Thailand, Christmas and Happy New Year.

We have just spent 11 days and nights in Thailand on the beach celebrating Christmas and New Year. We had a great time and whilst it was never our plan to come here on this trip it worked out well for us. (I know dad, yet another change!) The hotel we wanted was fully booked so we stayed in our usual brand The Marriott and collected some points for future stays. I have to say this was one of the most disappointing Marriott’s we've stayed in: the staff didn’t give two hoots about the guests and the pools couldn't have been designed worse if they tried. One had no sun at all as it was located in the centre of the hotel surrounded by the 3 buildings and the other was on the roof with the sun loungers in a completely different walled off area. (It's hard enough keeping an eye on what Roman is up to without having a whole wall between us!) This left us with a little bit of a problem as swimming and lounging were the very things we had come to Thailand for. John solved the problem by going to our first choice hotel and playing at being a guest - which worked fine! And so, for 11 nights we slept at our hotel and lived, played and spent money at the other hotel. We met some lovely people and Roman made some great friends, Luca and his younger brother Noah. We got on really well with their parents Jarred and Shelly too, so everyone was happy.

At this point I became unwell and ended up in bed for a few days, and so the rest of the group made the most of one of these peaceful days to go to dinner for dinner together...and no one had a clue what time they made it home that night; I was so worried that John would have scared off our new Australian friends that I asked Roman if daddy was the only one drinking to which he assured me that no he wasn’t so I could relax again!

In the daytimes we spent time by the pool and time on the beach; the evenings were spent eating very cheap local food from places on the main front road as the cost of things now on the main strip is crazy money.! You are easily on par with England for pricing - who would have thought that we once came here almost purely for the cheap prices. We were sad to see our friends leave on the 30^th and head back to Australia, but we were happy in the knowledge that they arrived safely and survived the New Years eve party that they'd arranged, crazy people!

We had a quiet NY’s eve in that we went for dinner and then popped back to the hotel to sort things out as we had a very early flight in the morning. The whole area was far from quiet though, and I kid you not, fireworks went off for 6 hours straight, with every hotel in the area trying to outdo the next. I have never seen so many lanterns floating in the sky either; seriously, we're talking thousands of the things!

So we all enjoyed Thailand and we found just what we were looking for: friends for Roman, swimming in either pools or the sea and great company. We did nothing at all tour wise - we have done a lot before but we also had this time marked down as a total relaxation period where there would be no dragging Roman around places that would probably bore him to tears.

Oh and much to Roman’s delight Father Christmas did in fact still find him even though he wasn't at home! Though after jumping for joy he quickly followed up with "will he have left me some presents at home as well?"

Happy New Year, let’s hope 2012 is a good one.