Misadventures in Thailand: Hilarious Tales of Last-Minute Planning and Unexpected Encounters

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Can We Start Over podcast! Lindsey and Britt recount their misadventures in Thailand with three kids.

Their adventure takes an unexpected turn, from their last-minute decision to go to Thailand without proper planning to their resort living and unexpected encounters.
Join them as they navigate the bustling city of Bangkok, ride tuk-tuks, visit Pig Island, and experience the rawness and beauty of Thailand.

Get ready for laughs and unforgettable stories in this episode!

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Transcript

Britt: 1:20

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Cammie Stradover podcast. My

Lindsey: 1:24

name is Brit. And I'm Lindsay. And today we are bringing you in some hot, hot heat,

Britt: 1:31

Thai hot,

Lindsey: 1:33

Thai spicy. We realized we hadn't talked about Thailand and. that it was sort of a bummer of a time. It was a great time and then deteriorated. And we really didn't get the full taste of Thai, of Thai hot that we wanted to because we were just drained. But we did go to Thailand and we did want to share it with you because it was an important part of our trip even though you'll hear in the episode what happened. And y'all,

Britt: 2:03

it's funny. I'm going to toot my own horn here and say

Lindsey: 2:08

it's a funny episode. It's funny. Stay tuned. Prepare to laugh. Before we get into the episode, I want to make sure everyone knows that there's still a couple days to sign up for my creative workshop, Touching Into Creativity. If you want to learn about creativity as an embodiment practice and get out of your thinking mind or creativity as a healing practice, because maybe you've tried every other healing modality, And nothing seems to work. Why not use your creative spirit and essence to express yourself, connect with others, and heal? It's on Thursday, October 19th. You don't have to be live to attend. There'll be a replay. You can sign up at the link in the show notes. One of the best things about this workshop, other than that it's a potent process that you can take and use every day and transform your life, is that it only costs 45. Imagine that. Ooh! Ooh! And let's get into the episode.

Britt: 3:08

I'm charming. I'm charming.

Lindsey: 3:12

Can this

Britt: 3:17

be like, not That's us, honey. Really? That's the way we look. Could you Photoshop this lady's couch

Lindsey: 3:24

out of this video? Yeah, seriously. And the stupid ass fan, the ugliest fan alive. Ugliest fan

Britt: 3:29

alive. She just had to get the ugliest one. Maybe I could put a, uh, No. Can we

Lindsey: 3:33

make a blared background? That's always stupid. I always hate when people do that, honestly.

Britt: 3:37

We're here today to talk about

Lindsey: 3:39

Thailand. Yeah, we went to Thailand. Uh, another episode title for this podcast could just be like, When Your Vacation Goes Entirely Wrong. Right? And that's also

Britt: 3:49

not When the shit falls apart.

Lindsey: 3:52

And yet it is when you just have a bad time and I think it's important to tell the stories of the times when it's a bad time. Yeah,

Britt: 4:02

and disclaimer, this probably doesn't have anything to do with Thailand of why it was a bad time. It was mostly us. It was a weird time. It was a weird timing. Thailand's great. It's amazing. Unless there's something I don't know about Thailand that's not so great, but, um, our experience

Lindsey: 4:19

was not great. Well, and we had a bunch of amazing experiences there, but overall... It was a bummer of a time. Yeah, it got a little sour. Yeah. Thailand, for us, is what happens when you've already been traveling for six months, going from place to place to place, seven months, actually, at that time, and then you... quickly decide somewhere to go and you don't actually feel into it. This is my own lesson. So I'm learning my own lessons in real time and then sharing them with someone. So maybe they can be like, ah, don't do that. Don't feel into where you actually want to go. And then also get a bunch of advice from a bunch of people that is all conflicting. Right. Go here right now. It's the best time of year. Don't go there. It's too hot. It's this. It's that. Go here. Go there. Don't go there. This one's too touristy. And it was so confusing that I was just like, I don't know what the fuck to do. Yeah. That was Thailand in a nutshell for us. And when you go to Thailand. Dear listener, what you're probably going to do is actually plan it out ahead of time because you're smart. And what we did is say, we're going to go on this big, long adventure. Oh, let's go to Thailand while we're still planning Hawaii, Japan. And so there was no time to plan. Yeah, it just didn't happen. So we, how did we get to Thailand? Let's start there. Well. How did we decide on Thailand and when? Um, uh. Do you not remember?

Britt: 5:50

I don't remember, no. It all seems like a blur. But. Here's what happened. Okay, tell me, yeah. Here's what

Lindsey: 5:55

happened. The day, gosh, I mean, I feel like when I say things, I'm like, people are going to think we're such idiots. We were flying to Japan from Hawaii. And the day we were leaving, we were like, Oh, are we going to need to know where we're going after Japan? Oh, yeah. We better book something. Yeah.

Britt: 6:14

For like,

Lindsey: 6:15

Visa reasons? Yeah, yeah, we have to? Because I do think that happens sometimes. Side note, in Japan, they don't care about seeing your return information. No one asked us for that. We didn't have like, return ticket that anyone asked for. Not that that couldn't happen to you. That couldn't happen to you. It didn't happen to us. And maybe that's because we weren't like asking for a lot of time there. Anyway, the day we were flying to Japan from Hawaii, we were like, where do we go after Japan? First sign of a mistake because we've been like volleying back and forth. Where do we go next? Where did we go? Where do we go next? And what we probably should have, what I looking back would have done is just stayed in Japan longer. Absolutely. Because we liked it. It was great. We didn't know what we were going to get into going in there. And so we were like, well, let's just spend three weeks there and then we'll go on to the next place. We should have just spent like six weeks there. Absolutely. And we didn't, and no big deal, but that's what happened. So the day, the morning we were leaving from Hawaii to fly to Osaka, we booked Tokyo to Bangkok in three weeks. We were like, that's our plan. Right, and

