*Editor's Note: We apologize if anyone suffered from blog withdrawal in the last two weeks...we were in China, where we learned about censorship.
Written by Charles November 18, 2013
After waking up at 4:00 am at Raffles Hotel in Singapore, we
were headed off to Thailand. It was a
two-hour flight, another flight, a helicopter ride, a boat ride, and a golf
cart ride before we arrived at the hotel room/villa. By the time we had managed to go through just
about every mode of transportation possible, it was 4:00 pm. Our villa had 5 bedrooms, a living room, a
massage room, and even a pool! The pool
was complete with a slide (a short one.)
And it was long enough to skip rocks in.
It was 90 degrees with 90% humidity.
William and I headed right into the pool.
William and I going swimming was the only exciting thing
that day. Something that I noticed about
the resort was that everything, except the bedrooms, was outdoors to
semi-outdoors (including the bathrooms). The next day we swam in the pool,
while taking videos with the Go Pro’s.
At lunch we found the two most important parts of the resort: the ice
cream room and the chocolate room. The
ice cream room was not a room where you go inside, but only a person came out
with a menu of 60 flavors. Then you have
to choose them, and five minutes later they came out. The chocolate room, on the other hand, was a
room full of chocolate everything. There
were regular chocolates, flavored chocolate milk, chocolates with fillings,
liquid chocolate, and chocolates on a stick.
I always went for the chocolates with fillings.
For the rest of the afternoon we did school work. At dinner we had a Pad Thai cooking
class. Most people think that Pad Thai
takes forever to make, but it really only takes 5 minutes. I made, by far, the best Pad Thai, and I
wolfed it down after I made it. After
dinner we stopped at both the ice cream rooms and the chocolate rooms. I tried a little of everything in both
places.
The next day we went snorkeling and scuba diving. In the morning Ms. Jenn, my mom, and I went
snorkeling towards an artificial reef.
There wasn’t much to see there, but one fish kept on swimming right in
front of my mask. It was tiny, not even
an inch long, and it was bright yellow.
There were also microscopic jellyfish that kept on stinging me, so I got
out. Within five minutes my mom and Ms.
Jenn got out also. In the afternoon my mom, William, Ms. Jenn, and I went scuba
diving. Yes, William went scuba because
he did a discovery course. A discovery
course is when you learn all the stuff in a deep pool. Then you go out with an instructor, and you
dive in the ocean. My dad didn’t come
diving because he got needles stuck in him that were supposed to make his
muscles feel better. (I would categorize
the acupuncture as torture though.)
There were lots of things in the water, and they were sea urchins,
coral, sea urchins, fish, sea urchins, stone horse statues, and even sea
urchins! There were sea urchins on
almost all the coral. There were stone
horses under water that were about five feet tall. I thought that they were really cool. There were still sea urchins on them though. We went scuba diving a different day, and we
saw the same stuff, though there were no horses.
On the second dive of the second day, I had a massive
problem. My ear started to try and kill
me. It was hurting so bad I was in
tears. I eventually got to the
surface/safety. I couldn’t go up that
fast because it hurt to go up. We
motored back home in the boat after that.
The day after the massive ear problem, we went to Cambodia to see Angkor
Wat. (There is a whole post about that
day trip.) The day after Angkor Wat, we
built boats. They were built out of a
plastic bottle, wooden skewers, cloth, and couple rolls of tape. I tried to build a Chinese Junk boat, and I
spent an hour or two perfecting it. I
named it the Red October after the book I’m reading. Then we went down to the pool to have a race
with the other kids. On the second race
my sail ripped off, so I lost. Then I
put it over the deep part of the pool, and the boat became a submarine,
fulfilling the name Red October. (Red
October was a made up Soviet missile submarine.) In the afternoon William did a treasure hunt,
while I finished an essay for school.
On our last day we went to the beach and looked for
crabs. Then after they kept escaping, we
switched to making sand castles. When we
had to leave we blew it up with our feet.
Tomorrow we are going to Hong Kong, which I hope will be fun. I think it
will be though.
Thailand
by William Flaherty November 18, 2013
Last
week we went to Thailand. When we got off it felt like the air was 100%
humidity with a torch in your face. So it was really hot and humid. When we got
to the resort, they guided us to our villa. Since our villa had a pool and a
slide, we swam in it. After dinner, we found out that our place was
an animal kingdom because a big lizard ate a bug about the size of your thumb,
and then a bug landed on Miss Jenn. When we woke up the next day, my mom
noticed an animal had nibbled at their soap in the bathroom.
One
day, Charles and I had the genius idea of taking our GoPro and chucking it into
the pool. Then we played slide Quidditch, which you play by chasing a rock down
the slide headfirst and trying to catch it. So we did that, and I bonked my
head a few times. The day after that I did the scuba discovery course. It tied
with the sky diving for my favorite activity so far, and it was so fun! The
only problem I had was that I was like a twig; I kept on going up, so my
instructor had to pull me down. Otherwise it was really fun. On the open water
dive, we saw sea urchins, fish, some more sea urchins, some old stone horse
statues, and guess what? more sea urchins. So basically a lot of sea urchins,
but it was still cool!
One
day, we went to Angkor Wat. The next day, I went snorkeling while everyone else
went scuba diving. We saw something called a Christmas Tree Worm; I would
describe it if I could, but I can’t. I took lots of awesome pictures though. I
went on a scavenger hunt with the kids club, but everyone else in my family
stayed back (boring!). I got my exercise keeping up with the other kids because
they were running all over the place. The prize was lollipops, chocolate, and
ice cream. After that we went boat building, which I thought was fun. We made
the boat out of a plastic bottle, skewers, and cloth. Charles named his boat
The Red October, which fulfilled its name when we raced, while my boat had a
few technical difficulties, so my boat also had a very long pit stop. Then we
swam and played dodge ball for a while with the other kids.
We
also went to the beach, where Charles caught a crab and named it Bobby. We
moved Bobby 4 or 5 times; his favorite place was the only home I built. Charles
built a few sandcastle cities in 10 to 15 minutes. Then I saw that he was going
to attack the cities, so I made sand balls, weighing around 1 pound each. (No
editors note Miss Jenn, please because it is a fact.) Then, of course, we
destroyed the cities.
I
thought Thailand was pretty cool, and I am looking forward to going to Hong
Kong!
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