck to cruise around the lake for 30 minutes or so. The pedalling was bloody hard work but worth it as the lake is brimming with wildlife. We saw fish, turtles, eels and monitor lizards so large we almost mistook them for crocodiles.

The best food find of our time in this part of Bangkok was the Rosabieng bar and restaurant at 3, Sukumvit Soi 11, just down from where we were staying. Rosabieng is the Thai word for the dining car on a train, and there’s one in the restaurant’s leafy garden, as well as a working model train in the air-conditioned interior. The Thai food is sensational, with an exciting selection of dishes. I could have eaten there every night. Tash was made to feel very welcome – she even managed to crash the birthday party of a group from the wonderful Mrs Balbir’s Indian restaurant one of the nights we were there.

Sukumvit also has the advantage of bookshops and department stores where you can stock up on toys for the plane, train and/or beach. Asia Books has a good selection of English language kids books and colouring books; there’s one at Siam Paragon, another at 221 Sukumvit Rd, just past Soi 15.

Bangkok with children – Part 2

Responding to a recent inquiry about kid-friendly places to stay in Bangkok made me realise I didn’t have a post on this site about Banglampu. This part of ‘old Bangkok’ on the arc of the Chao Phraya River is well known as a backpacker desination–Khao San Road is situated there–but it’s also a good budget option for families.

We stayed a couple of times at the New Siam II Guest House, located in Trok Rong Mai lane off Phra Artit Road. The rooms were simple but comfortable and good value, considering there’s also a pool with jacuzzi and a good open-air restaurant on the ground floor. Slightly more upmarket is the New Siam Riverside, five minutes walk down the lane and across Phra Artit Road, which as its name suggests overlooks the Chao Phraya. Regardless of where you stay, the buffet breakfast on the terrace at the New Siam Riverside is recommended, the passing river traffic guaranteed to keep the whole family entertained.

Heading down Trok Rong Mai lane away from the river takes you a leafy street that backs on to the grounds of Wat Chana Songkhram. We had breakfast here one morning and watched squirrels tight-rope walking along the powerlines above our heads. The temple grounds are a good place for a morning stroll.

A promenade runs along the river parallel to Phra Artit Road from the Pinklao Bridge. Follow it north past the Phra Artit ferry stop (Thai Phra Artit) to Santichaiprakan Park. This pretty, leafy park is built around the Phra Sumen Fort, part of what were once the fortifications of the old city, and also contains one of Bangkok’s last remaining lamphu trees from which the area takes its name. We were too busy soaking up the atmosphere to take photos when we visited, but there’s a nice one here. It’s a great space for running around or sitting in the shade.

Banglampu’s downside (for some) is that it’s a long way from the Skytrain or subway. But it’s easy and enjoyable to get around by ferry. It’s only a few ferry stops from Banglampu to Thewet, for example, where the kids can join in a fish-feeding frenzy at the pier, followed by a visit nearby Dusit Zoo–see here for more details.

For family friendly eating in the area, the restaurant at the New Siam II is a pretty good option, with decent Thai and Western options and a fish tank containing weird shrimp-like creatures.

But my personal favourite is The Old Phra Artit Pier, an ambient wooden place right on the river with hot Thai food, cool music and cold beer on tap. The staff were great with Tash and they even sold Nancy Chandler colouring books at the bar. The only drawback is you have watch that the kids don’t run out of the restaurant and along the old pier into the river.

You can see how that might happen in this photo of Tash at the Old Phra Artit Pier with our friends Shal and Randy, taken in April 2008: in the distance behind them you can see all the way across the river to the lights on the other side.

Stay tuned for a post on staying with kids around Sukumvit…

Warrnambool in winter

A winter weekend in Warrnambool might seem a strange choice for tropical heat lovers like us, considering the Antarctic winds that buffer this booming town in Victoria’s southwest. But on Tash’s advice, we packed raincoats, gloves and boots and braved the elements for a weekend away.