Britt: 7:28

because Bangkok was on our list, we wanted to go there, we

Lindsey: 7:31

wanted to see it. Totally, and we, yeah, we really did want to go to Thailand. Um, and then we spent three weeks in Japan, which if you didn't listen to the Japan episode, we had an amazing time there. Go back, listen to that episode. We'll link it in the show notes. And then go to Japan. And then go to Japan. It's incredible, especially if you're a family, especially if you have young kids, or especially if you're just a human. You're gonna have a great time there. And if you're a spirit,

Britt: 7:55

just go. You don't have to You don't even need

Lindsey: 7:57

a ticket. You just get there. Yeah, and probably if you're an alien too. Yeah. Back on track is, we knew we wanted to go to Thailand, we booked the thing really last minute, and then we spent three weeks every day going out and being in Japan. Right. So we would come, and You pair that with, we have three kids, when we come home, everyone wants to crash, so it's not like, and then there's like, work, a little bit of work that we needed to fit in, like, you know, I had like, some sessions with people, we're dealing with massive time change, we went 19 hours in the future. So all of those things, by the time we got done, like, touring around Japan during the day, there wasn't any juice left in the tank to plan what we were going to do in Thailand. We did not care. Right.

Britt: 8:44

And I must say, we have had plenty of wonderful times not planning and just showing up. Word. And just figuring it out. Yeah. Um, and sometimes that goes great and sometimes it doesn't.

Lindsey: 8:54

Yeah. I'm an advocate for both. Right.

Britt: 8:56

Yeah. It works better if you're just like in a new town. When you're going to a new country, however, maybe you should know a little bit before you get there. I don't

Lindsey: 9:03

know. Yeah. Or just actually be okay if it's not going to be that great. Right. Yeah. And there's... We'll get into it, but there's other things we could have done in Thailand to shift and we'll get into that. This is an episode about Thailand, y'all. Are we 20 minutes in and we're finally gonna tell you? The first thing we did in Thailand was we landed. Yeah. At the airport in Bangkok and I will say what I remember about that was it being such a stark contrast to being in an airport in Japan because when we walked out into the terminals, There was like people talking and noise and I was like, I could like feel this more liveliness that I was like, Oh, this is exciting to be just in a completely different experience.

Britt: 9:49

Right. Because as much as we love Japan, it is a very quiet,

Lindsey: 9:52

reserved place. Yeah. Yeah, and so getting to the airport in Thailand, I was like, this is going to be awesome. What we did decide before we got to Bangkok was that we were going to stay in a resort, which is something we really didn't do literally on this trip except for the first night we got to Mexico when we first left Texas. If you want to hear about Baja, that's another episode linked in the show notes. It was amazing. But we stayed at one resort one night and then we've been doing apartments, Airbnbs. For months, so we were like, let's stay at a resort. We need a full break. We need like someone else to pick up the towels for a few days. And this part will feel like a vacation from a vacation. Yeah. And so we stayed at the Anantara. And I'm so glad we did that. It was so fun. And it was kind of like, it was the fanciest experience I've ever had at a resort with kids. would you say? Would you agree with that? Absolutely. Yeah. That I can remember. Yeah, I can't think of anything better. Yeah, so we did the whole thing. We got like the private shuttle from the airport. Someone picked us up with a sign. These, these are not things that are on our everyday experience

Britt: 11:12

list. Let me add real quick, on that shuttle, this was night time when we landed. We drove through Bangkok for an hour through dense city and it was amazing. I had no clue how huge Bangkok was. Yeah. I know we said that about Japan too. Japan as well. Different places. Yeah. Yeah. Coming from the United States where cities are just, you Honestly, kind of small after seeing other cities. It's true. It was fucking enormous. Yeah. Like for an hour driving through skyscrapers and just like huge

Lindsey: 11:41

buildings. Yeah. It was amazing. It was so fun. And the first part of our Thailand experience was So fun. Yeah. It was amazing. We were like living resort life.

Britt: 11:52

I don't know if, if you are a buffet people, but oh my God, the buffet, I, I've never experienced a nice

Lindsey: 11:59

buffet. So we went to Bangkok. We stayed at the Anantara Resort. They have resorts all over the world. Stay in one of them because it's amazing. And we stayed in a suite, which is also something that was like a new experience for our kids, but we were like, let's just do it. Yeah. We stayed in a suite that came with. Access to the private lounge downstairs, which was so fun, so amazing, we like, when we got there to check in, you don't, what do you go to the regular concierge counter or whatever? No, you go to the private lounge and you sit down and they serve you tea while you check in. It was like an experience from start to finish. And that was so fun. And, and I know I like that.

Britt: 12:48

Yeah. The resort was on this beautiful river, and something that really stuck out to me, there were thousands of catfish that were just like boiling the water all over. It was wild. I've never seen anything like it. And it was 24 hours a day. They were just rolling and they would sometimes slap their tails in unison. And I don't know if it was like if a predator was coming or what, but you'd just be sitting out there and just like a whale or something, they would all slap their tails on the surface at once. It was something I had never seen before. Yeah, that was cool. There was a lot of really cool traditional Thai imagery and art

Lindsey: 13:27

everywhere. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful resort. We check in privately because we couldn't be bothered to be with the common people. And then we went to our suite, which had this welcome basket with wine, I don't drink wine, but cool, with More tea, water with all these Thai desserts with fruit like dragon fruit and, and our kids were just like, this is the fanciest thing we've ever done. And kind of we were too, but it was so beautiful. So in that moment, I was like, yeah, this is perfect. We spent a few days just like resort living. We would go downstairs for breakfast. We had private breakfast in the private lounge. We had pool. We just went to the pool. Like, we want to go to the pool again? Let's go to the pool. And we were just kind of like really totally relaxing.

Britt: 15:50

And I should point out at this point, We hadn't thought about what we were going to do after we left this resort.

Lindsey: 15:58

Exactly. We booked this place for four nights? Or five nights?

Britt: 16:03

Uh, yeah, we booked it for a few nights and then decided to stay an extra few nights as well. But we knew we wanted to go to a beach, but that was it. That's when we kind of started digging through, like, Messages

Lindsey: 16:16

from people we had asked

Britt: 16:18

that, uh, was too much

Lindsey: 16:19

information. Right, and you say that we wanted to go to a beach, and that is true, and that's what we decided on, but I think originally I wanted to go north. We did, I think

Britt: 16:29

we were going to try to do both.

