Asian Paparazzi - Celebrity Status

Here in Thailand, the people are very friendly, and they seem to enjoy babies like most other cultures do. However, Asians have a particular love for babies like our Adam, because the light hair and round blue eyes awes them. (I generalize and say Asians because we encountered Korean tour groups and Chinese, as well as the native Thai people here and the reaction has been universal.)

From the moment we landed in the airport and a security guard asked to take a photo of him (which had me very concerned at first!), we’ve had frequent questions of people asking to take pictures with Adam. And those are the nice people, the ones who ask. Usually, the Asians ninja-in, snap a photo, and ninja-out as you can see from my stalker photo evidence below.

This is not the best quality photo because I had to snap it quickly as we were walking, but this is me taking a creeper picture of two Asian women taking creeper pictures of Adam. Grandpa was holding him and walking a ways ahead of us, and I noticed numerous Asians come up behind him and take sneaky photos of Adam. 

If you ever want to feel like a celebrity, take a blond haired blue-eyed child to Asia and simply walk around. They will whip out their smart phones and start snapping. As we stroll around and visit various places, we have gotten the Asians taking “creeper shots” (without us knowing), ones who pop in (knowingly pop in and take a snap), ones who ask for his picture, and ones who pose with him while others take the picture.

This woman popped in front of us as we walked. 

Classic Asian photo taking position. 

Sometimes it can get a bit overwhelming when there’s a tourist group and one or two notice Adam and stop us to take a picture. Then the others in the group turn to see what they’re taking a picture of and decide they want one to, whether because they like him or simply because everyone else got a picture of the fair child, but then a small crowd begins to form and as they slowly surround you, you began to fear you’re being mobbed…

Everytime we went out to eat, it was almost a guarantee that the waitresses would abduct him and carry him around with them from table to table. 


It has been an interesting and often fun cultural experience, and if you happen to have a blonde haired blue-eyed child you plan on taking with you to Asia, be prepared for the Asian mobs!

Our Anniversary and Thai Massages

My DH and I got to celebrate our anniversary here in Thailand! Our day started when my sweet hubby served me breakfast in bed, our infamous healthy pancakes topped with fresh Thai fruits. Healthy and delicious!

Later that day we had Thai massages. My hubby’s parents were very gracious, and ordered the massages “to-go” I guess you could say? The masseuses came to the house and setup there for a two-hour couples massage session. (With Adam hanging out with his grandparents, hoorah!)

A two hour Thai couple’s massage session sounds both romantic and exotic, and while it was an interesting experience, and most definitely exotic, I don’t know that it was romantic, or my style massage…  It was far too painful to be romantic. I think I’m more of a Spa sort of person, lay the hot rocks on me and perhaps do a light oil massage. Thai massages, however, are intense!

We wore our own comfortable clothes, and the massages were given on the floor, as is traditional. They folded their hands and murmured a brief prayer (or perhaps blessing? I don’t speak Thai so I’m not positive which it was…) before beginning the massage. There are many components to a Thai massage, part is to get you stretched out, and I was told part of the objective is to assist in circulation to rejuvenate the body. Both parts were rather painful, but the assistance of circulation was the worst! The masseuse would lean on various parts of the body (generally in the vicinity of an artery) and apply firm pressure. Just as I was getting tingly numb and could feel the restricted blood flow throbbing, she would release the pressure and the blood flow would rush back into its various channels.

They started with the legs and worked their way up the body ending with the head, rotating the body as needed to reach all sides. The masseuse my husband got was a smaller, older woman, while I received a rather large younger woman. I recall upon several occasions when her full body was putting pressure on me, lamenting that I had been given the bigger girl. “Would it be rude to ask her to sit on my husband instead, in trade for the smaller woman to sit on me?” I thought. And no joke, she often sat on me - on her knees - with her full weight.