The tourist brochures say Warrnambool is 3 hr and 15 min drive from Melbourne, but with a 3-and-a-half-year-old in tow and a partner with a penchant for op shops, our trip took closer to 5 hours.

At our first stop we enjoyed excellent coffee and cakes at the Winchelsea Larder; I was only sorry we weren’t there at lunchtime for what looked like a great Ploughman’s Platter (AUD$12.90), plus kid’s menu version ($5.30); a genuinely kid-friendly venue with fabulous food and produce.

We lingered longer in Colac, first at the adventure playground situated on the edge of the lovely Botanic Gardens overlooking Lake Colac (follow the signs from the highway down Queen St and turn right into Fyans St; the playground is opposite the caravan park). The park has everything from a wheelchair-accessible swing to an old-school roundabout and half-dome climbing frame. Our personal favourite was the boat on a spring overlooking the lake, which fitted all three of us.

We had lunch at the Botanic Cafe, situated at the opposite end of Fyans St from the playground, also overlooking Lake Colac. Kid-friendly, good value and picturesque location.

Then it was on to Warrnambool, where we stayed with our friends Tam and Bill in a house overlooking the Hopkins River. It was raining when we arrived but as soon as it cleared, we headed to nearby Logan’s Beach for some whale watching. We got lucky: the mother and calf hanging out in the area showed their heads and tails, and at least one of them was blowing while we watched. It turned out to be the one and only time we saw whales in three visits to the viewing platform. Then again, Tash was more entertained playing with Tam’s “binnochios” (binnoculars) than she was by the distant whales.

Sunday, on Bill’s advice, we headed for Tower Hill Reserve, a lush wildlife sanctuary inside a dormant volcano that collapsed in on itself some 30,000 years ago. We parked by the Visitor Centre and within moments we were getting up close and personal with a couple friendly emus, and spied four koalas in nearby trees. We also saw black swans by the lake and a kangaroo in the wetlands area.

Tower Hill has a fascinating history. Despite being declared Victoria’s first national park in 1892, the area had been virtually clear-felled by the 1930s. Restoration work begun in the 1960s, based on a detailed painting of the Tower Hill in 1855 by Victorian artist Eugene Von Guerard. As the In The Artist’s Footsteps website notes, “It is the classic example of where a painting, by a realist artist, at a time when photography was in its infancy, can be a very valuable conservation resource.” These days the conservation efforts are so effective that koalas have to be periodically relocated from the area to prevent them from taking over.

From Tower Hill we drove to Port Fairy and would have meandered longer around this pretty town except that the port area was closed off for a bicycle race. We opted instead for lunch at Time & Tide, as recommended by Tam, a cafe with gorgeous sea views and even more gorgeous cakes. My smoked salmon fritta was truly delectable and the coffee good, too. No kids menu but they were able to rustle up a kid-friendly dish or two ($4.50), and Tash’s hot chocolate came out with a smiley face sketched in chocolate syrup. The gallery setting means it’s better suited to immobile babies than active toddlers. The turn off to Time & Tide is after the Catholic church and just before the water tower; follow the signs down the unsealed road to the beach.

Rain ruined our plans to build sand castles on the beach out front of the cafe. Instead we drove back to Warrnambool, put on our raincoats and went out to play at the Lake Pertobe Adventure Playground. The playground is a fabulous feat of engineering, built on a former swamp whose “pestiferous exhalations” were the subject of written complaints as early as 1879. (The name ‘Warrnambool’ allegedly derives from a Kuurn Kopan Noot Aboriginal term, meaning ‘two swamps’). Nowadays the park is 20 hectares of lakes, lawn and playgrounds and home to abundant bird life.

Having become playground aficionados since the birth of our daughter, I reckon Lake Pertobe is one of our best finds, not least of all because it caters for adults as well as kids: the highlight for all 3 of us were the flying foxes, one for under-12s and another for over-12s. (We were having too much fun to take photos, but there are some here). To find the flying fox station, head right from the main car-park past the maze.

