Confessions of an Expat's Wife

from one country to another,thousands of miles earned, different languages to get by with, cultures and expectations to live with plus millons of photos taken to tell the adventures of my life

Being the last day of the year, I can't help but look back what 2005 has brought me.

Here goes...

1. This year, I lived in three countries. The first few months in France, second in the Philippines and the then finally here in Istanbul.
2. I went back to school with my good friend, Tessa while I was in the Philippines. It was all because I miss my alma matter (and had nothing better to do). I found myself sitting in class re-learning my french and german during summer.
3. I spent two summers and two winters this year.
4. I realized how I value my family ( especially my parents) and miss them much.
5. I discovered the joy of blogging.
6. I reconnected with long lost friends both elementary and highschool.
7. I found new friends from different parts of the world.
8. I had my first Ramazan, Iftar, and Bayram experience.
9. I flew EasyJet and Airasia the first time.
10. I became more OC with things. I never stopped cleaning our flat.
11. I decided to teach in a refugee school. It was my first time to meet children from Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan,Somalia,Uganda, and Ethiopia.
12. I realized that BBC does better news report than CNN and FOX is just so annoyingly Pro-American.
13. I stopped reading news on Philippine Politics.
14. I discovered that there is always a Filipino/a every country I go and it helps to know them (the Pinoy mafia!).
15. I've mastered the art of converting currencies!

These are only the first few things I remember. I'm sure there are still a couple of entries I can add. This year was not the best of the lot but I had my defining moments. One of the things I learned just recently is the fact that people are more drawn to other people who do not give a darn on what they say. For some twisted reason, people nowadays are more drawn to negativity. When you are angry and you express it, you are said to be cool. When you say what you want without being sorry, you are regarded highly and sometimes thought of as somebody important. With the influx of information everywhere, it seems so hard to keep track of the truth and the ones that are valid. Everyone just wants to be the center of the show. Everyone has something to say about everything. It doesn't matter if it's useless info or not. (Note: I'm talking in general over here not just with blogging.)

2005 has been a year of contemplation for me. It was nice to step back and look how things were. I just hope, this coming year, there will be more people who will pay good things forward and just stop being angry.

As Master Yoda says...
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Cheers to a New Year!

Christmas is just an ordinary day here in Istanbul. Good thing I found some people I can share the spirit of the holidays with... the only down side of it---> the amount of alcohol my husband and I have consumed the whole night is enough to make us still drunk the morning after.

After a couple of days in Bangkok, hubby and I met up with his bestfriend, J, and headed to Kanchanaburi for three days and two nights.For us, there were two options to reach Kanchanaburi, one is via private transfer (e.g. car or van) or by taking the bus. Apparently, it would take us around 2 to 3 hours to get there. I wanted to take the bus but my other half wanted to take a car. Once again, we found ourselves presenting the pros and cons of both arguments and unfortunately, I was outvoted 2-1 to take a private car.

All throughout the trip ( going there and back), I was asleep. I guess there was nothing much to see since we were traversing on a highway. My two companions were busy catching up on each other's stories and football stuff so I was left in peace with my 3 hour nap.

We stayed in Royal River Kwai Hotel. It's a very quaint hotel which was not near the center. It was just perfect for us since we wanted to have a peaceful and quiet atmosphere. The keyword on this trip was RELAX.

After checking in,we decided to go to the tourism office, to check which places and activities we wanted to see and do. After a couple of brochure analyzing and understanding Thai english we managed to arrange a couple of things for us to do. We hired a boat to go about the Kwae River and visit some places. The first stop was the buddha/s inside the cave. It was a good half hour walk in and out of the cave.There are a couple of Thai kids who will ask you if you want them to tag along and help you find your way inside the cave. If you are a little bit scared and would like someone to "guide" you, the closest you can find will be these children. You will find it easy to discover the cave though, since there are signs all over the place (I've seen so many signs like the picture above and in the end I wasn't minding the grammar anymore).The cave was well lit ( flourescent lamps inside) but it gets a little bit tight at some point. If you are claustrophobic, you would want to get out as fast as you can. There are several buddhas in different parts of it. Some strike me as quite eerie just finding them little ones sitting there inside the cave.You would wonder though how the Thais were able to put the biggest Buddha inside this cave. It being huge and the cave quite small.Next, we went to the war memorial cemetery-- Chongkai cemetery. Here you will find, beautifully manicured gardens with hundreds of epitaphs of World War 2 soldiers. Not Thai mind you, but more english,australians, new zealanders, dutch, and other foreign soldier captives who died during railway construction or staying in the concentration camps during those years. The POW average age of death? 22 years old. In their epitaph, the youngest person I saw was 17 years old. Out of respect, I couldn't bring myself to take some pictures of the cemetery.The famous Bridge over the River Kwae was our next stop. Thanks to the movie starred by Sir Alec Guinness and the novel written by Pierre Boule (the author of Planet of the Apes). I wasn't born yet when the movie was released but I remember my father raving about it when I was a kid. It was one of my movies to watch but I couldn't get hold of a copy until now. I'm sure in one way or another, you've heard that famous whistle and knew it's about soldiers. The bridge nowadays, is still used but you will find tourists ( including us) walking along the bridge and taking pictures like there's no train that will pass by any moment. After the whole boat tour, we decided to head back to the hotel and eat dinner. As usual it was hot, spicy, and delicious! There are a couple of non spicy thai food as well like khao pad dishes (usually rice meals with pork, chicken or beef). But I love green curry the most. The spicier the better. My husband had the audacity to spread the sauce of his curry in his rice and ended up having numb lips after. Now, he knows better, he tastes the sauce first before putting it in his rice.The next day, we booked a tour to go to the elephant camp and do some river rafting. This was amazing. Elephants are just such cool animals. At first I was a little bit scared with them. I didn't want to end up being stepped on by an elephant. I saw an episode of Monk wherein a circus elephant stepped on his trainer's head during a rehearsal. Leading to a squishy squashy brain on the floor. My first elephant kiss was with a baby elephant. He extended his trunk on my cheeks and made a vacuum like kiss that tickles. So cute! We then had a 30 minute elephant ride along the river and fed them after. It feels weird to be sitting on an elephant's neck. their skin is really thick and they have all these stubbles ( imagine the hair growth after 2 days of not shaving) and you feel their neck bone on your tush while they are walking. It's like having a tush massage with stubbles on the side ( Yep, I'm the bozo who decided to wear shorts on this trip).The last part of our trip was the river cruise with a raft. Our boatman was just lovely. Like any Thai, he had this sincere smile all the time even if we couldn't understand each other much with the language barrier. It was almost 45 minutes of quiet river cruising and pure relaxed moment. The two boys, decided to take a dip and just enjoy the scenery. Really, it was the perfect ending for another day in Kanchanaburi.Since it was our last night over in Kanch, we decided to celebrate and went to Felix River Kwai for dinner and drinks. This place is quite famous for tourist. It's the more upscale hotel in the area and the place is quite big. they also have many facilities available and the worst karaoke lounge singers I've heard my entire life. The ironic thing is, there were quite a number of people who were sitting down and listening to this male and female thai duo doing some baaaaad rendition of english songs. We decided to stay outside and enjoy our drinks in each other's company until we decided we've had enough and head back to our hotel.