She also enjoyed quickly pulling and snapping my toes and fingers out. This practice was fairly successful on my toes, however she had difficulty and frequently no success popping my fingers out, which on numerous occasions resulted in my entire arm jerking downward. She told me in her thick accent that I had “Bad fingers” and sadly shook her head back and forth. I think I apologized for them, I can’t quite recall. As she dug her knee into the artery of my arm, she also told me that I wasn’t relaxing enough. This was true, I could have relaxed more, however, I felt certain that she would snap my limbs if I did, so I only released as far as was bearable. The scariest part was when she snapped my neck to the left and right. I was terrified she would snap my head right off! It was a painful and sore when she cracked my neck, and I think it was the main contributor to the headache I had for hours after the massage.  

Adam loves to be a part of everything we're doing, and he spent the first small portion of our massages with us. Here he is assisting in giving his daddy a hand massage. (Photo courtesy of grandma Na!)

Contrary to my painful experience, my husband loved the massage and said he wished he could get one on a weekly basis! However, he also lifts weights regularly and requires a deeper tissue massage to get his kinks out. Perhaps being sat on by a smaller woman helps too… I was told it’s something that you simply need to get used to, and that it gets better and more beneficial the more frequently you get one. Good to know, but definitely going to pass on that experience though! I was very appreciative to have experienced it once, glad that my husband enjoyed it immensely more than I did, and also thankful my kind in-laws brought them to the house and watched our little one for us so we could have some “us” time. Albeit painful “us” time… 

Nong Nooch Gardens, Thailand

On Wednesday, our first full day in Thailand, we went to the Nong Nooch Gardens. This is very much a tourist attraction, and there were many tour buses parked in the upper lot. (I think the majority of the tourists were Koreans) The entry price was crazy expensive by Thai means, 400 Baht per adult.  (about $13 in American currency).

We were there to see the gardens and cultural shows, however there was also an animal portion of the park we walked through. The mini zoo was terribly sad. The animals were generally in small pens, about twice the size of their own bodies, and all were on the concrete but one pen. (Not sure why this one animal was favored over the others… but it was the only one with a dirt floor…) There was also a cow in a pen. I didn’t realize that was considered interesting and unique enough to be a zoo animal, but there it was. Baby tigers were chained onto small platforms throughout, so one could sit next to them and “get a picture with a tiger”. I don’t have picture proof to show you because I didn’t want to support or encourage such a system, but the Asians were eating it up and paying the extra fee to get a picture with a tiger at the little stands.

There were lines of elephants, ready to be boarded with people for a stroll around the concrete exterior of the place. It rather reminded me of going to the county fair, where people line up to put their kids on the “pony ride”.  When their turn arrives they pay an inflated fee, then they sit their child on some poor pony that shuffles its way around in the same tired circle while they snap pictures of their child’s riveting and exhilarating adventure. Elephant rides are the adult version. You plop the adults onto a some poor, sad, highly decorated elephant, who shuffles around the same tired concrete circle he does all day long, all year around, and their friends on the ground oo and aw as they snap pictures of their friend’s grand adventure on an elephant. It’s a sad and pathetic scene really, but people were eating it up and to hear one talk afterward about how they “rode an elephant”, they say it as if they were Legolass surfing down the back of an out of control Oliphaunt and taking the wild beast down in order to save middle earth as we know it. However do not be fooled, they sat atop a beat down elephant and shuffled around a large concrete circle, like the children who sit on tired ponies and shuffle around the circle at the fair.

However the sad the animal portion was, the gardens and cultural show were a great improvement and a fun experience. Here is a sample of our day from there:  

This was part of the cultural show we enjoyed before touring the gardens/grounds. 

I believe this was an example of Thai kickboxing

Their traditional wear costumes were pretty. One could pose for pictures with them afterward if desired. 

A portion of the well kept gardens

A platform in the trees. These tree house type structures were spaced throughout the park.

This was a part of my view as I looked down from a platform in the trees

This structure was 5 or 6 stories tall (sorry, don't recall the exact number, but at least 5!) How neat is this tall, old tree?

Distant view of a city

It's a jungle out there

They had a large area of decorations made with pots, even large boats and cars one could sit in. 

I enjoyed the Orchid Room most, they smelled sweet and were lovely to photograph. 

More Thailand posts to come! When I have the time to sit down and put another something together...