What worked for us over our weekend in Warrnambool was to come equipped for inclement weather, make the most of fine spells to get out and about, and not to be deterred by a shower or two. We had a busy, fun time and I felt we’d only scratched the surface in terms of what the region has to offer.

Also worth noting for the trip back is the castle-like Apex Playground in Terang, which has low doorways hazardous to unsuspecting adults and was a bit slippery in the wet, but is beautifully located overlooking the croquet club and has everything a would-be princess needs to fire her imagination.

Other recommended food stops are the Cobb Loaf Cafe in Camperdown, and Cafe Gravity in Colac (impressive kids’ menu with $7 dishes), both on the main street/highway on the right side heading towards Melbourne.

NAIDOC Day at the Collingwood Children’s Farm

Tash and I celebrated NAIDOC Day on 9 July 2009 at the Collingwood Children’s Farm in Abbotsford, an event organised by Aboriginal Housing Victoria.

NAIDOC stands for National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee and NAIDOC week is an opportunity to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and the contributions of Indigenous Australians in all walks of life.

The event was brilliantly organised and included a traditional music and dance session where an Indigenous elder and young dancers invited kids in the audience to learn to dance like emus, kangaroos and eagles. There was also a dance symbolising fishing and the celebration of a good catch. Tash was too shy to join in the dancing but was rapt to witness the didgeridoo played live (she’s only seen it in books and heard it on CD).

My friend Helen alerted me to the NAIDOC Day event and we met up with her and her 2+ year old daughter Iris, sister Genevieve and her 4 kids for the celebration. We participated in a smoking ceremony, where the kids had their faces painted with ochre, followed by a boomerang painting session that all the kids got into.

There were drinks, fresh fruit, cakes, damper and barbequed sausages/vegie burgers in bread–all free, thanks to Aboriginal Housing Victoria and the fabulous volunteers at the Collingwood Children’s Farm.

It was wonderful to be around so many Aboriginal families and kids having fun.

The Farm itself was a great venue, the landscape forming a beautiful backdrop to the ceremonies, and lots of farm animals on hand to entertain the kids afterwards. For Tash the highlight was hand-feeding fresh grass to a white horse; I was rather taken with the 10-day-old black piglets.

We last took Tash to the Collingwood Children’s Farm when she was just under 18 months old, thinking that because she enjoyed reading about farm animals and emulating their noises, she would enjoy seeing the real thing. In fact, most of the animals–bar the ducks and chickens–scared the hell out of her. This visit was much more successful.

I’d always thought the Children’s Farm, whilst wonderful, a bit expensive to visit at $16 per family; but entry was free on NAIDOC Day and Helen tells me it only costs $2 per adult on Farmers’ Market days, the second Saturday of every month, which is great value.

I forgot the camera, but Helen took some great photos, including the one above of the white horse kissing Tash.

I hope to make NAIDOC Day at the Children’s Farm an annual event – even if it means skiving off work to be there.

10,000 hits

Oh, the places you’ll go this week celebrates 10,000 hits. We named the site after the classic children’s book by Dr Seuss, with a clue in the URL ‘great balancing act’ as to what it was all about.

We started blogging 18 months ago as an on-line diary to keep friends and family up to date with our travels during our ‘year off’ – though it would be more accurate to call it a ‘year on’. A year when the work-life balance was tilted very much in favour of life.

The photo above shows Tash asleep in her father’s arms at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, just before our flight to Cambodia, our home for the year. It was as if Tash had already absorbed the ability of Thai people to sleep anytime, anywhere, after only a few days in the Kingdom. It was the first of many instances where she slipped with apparent ease into a strange and wonderful environment.

As we wrote on during our months away, it emerged from our ‘blog stats’ — the figures that tell you what search terms people use to find your site and what links they click on when they drop by — that the site was filling a gap in terms of upbeat information on travelling in Southeast Asia with small children, especially in countries like Cambodia and Laos. At least one of our readers says she was inspired to take the plunge and head off travelling with her small son on the strength of our posts — which is about as good as it gets in terms of compliments!