Lindsey: 16:30

Yeah, and then someone was saying, Oh, don't go there right now, it's too hot. And that's just another example of like, too much information, it was like information overload paired with tired, overextended nervous system. And so anything someone would say, I'd just be like, Okay, I guess that's something to consider. Right. Instead of actually like, feeling where I wanted to go. Exactly, because

Britt: 16:57

looking back on it, I don't care if it was a little hotter there, I would have loved to have gone there.

Lindsey: 17:01

Right. It was hot. It was hot everywhere. And we're from Texas. It's hot. Yeah. Like, we would have been okay. Yeah. It would have been better for us to see what we actually wanted to see. Right. But Brit is right because. At some point, this full relax mode, we were like, we need to go to a beach. We haven't been to a beach in what at that point was three weeks, four weeks. Cause we just left Maui, which is also kind of funny to be like, we need to go back to the beach. That's how you can tell that you're just like. That for us we just think weren't making the right decisions. Right. So how did we land on where we decided to go? Well,

Britt: 17:36

well let's go back a little bit. We were still having a great time. Yeah. Hanging out. They had a show by the buffet at night that was the story of Hanuman. And that was a crazy synchronicity because we had just come from the Hanuman temple in Maui. Over there it's usually Buddhists, so we didn't expect a Hanuman story. Yeah, yeah. Like a Hindu thing to go on. And the boys loved it because we were just immersed in all this Hanuman imagery before we got there. And then we got there and Eli's like, look, it's Hanuman. It's Hanuman,

Lindsey: 18:08

yeah. It was wild. It was so cool. We were resort chilling. And honestly, we didn't. There's so much to do in Bangkok, and we didn't really do that much, and it felt really good. Really, the only time that we left the resort, and this isn't our, also I want to preface by saying this isn't necessarily our normal mode of travel, because we're normally like, let's go see and do everything, but we just really, Wanted to chill. The only time we left the resort for the day was when we We

Britt: 18:42

took the boat across the river with the boys to kind of walk through the town a little bit And we got to ride on a tuk tuk. It's like a motorcycle that'll fit a whole family It's the best way to describe it. Look it up if you want. And we just rode around the city and it was beautiful. Yeah. It was cool. Like, Japan is so clean and so neat. And then we got to Thailand

Lindsey: 19:06

and it was a little gritty. It was like, has this rawness. And it felt good. It's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like a little like New York or something. Yeah. And it was really nice. And it drove

Britt: 19:16

us through the, uh, flower market. Right? Yeah. There's like a famous flower market

Lindsey: 19:21

there. And Chinatown and like the street. Oh, the gold district. The gold, yeah. There was just like a thousand gold stores. I was like, I need to come back and buy a necklace. Of course I didn't. Yeah. Because I forgot. But it was so fun. You know, we're just riding around this tuk tuk for like 5 for an hour. And that kept the boys so entertained. It was so fun and then that's kind of the one of the only things we really did outside of the resort and then we took so they have a this resort and many most of the hotels and resorts on the river have river shuttles like that's how you're going to get from one place to the other you can go to the mall you can go to the Four Seasons you can go from one place to the To pretty much anywhere in town through the river. So that's, we were riding on the boat, which is also like free entertainment for the kids. Because they could ride a boat all day. Right. And just look in the water, look around. And so that was super fun. And then we went back and went swimming again. And with, an amazing thing about staying at a resort was that we had access to babysitters. Which we hadn't had in a while. And so we totally took that opportunity. They were so nice.

Britt: 20:33

These babysitters worked for the resort. They had like a kids day center there that you could just leave your kids there while you're at the pool or something. But they could also come up to your room and watch the kids. So we took advantage of that. And one night we went out on a dinner cruise on like a traditional longboat. Down this beautiful river at night time where you could see the whole city skyline lit up, all the temples lit up, gold shimmering, it was beautiful and they would announce any time we passed something, oh this is, you know, the, whatever, and it was beautiful. Beautiful, and we ate this amazing multi course meal, glad we got to do

Lindsey: 21:13

that. It was so, it was like the perfect experience of like that resort vacation living where we were like having a fancy. We had a full fancy. And it was so fun. The night that we did get a babysitter, Eli got sick and they like texted me immediately. They told me he threw up. Sorry if you don't want to hear that in your earbuds or whatever you're listening to. But they were just like, he's fine. We think he just ate too much pizza. Cool. He seems fine now. He's totally happy. So we were just like, okay. I think they even sent us a

Britt: 21:50

video of him being like, I'm okay. Yeah, yeah,

Lindsey: 21:52

yeah. We were like, we're just going to take advantage of this. He, he was like heavily eating pizza at that point.

Britt: 22:00

So much pizza. We were ordering room service all the time. Man, we went all

Lindsey: 22:03

out on that one. We were like living it up. And. Now looking back, that throwing out was a little bit of foreshadowing. But we decided where we were going to go next, probably that next day, when we were talking to someone at the pool, someone vacationing from England. And she was saying, we're going to Koh Samui, we love Koh Samui, we go there all the time, it's like our favorite place, we've been everywhere, all of these things. And so we were like, oh, we should go there. And that's how we decided. And that seems

Britt: 22:38

nice too, like, that seems like a great way to be like, yeah, let's go to that place.

Lindsey: 22:42

It's true. Right. I think just after the overload of everything, it was an easy way to make a decision. Right.

Britt: 22:51

And speaking of foreshadowing, let me throw in this little tidbit. When you're traveling in Bangkok, there are plenty of cabs and they're super cheap and they're easy to get everywhere. Put that in your pocket for later. Put that in your pocket for later.

