Mexican Riviera

Booked and arranged a long long time ago was a cruise with our Dutch friends from Los Angeles to Mexico and back. We met up with the guys in LA and the next day we sailed off on the Royal Caribbean Mariner of the Seas.

Because of Hurricane Rick in the area, captain Johnny had to change the plans a bit, but he sailed us through the heavy weather without problems. The ship went to port in Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas (we had to skip the stop in Mazatlan).

The Mariner of the Seas	The guys
Dance party at the pool deck	Another dance party in “Studio B”
Decorating your Stateroom-door is part of the experience.	View of the Royal Promenade
Dolphin Encounter in Cabo San Lucas	Cheers

After a great week with parties, dinners and time to catch up with our friends, it was time to head back to Sydney. We had a couple of hours to spare before our flight back, so we had a look in Santa Monica and Venice Beach.

Santa Monica Pier

Bangkok - กรุงเทพมหานคร

It was good catching up with everyone in Amsterdam, but time had come to head back in the direction of Australia. On the way back we had a stopover planned in Bangkok for 5 days.

We had a great time and have already planned our next trip to this wonderful vibrant, buzzing and very cheap city.

Shopping in MBK	Very weird ice cream
Streetfood & Singha beer	Dried Squid, cheap !

Wat

There is more in Thailand than food… you guessed it… Temples. We took the very efficient SkyTrain and the less-efficient river ferry service to Wat Pho (วัดโพธิ์), the temple of the Reclining Buddha. Wat Pho is the one of the largest and oldest temples in Bangkok and is home to more than one thousand Buddha images, as well as one of the largest single Buddha images: the Reclining Buddha, the Reclining Buddha is forty-six metres long and fifteen metres high, decorated with gold plating on his body and mother of pearl on his eyes and the soles of his feet.

46m of gold	The feet with the inlay of mother of pearl
nice ‘n easy	Hans donating a roof-tile to the restorations of the temple.

Close to Wat Pho is the Grand Palace. The Grand Palace is a complex of buildings in Bangkok, Thailand. It served as the official residence of the Kings of Thailand from the 18th century onwards.

The Palace
	Stray pussycat, always taken good care of by Buddhists

 

Food

More food… A Korean-bbq type of cooking, but with Thai ingredients.	Of course the menu is only in Thai.. so you need some help. And you have to write down your own orders on a post-it.
You eat inside, but the kitchen is out on the street. At least no smelly curtains.	The mystery order came out well!
With our friend Ayre at the night markets.	The night markets at Memorial Bridge.

Amsterdam

Because we have our best friends Harald & Danny’s wedding to attend next weekend in Amsterdam, we took off for a trip back to Europe. Luckily we were able upgrade our flight on points from Sydney to Singapore on Qantas. Singapore-Amsterdam on KLM was back in cattle-class unfortunately, but some sleeping got us through the 24hrs of travel.

  
Hans in seat 13J

We arrived on Sunday morning at 6am and after some coffee and freshing up we met the familiy first. After that we headed to Amsterdam to check into the spare room at Harald & Danny.

Uncle Arjan

Elmo looks scared but he wasn't, maybe he still recognised me ?

Of course we had to go and eat some Dutch Kroket (Croquette) and meet up with all our friends.

a FEBO Kroket

dinner with friends

We also met up with our parents again and we had a very nice dinner in Leiden.