This has inspired me to keep the blog going as a guide to travelling with children, wherever we are in the world — a reminder to recapture the spirit of travelling even at home. To slow one’s pace. Take in the sights. Be in awe and appreciation. Take joy from watching a child experience the world in all its glorious diversity.

Thanks to everyone who has followed our travels and visited our blog. Keep on dropping by and feel free to leave comments.

Oh, the places we’ll go…

Crocodile shows

Today we went to a crocodile show at the Melbourne Zoo called Crocodilia. Almost five months ago to the day, we went to a crocodile show at the Phuket Zoo in Thailand. Can you spot the differences?

I know, I know, it’s easy to see: at the Melbourne Zoo, the keeper is handling a juvenile American Alligator, whilst in Phuket, the keeper is handling a full-grown Asian crocodile.

Seriously though, there were also differences in what we learned at the respective shows.

At Melbourne Zoo, we learned that crocodilia have evolved with five key characteristics that have enabled them to survive for more than 2 million years: the ability to be submerged but breathe above the water; the capacity to draw energy from the sun through their backs; a rudder-like tail that propels them through the water; estivation, or the ability to hibernate during hot, dry times of food scarcity and re-emerge once the rains come; and being communicate with their young, even whilst the babies are still inside the eggs. A mother crocodile may use her teeth to help a baby having trouble breaking out of its egg.

In the first photo, Tash can be seen far right standing next to the zookeeper and holding a megaphone to ‘demonstrate’ a baby crocodile communicating with her mother. And because she was part of the show, she got to pat the American Alligator afterwards [photo 3].

At Phuket Zoo, we learned sometimes a crocodile will simply not be roused, no matter how many times it is poked, prodded and dragged by the tail [photo 4] — and even when someone lies on top of it [photo 3].

The Crocodilia show is part of Melbourne Zoo’s school holiday program and is on at 11am and 1pm in the marquee next to the Carousel park.

The Crocodile Show at Phuket Zoo is a feature attraction and can be seen at various times throughout the day.

Angkor with children

Exploring the temples of Angkor with young children can be challenging. But it’s also rewarding to see these wonders through your child’s eyes, as Angela Savage reveals.

I first visited Siem Reap and the surrounding temples in 1992. Back then, the United Nations was running Cambodia, civil war was still raging in the countryside, and there was just me and my partner—literally. We barely saw another living soul.

Sixteen years later, we returned with our nearly-three-year-old daughter to a town that had changed so much it was unrecognisable, and temples crowded with foreign tourists. It was a very different experience but equally worthwhile.

The first thing that struck me about visiting Angkor with our daughter was that what excited us was rarely the same as what excited her. Exploring the jungle-covered ruins of Ta Phrom might be fun, but what really had her riveted were the tiny frogs and giant snails that shared the stones with her (we were warned against touching the snails as they can cause a rash).

While she showed mild interest in the carvings of the apsaras at Angkor Thom, she was thrilled by the group of apsara dancers in traditional costume who posed for photos with her for a mere $1 donation.

Another friend’s kids most enjoyed the grassy expanse in front of the Terrace of the Elephants, and watching the real elephants ferry the tourists around Angkor Wat. The horses, too, are popular with the kids.

But visiting the temples themselves can be boring, if not gruelling for a toddler. So here are a few tips, gleaned from a number of families, for making the trip as enjoyable as possible for everyone.

1      If your back is up to it, consider carrying your child in a baby/toddler backpack. If you live in Phnom Penh and don’t have your own, someone on the Yahoo group Cambodia Parent Network might lend you one. Contact cambodiaparentnetwork@yahoogroups.com

2      If your toddler is too heavy or active to be carried, make sure they have decent walking shoes that don’t cause blisters (seems like a no-brainer, but we got caught out on this one).

3      Be realistic about what you can achieve: visiting 2 or 3 temples is probably enough for one day.

4      Hire a guide: in kid-friendly Cambodia, a good guide will be sensitive to kids’ needs, such as pointing out all the fantastic animals to be seen on the bas-reliefs at Angkor Wat and the Bayon. Ours even carried our daughter up the steeper staircases so we could all enjoy the view.