Lindsey: 23:05

The second time we left the resort with everyone was to see the Golden Buddha. And we did get a cab and we did sit in a lot of traffic. And it was, that was actually a little bit, it was interesting because the reason I felt so drawn to Thailand, other than that it's beautiful, In so many ways, but it's like, Oh, my teachers learned so much here, you know, so I want to like go be in these places where. My teachers learned from their teachers and then we went to the Golden Buddha and it's very busy. It's like a very popular tourist spot, but like the boys just were like, cool, let's go. They were like so acting like teenagers about it other than putting the coins in the bowls. They did like that.

Britt: 23:52

And then it started pouring rain while we were there too on top

Lindsey: 23:54

of that. Yeah, so they were kind of, they were just like, we want to go back to the hotel, which is a really interesting thing when you're traveling with kids. Because I think, I like to think our kids are pretty open and then sometimes they will just straight up be like, I want to go home and be like, we don't have one. Our home is the hotel. No, they're like, we want to go back to the room and you just have to balance that. That is traveling with kids. They're going to want to. Not do what you want to do. That's true. So then, we went to Koh Samui.

Britt: 24:28

Yeah, baby. We took a little plane. We took a

Lindsey: 24:31

little plane. A fairly small plane. Medium sized plane, maybe? From a big airport, we took a little plane, and we went to the island of Koh Samui. It's a

Britt: 24:40

pretty quick flight, was it

Lindsey: 24:41

30 minutes or something? I think it's an hour, like right at an hour. And when we're landing at Koh Samui, this little island, our plane caught like a wind gust right when it was about to touch down onto the tarmac and had to go back up. We bounced off the ground. We bounced off the tarmac, tarmac went back up into the air and had to make a giant circle around. The entire island, and I was, every possible, like, nightmare scenario was going through my head. Which isn't always normal for me, but for some reason...

Britt: 25:17

Well, I should point out, no one said anything about it. We just bounced off the runway, no one mentioned anything over the loudspeaker, no one walked around like, oh, it's okay, we're just gonna circle and try it again. Not a single thing. So we spent 10 or 15 minutes just like... What the fuck? And nobody on the plane was talking. Everyone was just sitting there quietly. We're looking over at the boys. who are like in a seat in front of us, I think. Just being like, are they okay? Do they know what just happened? Yeah. And just quietly not trying to freak out.

Lindsey: 25:47

I know. I don't, man, it freaked me out. Yeah. It stressed me out. It was fine. They just landed. We landed at the airport. We took a little Six Flags Disneyland shuttle from the airplane to the terminal. We got all of our things. Oh,

Britt: 26:10

first thing that, uh, second thing that went wrong, first was the plane, uh, bouncing. Second was that we got up there and our Airbnb hadn't sent a car to pick us up like they said they were going to.

Lindsey: 26:22

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I was like, when I was talking with the person, yes, that was so confusing. I'm so glad you remembered that. I was talking with the person through Airbnb. Of course, we booked it last minute, but I was like, can you send a, you know, like a cab or a car? And they said they would, and then there was no one there. So we're like, what's going on? And then we had to call them. And there's this language barrier, they don't really understand what I'm saying, I'm asking, I don't really understand what they're communicating. So that was really confusing. And then finally I was asking, like, because the address on Airbnb, and we still need to do the episode about Airbnb because... There's so many frustrating things about Airbnb, especially when you're depending on it over and over again. You just notice, like, all the cracks. And the address on Airbnb is in the water. So that's not a place. Yeah, you

Britt: 27:17

look it up on a map, and we showed the person at the taxi stand. She's like, where is it? Showed her and she's like, that's in the water. That's in the ocean. And that comes up a lot with Airbnb. They do not give you the right address. The correct address. Yeah, and they don't tell you that either. You just have to contact them and they'll be like, oh, here's the real address.

Lindsey: 27:35

What is that? It's confusing. And that was another thing on the phone where I was like, so they didn't understand what I was like asking. How do I actually get there? Is this the address? And finally they understood. We got it sorted. We got in a van cab that was like solid gold inside. It had

Britt: 27:56

subwoofers

Lindsey: 27:57

everywhere. Super pimp mobile. It was a bangin party bus. It was like, yeah.

Britt: 28:03

And that, I'll, one thing about that island is that a lot of the cabs are party buses. And that was

Lindsey: 28:10

badass. Yeah, yeah. They're like two chain mobiles. Yeah. So then we got to our Airbnb and What were you feeling at that point?

Britt: 28:20

At that point, I was happy to be there. We walked in, I was like, oh, this is, this is beautiful. Look at that beach. It was a beautiful beach. Yeah. Just like... Gorgeous. The house was like a traditional Thai house, looked really great.

Lindsey: 28:34

That's how I was feeling. Yeah. Me too. This is when I was like starting to feel like it reminded me of Costa Rica when I went to Costa Rica almost 20 years before because it was very beautiful and very basic. Yeah. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with basic, but I just felt like, Oh, this reminds me of Costa Rica. So we hung out there. We chilled kind of the first thing on our list every time we're traveling somewhere is we need to get some groceries because we're a family. So we're not going to eat out every meal. Our kids want breakfast at like 6am. So we tried to find some groceries. That proved impossible.

Britt: 29:17

So it turns out the part of town we were

Lindsey: 29:20

in. Or the part of the island, yeah. Yeah, the part of

Britt: 29:22

the island we were on. Was a little isolated. You couldn't just pop out and get a taxi. They weren't just driving by, right? So we had to figure out we had to ask the people at the I guess it was kind of like a hotel It was like six little houses. Yeah, and then a rest like a tiny rest breakfast restaurant and You call the breakfast restaurant, and they're the people that own the houses, I don't know. And so they hooked us up with a private taxi. Most people, most of the people that work there didn't speak much English, so it was kind of hard to communicate. My bad, not theirs. And so they got us a number for a private taxi, and we ended up using this private taxi most of our trip. Yeah. But you would call them, and then they would show up 15, 20 minutes later. Take you wherever you're going. So, we would have to go to a different part of town to get groceries. But most of the groceries were like gas station level. It was all like lots of food coloring, lots of, it was all just like junk food.