5      Stay at a hotel with a pool and make the most of it to take time-out between tours.

Some midrange, kid-friendly hotels recommended by resident expats are the Auberge Mont Royal d’Angkor, the Borann l’Auberge des Temples and the Pavilion d’Indochine. All have pools, gardens and kid-friendly touches. The Majestic Angkor was also recommended for older children (pool but no garden).

If you really want to enjoy the temples at your own pace, consider travelling with another family or other adults and taking turns at childcare and temple viewing.

That said, seeing the temples through the eyes of a child can be an enriching experience. While I remember the breath-taking grandeur of the temples on our 1992 visit, travelling with my daughter made me appreciate the details.

Amongst our friends, the jungle temple of Ta Phrom seems to be the biggest hit with the kids. Visiting early around 8 or 8.30am will get you there ahead of the tour buses.

In Siem Reap, the Butterflies Garden Restaurant is worth a visit. If the butterflies don’t keep the kids occupied, chances are the ponds, bench swing and garden will.

There’s plenty for kids to see at the enclosed Night Market, too, and the juggling cocktail barmen at the fabulous Island Bar in the middle should keep them distracted long enough for you to enjoy a cool drink.

Also recommended are the traditional dance shows. The Apsara Theatre (also referred to as ‘Angkor Village’) on Wat Bo Road has a 6.30-8.00 pm dinner and show—free for toddlers—which our daughter found captivating.

This article was written for an AsiaLIFE guide to Siem Reap.

Phuket

Last stop on our Asian adventure of 2008-09 was Phuket, Thailand’s most populous island and amongst its most popular with foreign tourists. I didn’t really warm to Phuket, and in a bizarre way I was grateful for that: it made it easier in the end to go home.

That said, it wasn’t all bad. We stayed at Kata Lucky Villa, which I’d happily recommend (the photos on the website don’t do it justice), and Kata beach was nicer than I’d expected. The sand was clean and soft, the water calm and clear, and the banana lounges only two-deep. We spent most mornings there, surrounded by Russians and Northern Europeans who, as Roo pointed out, must think it’s Paradise. There’s also a decent place to eat at the southern end of the beach called Kata Seafood, right next door to a bar built beneath a sacred tree.

We visited old Phuket town a couple of times. Established by Chinese traders and tin miners, and there are some well preserved shophouses and other buildings from the 1900s up to the 1960s, especially on and around Thalang Road. We had a great curry lunch at Aroon Restaurant at 124 Thalang Rd; and the shophouse at the China Inn Cafe (also selling textiles and antiques) at 20 Thalang Rd was particularly beautifully restored. We also visited the Phuket Provincial Hall, the setting for the US Embassy in the film The Killing Fields. There’s a terrific walking tour guide available here.

Phuket’s other prime attraction (at least in my opinion) is its drag shows, the most famous and polished of which is Simon Cabaret. The intrigue starts with a line on the brochure, “She is more of a man than you will ever be and even more of a woman”, and I’m willing to bet there are audience members who leave without realising all the performers began life as men.

Simon Cabaret is energetic and great fun, with over-the-top sets ranging from Ancient Egypt to Imperial China, Brazilian Carnivale to a faux rainforest. Numbers are sung in Chinese, Japanese and English — Dreamgirls providing rich material — though surprisingly little in Thai, apart from a traditional Issarn song that starts out as a slapstick by a large, mannish, middle-aged kratoey but ends as a rather poignant performance of ‘I Will Survive’. That performer danced among the audience and planted a sparkly kiss on Roo’s cheek, and for once Tash was not the main attraction in our family.

For her part, Tash was rivetted by the show and all the ‘princesses’. “That was really fun!” she said, as we piled into the minibus to go back to our hotel.

Tickets were 750 baht including door-to-door transport and we felt we got our money’s worth. The showgirls are happy to pose for photos outside after the show, but be aware you have to pay a 100 baht tip per performer in the photo. The most popular performers pull the lesser stars in so they can get tips, too, and it’s wise to be gracious about this. They’re only looking out for each other.

On our last night in Phuket, we watched a captivating sunset over the sea — a novelty for us who live on the southeast coast of Australia — then chanced upon the swanky Kata Beach Resort and Spa offering a buffet dinner in a garden overlooking the beach. This in itself was lovely, especially with Tash on her best behaviour. But we really hit the jackpot when the keyboard player/songstress duo pumping out the slow rock classics gave way to a group of performers I could only describe as ‘Simon Caberet rejects’.

The open-air show was cheesy beyond belief, with performers out of step and wardrobe malfunctions all over the place. But we all loved it! Tash alternated between emulating the dance moves of the ‘fairies’ — there was an excess of feathered wings, headdresses and tail pieces — and sitting at the foot of the stage, absolutely captivated.

It was the perfect last night.

Tash got to choose the destination for our last morning in Phuket, and we spent it at Phuket Zoo. It was pretty ordinary as far as zoos go, but four months later Tash still remembers the dodgy show we saw there and the man putting his head in the crocodile’s mouth.

I wonder how much else she remembers.

We flew home from Phuket via Sydney to Melbourne, arriving home just in time for a heatwave, followed a week or so later by terrible bushfires. Both Roo and I started new jobs within weeks, fortunate to find work and to find employers flexible enough to let us work four days per week, giving us both a day each at home with Tash.

It was never going to be easy settling back in at home. Our year in Cambodia saw the work/life balance tipped very much in favour of life. Back in Melbourne, the scales seem tipped to the other extreme.

But we are trying to keep alive the spirit of The Great Balancing Act by making the most of our days off with Tash and doing our best to get out on the weekends, too.

And so we’ll keep this blog going, with a shift in emphasis from Asia to Australia.

At least for now…

Krabi Town

With Krabi province offering such gorgeous beach destinations, some might not see a reason to venture into Krabi town except in transit to the coast. But there are at least five good reasons to make the trip.

1 Night Market – Top of the list is Krabi’s riverside food market, an area beside the port that fills up with rot ken – vendor carts – in the evenings, selling delicious local food. Atmospheric, highly affordable and packed with locals, the night market alone is worth the trip into Krabi town. In addition to all the vendor carts, there’s a fold-away restaurant, Nong Eang, where you can sit down to fish fried in garlic and pepper or duck soup with noodles, and cold Singha beer. Tash tucked into the local biryani. There’s also carts selling Issarn favourites such as som tam – spicy green papaya salad – dried beef and sticky rice, sweet roti or ‘Thai pancakes’ and every imaginable snack on a stick. There’s a toilet block (squat-style) costing 2 baht to use. The night market is on Thanon Khong Kha, a 5-7 minute walk towards the river from the main songtheaw stop on Thanon Maharat.

2. Neanderthal statues holding up traffic lights - What genius came up with the concept of cavemen carrying traffic lights? Krabi province is the sight of some ancient human remains, but putting that minor point of interest together with traffic control takes special talent. According to one website, “Traffic lights have never been fun, and they rarely qualify as points of interest. Krabi Town saw that as an opportunity.” I can’t believe we didn’t get a photo of them, but there’s one here on the aforementioned website. The traffic lights are on Thanon Maharat at the intersection with Thanon Sukhon.

3. Fortune telling machine, Vogue building – Vogue on Thanon Maharat is Krabi town’s only department store (not counting Tesco Lotus en route to the airport), a quaint collection of clothes and accessories stalls. But the real attraction is on the landing between the first and second floors: an old-fashioned, coin-operated fortune telling machine. Five baht will set the Wheel of Fortune turning; inside a rotund Buddha raises a branch above his head and brings it down on a numbered groove on the wheel. Your fortune is on the corresponding slip of paper in the numbered pigeon-holes in the base of the machine. You’ll need someone who reads Thai (or Chinese) to translate for you. If your fortune isn’t so lucky, roll the slip of paper into a strip and tie it around a tree to alleviate the bad luck. (I was advised to do this, though it didn’t prevent the accidents I’d been warned about: beware of the slipperiness of the freshly mopped tiled footpaths in Krabi town!).