Lindsey: 30:24

Right. Unless you're like at the market getting vegetables or protein. And that's just not fully what we were looking for. Especially because the Airbnb we were in was like very basic. I think there was a hot plate. There was a fridge, there was a microwave, but it's not, you're not gonna like, cook meals really there, so it needed to be easy. Yeah,

Britt: 30:46

and, you know, no shame to junk food, I eat plenty of junk food, but when I'm going to get groceries, I want better options so I feel good, you know, and that wasn't around. Uh, same with restaurants, there were a few restaurants like along the beach that we could walk to, but only a few of them had vegan options and they just weren't the best.

Lindsey: 31:08

Yeah, it just kind of felt like everything took

Britt: 31:11

effort. Right, and this is like, as soon as we get there, we're figuring this out. Right. And let me throw down my, I, I am hot natured and I like always need an air conditioner on or a fan or something because I'm a big wussy and It was extreme. It was very hot and extremely muggy there. So I just had this kind of general Discomfort where my body just felt numb and I just it was hard for me to relax So making these decisions I I had kind of a short temper

Lindsey: 31:42

It's like, it's like when you're already not have your, you don't have your creature comforts and then also you're physically uncomfortable or something. That's exactly what it was.

Britt: 31:50

So that was just a general feeling from my whole experience on Adaline. Yeah. Going into everything else. So I was already, Not feeling my best.

Lindsey: 31:59

It just, like, adds another layer because you've, like, been camp I mean, we've been camping and stuff and Yeah,

Britt: 32:04

and that's fine. Yeah. Yeah, but there's just a lot of emotion going on there. And then eating junk food, feeling extra bad on top of that.

Lindsey: 32:12

Yeah. Yeah, we're every Yeah, a lot of our Several of our meals were kind of just like, Eugh. All right, well, I'll eat this toast. Yeah. Sure. So, that's what we did for a few days. Granted, we're on a beautiful We're right on the water, on a beautiful beach. That was amazing. I must say

Britt: 32:28

about this beach, it was beautiful to sit next to, but you couldn't swim in it because it was maybe knee deep for like a half a mile.

Lindsey: 32:39

Right. And pretty rocky. And

Britt: 32:40

lots of rocks. There was a reef out there, so you couldn't, between the shore and the reef, it was only maybe like 20 or 30 feet. So you could sit in it, but that's really all you could do right there. But there weren't very many people around it either, so it was like having

Lindsey: 32:54

our own private beach. Yeah, yeah, and it was good for the kids because they just want to, like, dig around and find rocks. So it was the perfect place to just, like, sit in the water, but not really. Yeah, you're not really going to swim, and it was beautiful, and that was kind of like our first day or two there. We were just getting our bearings, figuring out that there wasn't the best food options for us, maybe we're also kind of picky. I'd like

Britt: 33:20

to throw in that there were no cobras on this trip. We didn't see a single cobra. Yeah.

Lindsey: 33:24

I was hoping to see. I saw a sign for a cobra show, which is so sad. Yeah, no thanks. So sad.

Britt: 33:29

I want to see a wild cobra. Ugh. Saw plenty of, uh. Centipedes,

Lindsey: 33:34

no cobras. Yeah, and then something that exponentially added to Brit's general discomfort and the general discomfort of the entire team is that Eli got sick, like I mentioned in, in uh, Bangkok and then that went away and then he got sick again. And this time it was like, oh, this is a stomach bug because he just kept getting sick for like a day and we would maybe try to go somewhere or And then he would get sick. For every family person who ever has passed around a stomach bug, you know when it starts. Like, oh shit, we're all going down. And that's exactly what happened. Eli got it, and then Jack got it, and then I got it but I didn't actually get sick, I just felt horrible for two days and like couldn't eat anything, and then Otis got it, and then Britt got it. And it

Britt: 34:32

was, and like I was saying, there weren't good groceries and we were kind of stuck at home because no one wanted to go out because they didn't feel good. So we're kind of stuck at this house eating food we don't like. And also it was, like I said, it was hot and muggy and this house, even though it was beautiful, it doesn't cool down. There was like a split AC, but unless you were standing right in front of it. It all just leaked out through the, the boards because it was kind of a shack. There was no insulation or anything. Yeah. So it was very uncomfortable and everyone was sick. And everyone was sick. And so at this point, none of us even have an appetite and we're like, we're in Thailand. Thai food is like our favorite food and we can't even eat

Lindsey: 35:13

it. Like my least favorite, I would rather everyone have the flu. than everyone have a tum a tummy bug. It is the worst. And when you have to clean all the sheets, clean all the towels, like twice a day, and you have to ask someone to do it because there's no washer and dryer. So I would just be like throwing everything onto the porch and then being like, I'm so sorry, but everyone got sick. Can you clean this up? And... Who was it? I can't remember which kid it was, did get sick in the taxi and I felt so bad and then the private taxi that we did end up using, they were the nicest people, his husband and wife. They were so sweet. That was an upside is like everyone we met so many nice people and they were two of them. They were so wonderful. The wife would like stop at 7 Eleven and get the boys chocolate bars. Anyway, one of our kids threw up, like threw up in their car. Yeah, paint

Britt: 36:15

him a picture.

Lindsey: 36:17

It was a lot. And they were, and they were just like, it's okay, don't worry, it's okay. And that was so nice. Yeah. That was so for sure. Yeah, yeah. So for like four or five days, it seems like, we were just in this cycle of, okay, one of us is sick, and everyone feels awful, and everyone's drained, and... There's not really anything good to, like, replenish us and that's what we were doing. Right. And then we'll go sit in the water and in the ocean for a little while and then come back in. So that's what we were doing. Then when everyone felt better, we were like, all right, we're ready to go do something. So Brit booked a tour because we heard, you know, there's. We heard there was cool things to do, and one of the things was...

Britt: 37:08

Pig Island. Doesn't that sound fun? Pig Island? An island where pigs swim around and you can pet them. Cute little

Lindsey: 37:15

pigs. Beautiful island. Beautiful island. You should see the pictures, y'all. Take a little

Britt: 37:20

boat out there. Oh my gosh, it looks so amazing. That was not the

Lindsey: 37:24

case. That was not the case. You take a long boat to an island that's very close. And you swim with adorable pigs. That's the sell. The reality was you do get on a longboat. The water was extremely choppy. It was hard to get there, right? Yeah. It took a while to get there. It took a while to get there. It wasn't as bad. And then you got, we got to this island that's essentially three little shacks with all these pigs. Pigs everywhere.

Britt: 37:58

What we were expecting was like, Oh, this is where the wild pigs live. And they, you can kind of like hang out with the pigs. Yeah. But this felt like, uh, they just let the pigs breed. Like somebody brought some pigs there, and they just overran the place. So there's little tiny brand new baby pigs, there's huge giant pigs, but there was like a thousand pigs.

Lindsey: 38:18

Yeah, and they were adorable. And the boys did love the pigs. But it's like one of those ultimate tourist... Attraction traps. So there's just 50, 60, I don't know how many boats were right there on this one little beach pulling up, people were pouring off the boats, and then you go to this, you look at, there's some pigs, the water's not super swimmable. It was a cloudy day when we were there, that's beside the point, they can't control the weather, but, and then there's like one little shack that sells Sprite and alcohol and chips. I don't want any of those.

Britt: 38:54

They also, there's a, there's a restaurant there where you could get like hot dogs and stuff, but it wasn't open yet.

Lindsey: 39:02

Oh, yeah. So the. So the tour was, take a boat to Pig Island, hang out with pigs, eat lunch, you know, have a beautiful lunch there, and none of that was

Britt: 39:14

true. It was also, there was trash everywhere, because I mean, there's not like a trash truck coming to pick everything up, so. Behind, you know, a tree here and a tree there, there's just a giant pile of stinky garbage and flies.

Lindsey: 39:25

And then you're like telling a two year old like, Oh, don't touch the trash. Don't touch the pig shit. Yeah. Don't touch that one pig. There's also like lots of pigs that you're not supposed to touch because they're not that cool with it. And that's also okay. That's not someone's responsibility, but it's just another layer of hilarity to our day. And I should have

Britt: 39:48

known these weren't just wild pigs, you know what I mean? I feel kind of bad now realizing, like, these are just, like, trapped pigs that these people are

Lindsey: 39:56

making money off of. I don't know if they were really tra I mean, they definitely weren't trapped. They were all just, they were free ranging. Yeah, you're right, you're right. They were definitely free ranging. And they like the trash, so it's fine with them. They're probably having the best. Um, it's like, kinda seem like every group of people that got off the boat looked around for about five minutes and was like, okay, I'm over this. Pretty quick

Britt: 40:19

we were like, kinda ready to go. We were ready. So Lindsey's like, alright, go see if our, our, and this boat was just us and our driver, right? Go see if the driver's ready to go. I go over to the driver and he's like, no, there's a storm coming.

Lindsey: 40:32

He pointed at a storm and he was like, we can't go. We gotta wait,

Britt: 40:35

like 30 minutes. We gotta wait 30 minutes. So we go and. A storm comes and it's pouring rain and everybody's like huddling under this one tiny hut. Like 60 ish people. And I'm fine. I'm like, this is kind of nice. Yeah, it wasn't like scary or anything. I was just like, look what we're doing. Look at this situation we're in. Kids weren't liking it, so that makes it uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah. Pretty much any of these experiences, if it would have just been Lindsey and I, I think we would have been fine and gotten through it fine. But having the kids, you just go into this mode where you're like, I need to make these kids comfortable or, I don't know.

Lindsey: 41:11

And like make sure they're safe. Make sure

Britt: 41:13

they're safe, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And we never felt unsafe. But it was also like, okay, now there's this huge storm coming out of the island. There was

Lindsey: 41:21

just nothing fun or comfortable about it other than there were some pretty cute little piggies. Right.

Britt: 41:27

So finally when the storm lets up, they take us over to

Lindsey: 41:30

another island. Which is super close. And this island is more of the same minus pigs. So like minus the cute. It was some buildings, a restaurant that did have, that had meals. And then some, like, secret piles of trash. And, uh, there was other tourists there. That they went on like a tractor ride to one of the, um, temple, there was a little temple on the island and we didn't do that because I was like, there's no way the boys will want to ride on that little truck. Anyway, all of their faces when they were coming back from the tractor ride, they looked like, Why the fuck am I here? What am I doing? I don't understand why I'm on this island.

Britt: 42:13

We were there on that island for a little too long. Finally, we had lunch. There

Lindsey: 42:17

was a swing. There was a swing. So that entertained the boys. We ate some

Britt: 42:20

french fries and then it comes time to go, right? So we hop back in this boat and the boys are excited because they get to go home now. But. The water from this storm is so choppy, we were bouncing in the air. I mean, it felt like the boat was going to fall over. All the kids are screaming, asking if they're going to die. Crying!

Lindsey: 42:43

Even Otis, he was crying, like, he was crying so much. And he doesn't get scared easily, he's like... Because he's not like... He doesn't have the fear. Yeah, he's still like, not with it enough to be like, what's happening? But all, we were... Completely soaked, like water was coming over the side of the boat and just literally, it was like we were swimming.

Britt: 43:05

Right, and if you've ever driven a boat, you know that you need to hit the waves at

Lindsey: 43:10

an angle, right? Ever been on a boat with your uncle or anyone that's like, tells you to hit them at an angle? Not

Britt: 43:16

this motherfucker. He hits them head on and we shoot straight up in the air and slap down, fall out of our seats. Oh my god, we're covered. We're just like, soaking wet like we're swimming. And, um, I don't know, to me it's fine. I've been in situations like that before. But the boys are scared and then you want to make them happy. I

Lindsey: 43:39

was just like, the boat right? That's also my perception. There could have been nothing else to do. It is open water that you're going over on a long tail boat. That might be the only way to do it. I mean, it's like four feet wide. I never, I never want to do that again. So we got back to the place where we got on the boat and we were completely drenched. And then we ate some ice cream and then we went home. And

Britt: 44:06

that was Pig Island, baby. Don't go to Pig Island.