4. Day/night market – on Thanon Sukhon, the main day/night market is a great place to shop for fresh food and to eat lunch or dinner. Try the fantastic geng pum pla, a spicy fish soup typical of the south, made with pumpkin, potato, pear-shaped eggplants and dried fish. The phad khi mao, a stir-fried dish of bamboo shoots and fish balls with chilli is mouth-numbingly good. The most authentic and exotic food in Krabi.

5. Toy shops, Thanon Maharat – one for the parents of infants and toddlers. Krabi’s main street hosts several toy shops with all the things you need to buy ten minutes of reading time. The large newsagency in the same strip has a fabulous selection of colouring-in books, too, some in English, most in Thai–not that it matters, if you’re just buying them for the pictures!

Islands of Krabi province – Part 2

There’s an unofficial hierarchy when it comes to island hopping tours in Krabi. First you do the ‘4 Islands’, followed by the Phi Phi Islands. Then if you still have time, throw in the Hong Islands or ‘5 Islands’ tour. I wonder if there’s a subtext in the tourist information: stay long enough and get rewarded with what is possibly the loveliest of all the island tours.

We returned to Barracuda Tours to cruise the ‘5 Islands’ by longtail boat. First stop, Koh Deng, is a rocky red outcrop where Roo snorkelled and Tash fed green, black and white striped fish from the prow of the boat, sitting with our otherwise purely decorative guide Em.

Next up was Pakbia Island where we had a swim and collected huge shells to decorate the sandcastle built by Canadian twins Roya and Yasmin, whom Tash had befriended on the boat. The twins’ parents Christina and Nadim were taking the girls on a year-long world tour. Watching them made me realise how much easier it is travelling: a) with two children; b) with eight-year-olds. I can’t remember the last time I got to read on the beach!

We stopped for lunch on Lading Island at a small idyllic bay called Paradise Beach where five Thai police were stationed to protect the resident swallows’ nests (a kilo of which fetches 100,000 baht on the export market). These were the most laid-back Thai cops I’ve ever met, which is not surprising as this must be the cushiest police posting in all of Thailand. There was just enough infrastructure on the island – rough-hewn wooden tables, benches and a huge swing – to indulge in the three most important traditional pastimes: eating, sleeping and sanuk (having fun).

Then it was on to the main attraction, Hong Island. Hong meaning ‘room’ in Thai refers to the lagoon in the middle of the island, accessible only at high tide through a narrow chasm. Inside the hong, surrounded on all sides by limestone cliffs, it felt like being let in on a wonderful secret.

To one side of the same island was an exquisite beach: soft white sand, aqua water (‘aqua’ in Thai is si far talay, literally ’sea-blue colour’), limestone outcrops and tropical fish to gaze upon – with or without a snorkelling mask. Tash found a ‘baby pool’ in a cleft among the rocks and Roo and I took turns at swimming with her and with the fish.

Apparently there is an walk that shows how far a boat was tossed inland by the December 2004 tsunami, but we were too enchanted by the beach to drag ourselves off to see it. And true to form, we were having too much fun to take photos – although there is a good one of the beach at Hong Island on Christina and Nadim’s travel blog.

Tash slept wrapped in a towel on my lap during the ride back to Ao Nang. It’s hard to know at times if she really enjoys what we plan for her, or whether she feels obliged to enjoy it because of our enthusiasm. So it was a great moment, as we got off the boat, to have her come out unprompted with, ‘That was fun!’

[As I write this, almost three months to the day since we took the 5 Islands Tour of Krabi, a State of Emergency has been declared in Thailand and parts of Bangkok are on fire. Krabi is a long way from Bangkok, but concerned travellers can check the Paknam Web Thailand Forum Q&A site for updated information on the security situation].