Lindsey: 44:09

Maybe it's fun. Maybe it was the wrong time of year. It's fucking not fun. If we went, if it was like technically the rainy season. It's also a

Britt: 44:17

place where you can't really swim. So, throwing

Lindsey: 44:20

that out there as well. Right, right. If you want to see some pigs, there are 15, 000 other better situations for you to go see some pigs. Absolutely. For sure. For sure. So, that was that. That was that. And that was, that was like a real stamp after. Everyone being sick, eating some gas station food. Then we went to Pig Island where we were just like, what is this place? What is this experience that we're having? This is not fun.

Britt: 44:47

So, our next big outing, we went to an elephant sanctuary. And I vetted this one. They're great. I stand by this one. This was a good experience. It was good, yeah. They rescue these elephants from bad situations because in Thailand, there's a lot of elephant tourism. Where these elephants are trained to, like, pick people up with their trunks and get a picture with them and do all this stuff to do elephant rides where they have these collars on them that Dig spikes into their skin right so a lot of these rescued elephants have scars all over them from these spikes digging into them It's terrible, but here they're just free ranging. They're amazing They love being with people because that's how they were brought up and now that they're treated right They're really interested to be around you

Lindsey: 45:33

filled up our bags with bananas and these little rice cake things And we just got to like go feed elephants and meat elephants And learn about the elephants. It was such a cool experience. The boys. Loved it. It was amazing. It was perfect for a family. No cobras. No cobras. But it was cool. The food was all vegetarian. Yeah, that

Britt: 45:55

was awesome. Got to have a great meal. Yeah. Yeah, a nice buffet. It was nice. I gotta say, let me tell y'all, pad thai is like one of my favorite foods ever. And it's hard to find it vegan in some places. And boy, I was so excited to just have all the Pad Thai I could eat. Even though I was just coming off being sick and could only eat a little bit. Right,

Lindsey: 46:13

right, right. That was a good day in Koh Samui when we went to the Elephant Sanctuary. And if you ever find yourself in Koh Samui or anywhere in Thailand, find a really good... And make sure, like Britt said, vet the elephant sanctuaries because there's even some, you know, that'll say like, we're a sanctuary, but they're not really. Find the good ones, go see elephants because they're amazing animals.

Britt: 46:37

Absolutely. Another thing we really liked is the night markets and these are all over Thailand, but the ones in Koh Samui were fun. There's small ones, big ones, one by the mall, you know, so.

Lindsey: 46:50

Yeah, pretty much everywhere there was a night market and it's food, vendors. Almost every single night, it was bands playing. So we'd just walk around, see what they have, get super cheap food. Get sick.

Britt: 47:05

Get maybe I think that's what made probably made us sick. I don't know. I hate to be judgy about it, but, uh, it wasn't the cleanest, uh, conditions. It was pretty dirty.

Lindsey: 47:15

Yeah. But So at this point, we'd been on Koh Samui for about a week. And also with no plan of where we were going after.

Britt: 47:23

So when we did start thinking about what are we going to do next, right? We're thinking Bali, because that was a must do on our trip, right? So we look up tickets to Bali and like, oh, those prices look pretty nice. Let's revisit this tomorrow and then we'll, we'll book these tickets. Tomorrow comes around, we look them up, and the prices have jumped way up. Yeah. And also, it meant if we were going to get them for a more reasonable price, we were going to have to stay another week or two weeks. Until the ticket prices went down, I don't know, became a thing. So, at this point, we were still not having the best time. And we're like, well, let's look at tickets

Lindsey: 48:02

to... We just kind of started looking around everywhere. But without really an idea of like... Nothing sounded great, honestly. Even, even Bali, I was like, I don't know. We were looking at Airbnbs, and there wasn't really anything that good that would fit us. And we were like, how long do we stay? Do we stay a month? Everything just felt so... Murky. And this is

Britt: 48:26

where the wheels came off on the whole trip, I think. This was like, this was the low point where it was a lot more going on. It had nothing to do with Thailand,

Lindsey: 48:36

you know, it was us. Totally. Right. Other than Pig Island and the boat. No, I'm just kidding. So, also, another. I mean, we're like calling in that experience even because we're like, just, yeah, so wonky. Right.

Britt: 48:49

So, we decide Melbourne, Australia. It's not super far. We wanted to go out of Australia, I wanted to go to Melbourne. A lot of my favorite music is from there. I felt like this was a pilgrimage. Gotta get to Melbourne. So we're like, fuck it, let's do this, Melbourne. This also requires us to stay for one more week and go see a movie. Another red flag. So, yeah, we had to stay another week. But this week we decided to book a different Airbnb in a different part of the island. Right. And that up leveled us

Lindsey: 49:22

a little bit. Right. That was a better experience. Way closer to better grocery store. That was in a mall. It was so funny to be like only for the, I don't know why I felt like the mall was so comforting because I don't care about the mall. Right. But there was something about You're

Britt: 49:38

going from like a shack. Yeah, yeah. On a beach with piles of trash everywhere. To a mall.

Lindsey: 49:45

I don't know. To a place where you can like, get something organic or whatever.

Britt: 49:49

And let me, there's a huge wealth disparity there. So like you're either Totally. In like a beautiful resort. Or on the other side of the street, our taxi drivers pointed out their house as we were going by and it was literally a shack. The roof was just corrugated tin on top of some stuff. There was a huge wealth, wealth

Lindsey: 50:08

disparity there. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it's, it's like fueled by tourism. And that's like this underlying thing that you're just so aware of when you're traveling for a long time. And you're not always in a resort or something like that. It's like you just see. Exactly, the disparity, and like, I can imagine if I was feeling this weird energy there, of like, what is this place? Imagine that for the last three years, their lifeline and their livelihood was completely obliterated by a global shutdown. And like no one's traveling and people even told us that like no one's no one's been coming here until like now it's starting to pick back up right

Britt: 50:52

so and it didn't seem like any of that wealth was trickling down to people and that could have just been because of the shutdown I don't know but it did feel very sad and that it and It made me feel a lot better about paying extra for the taxis there. The taxis were all way more expensive, but the people driving the taxis were so amazing. They needed that money and I was

Lindsey: 51:15

happy to give it to them.

Britt: 51:17

And when I'm in the position, I would love to figure out a way to help support more people in Koh Samui. Yeah, yeah. Or

Lindsey: 51:25

places like that. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Because there's like a ton of small businesses. And they are just like trying to make it just like anybody else and it hasn't been easy. Right. You know? So we up leveled, we up leveled baby. We went to a different Airbnb that was a lot more comfortable, uh, also on a beach, not a swimmable beach. I had a cool pool right by a big, the big golden Buddha that's there on Koh Samui. So that was cool. We could walk there actually. It was nice, but it was still that feeling of a little bit tourist trap y was what I felt. You know, I felt a little bit like. Just kind of closed in. Sometimes I, sometimes that was even fun, even on that. You can like tap in and be like, let's go walk down the street where they sell fake Louie's. Yeah. And just talk to people and, you know, have a good time. And then sometimes it can be like, okay, I just like. Want something to be easy, right, and

Britt: 52:21

I'll say we, we felt like we were just running out the clock. Totally. It was like, is it time to go? Yeah, that's kind of how we were feeling. Yeah, we did find a great coffee shop that was in the back of someone's house. Yeah, we would go there every morning and this person Peachy would make us

Lindsey: 52:36

this great coffee. We are definitely buying one of those coffee. It was like a Hand press espresso machine that we are buying. With, like, the big ice. It was the best. Yeah.

Britt: 52:50

Yeah, it was like cocktail ice. Yeah. Like the

Lindsey: 52:52

big cubes. Yeah. And they served it in a cocktail glass. Yeah.

Britt: 52:55

Fantastic. Uh, we ate some okay food. We, uh, saw some

Lindsey: 53:00

shit. We went to a pizza place.

Britt: 53:03

That was good. Yeah. We did

Lindsey: 53:04

some shit there. We went to the mall. several times also because the mall had a, um, arcade, arcade, and the kids were just like, yes, we want to go to the arcade. And we couldn't really think of much else to do. Nothing else sounded that great. So we went to the arcade a lot. The best I, from what I could gather in Koh Samui, it's like the best beaches are surrounded by resorts. So either need to be staying at the resort or they're probably public. You can probably walk through, but we didn't really like have. gear or whatever to like do a beach day. Yeah, and like I said, we were just counting. We were just like, we're ready. Yeah, so we really kind of took it easy. Right. We did meet at our Airbnb some Texans. Oh, yeah. And that was really cool. That was like one of those little special synchronicities to me. The people right across from us, they were from Houston and they were nomadic now and they were traveling with their... Elderly father slash father in law, who was so nice, we met him first and he was showing us that there was an eagle that would fly by the pool every day, twice a day. At the same time every day. At the same time. So we could map it. Yeah, yeah. We were like, oh, let's go see the eagle. And they were just so nice. Again, it just it feels good everywhere we go. We meet like the nicest people. Yeah

Britt: 54:23

Oh, and let's say we have to I can't stress this enough all the people in Thailand were so nice So nice, so happy to talk a lot I feel like a lot more people knew English there than in in Japan even

Lindsey: 54:37

Yeah, so yeah,

Britt: 54:38

yeah, yeah, maybe a little bit more than them. Yeah, but they were so happy to talk, hang out. They were so nice, so helpful. They were very, it was like a very genuine feeling.

Lindsey: 54:48

Yeah, and they love the kids. Yeah, so much. Like I mentioned the one taxi driver, she would buy our kids chocolate bars. And she loved them so much. And then we would, then we had a second taxi driver that drove one of the pimp vans, and he loved the kids so much. Just everywhere we went, everyone was so nice. So again, you can tell it's an us problem. Yeah. For why we didn't like this place. And yeah, like Britt said, we were riding the clock out, so. Eventually, it was time for us to go. And that's what we did. And I do remember this relief getting to the airport of just being like, ah, this part has ended.

Britt: 55:34

Yeah.

Lindsey: 55:35

And I don't know if you remember this, but then we got to Bangkok. This is another part. From Koh Samui. From Koh Samui. We had to fly back to Bangkok. Yeah, we flew to Bangkok to take our flight to Melbourne. And this is another aspect of what just feels funny as people that are telling you guys about traveling and how many times we didn't pre plan. But we got to the flight to check in for our Melbourne flight and they were like, Oh, do you have your Australian visas ready? Oh, I forgot about that. And I was like, what? And I had no idea that that's what you were supposed to do. So we all had to sit down. And it took a while because you have to do one for each person. Again, you would probably, you guys probably all know this because you actually look up where you're going to share it because that's just another real part of travel. So even that part being done and us going to the next place, we were like, Oh, okay, here's another way that we. Could have planned better and didn't and it took 30 minutes we sat on, we sat on the airport floor for 30 minutes while I filled it all out and then you have to wait for them to get approved but it's very fast and then we could check in for our flight but that was funny, um, because it was just another layer of things not really going right and then we got to go to the like fast lane for our flight. Security, but it took so long, do you remember? They were like, Oh, you have kids, which is so nice. A lot of other countries will like just send you through the faster security just because you have kids with you. Fantastic. We would

Britt: 57:22

never do that here in the US. So awesome. You

Lindsey: 57:24

would definitely have to pay here. So we went to the faster checkpoint, but then it took us like three times as long. And then it was nighttime, we ate that sticky rice we talked about, and then we got on our night flight to Australia. Nice. That's it. That's it. We don't know if you gained any tips about Thailand from this episode, but at least it's funny to hear our story of... mild discomfort, but then becomes major discomfort when you can't handle discomfort.

Britt: 57:57

And as I mentioned earlier, I feel like that was when the wheels kind of came off the whole trip, not just Thailand. So it was like the air

Lindsey: 58:05

sucked out

Britt: 58:05

of it. Yeah, there's more to it. And we'll get to that in the Melbourne episode. Totally. But Melbourne, we had a great time in Melbourne too. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for

Lindsey: 58:15

listening. All right. We'll see y'all later. Bye bye. Bye.