The next day, just before leaving kanchanaburi, we've managed to lay a couple of hours by the pool and get some sun. Then off we went...

back to Bangkok...

next on my list : Shopping 101 in Chatuchak Market.

A couple of weeks back, I suddenly announced in this blog that I am going on vacation. It was an unplanned vacation and it was actually a 15 day recuperation of all my husband's overtime work. Originally we wanted to travel somewhere near which basically sums up to Europe and the Middle East. Since I was holding the ever so limited green passport and my Schengen visa already expired, we both came to a conclusion to visit the place we miss the most other than the Philippines without the hassle of visa applications. Just an impromptu trip. We finally decded to go to the first two countries we visited together when we were still going out ---> Malaysia and Thailand. On top of it, we realized that our good friends in Hong Kong are now living in the above mentioned countries and it would be a good idea to touch base with them again.

From Istanbul, we took Singapore Airlines with a stopover in Dubai and Singapore and, after almost 22 hours of travelling and waiting in between airports, we landed in Bangkok. The first thing that greeted us was the morning traffic. What a lovely welcome! We weren't annoyed a bit with the traffic jam. We were just so happy to be there. Arriving at our hotel, we ended up falling asleep the rest of the afternoon. Thanks to the six hours time difference and the head spinning jet lag we had.

Come late afternoon, we met up with our old friend and colleague in HK, Monsieur and Madame D and their beautiful bebe toctoc. Madame D was already pregnant when we left HK last year and the last time we saw her was in Paris when we met up and had lunch together minus Monsieur D who was busy working in HK that time. Bebe toctoc was born early January of this year and it was so good to see him for the first time in person already crawling everywhere.

We then went straight to their flat and had dinner with the whole family. After hours and hours of chatting and wine drinking , we called it a night at half past one in the morning and went back to the hotel to get some shut eye. We had a long schedule the next day and needed to wake up early.

Grand Temple and Wat Phra Keo


Wat Arun


Our first trip to Thailand, we only stayed one night in Bangkok and went straight to Krabi Island for one week. This time, we decided to explore the chaotic and exciting city of KrungThep and enjoy all the Wats ( or temples) that we can see. The first thing on our agenda was visit the three Major Temples Bangkok is known for. These were the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Arun. Armed with a touristy map and infos taken from Virtual Tourist, we spent one whole day discovering and taking pictures of these Wats. Unfortunately, Wat Pho was closed on the day we decided to do these three temples and so we ended up walking around the area discovering other buddha images.

Pooh Khao Tong and Wat Indrawiharn


One of the highlights of our day was a tuktuk ride all over the place and a pleasant surprise from husband dear who bought me a ring with ruby (my birthstone) and diamonds. I felt like a teenager and the gemologist even thought we were on honeymoon. As corny as it may sound... love was in the air ( I can't believe I just typed that!).

Come dinner time, husband and I decided to try out mahanaga. It was a thai fusion restaurant with very nice ambience. The food was good although the quantity was not enough for voracious eaters like us. We then went to Brown Sugar, a small bar that plays superb jazz music live. After having a couple of drinks and good beat tapping, we headed back to the hotel.

When we arrived at the hotel, husband was again hungry and said he would like order something to ( take note) nibble from Room Service. He ended up eating a steak with french fries! i couldn't care less I was too dead tired and excited for our next day travel to Kanchanaburi...to be continued

Next Stop : Kanchanaburi, Thailand
-Buddhas inside A cave
-Acrophobia with the Bridge over the River Kwae
-our first elephant's kiss
-hotta hotta thai food
- river rafting

I don't know where and how to start with my super fun and fabulous vacation. Until now, my mind is wandering off and someone needs to put my feet back on the ground. I still feel the sun and sea in Kota Kinabalu, taste the best streetfood of Bangkok, feast my eyes on thousands of trinkets and what have you's in Chatuchak Market, and savour the lovely Christmas decors along Orchard Road of Singapore.

About Me

Name: duke

Location: Istanbul, Türkiye

A first time mom to baby A living as an expat in Istanbul, Turkey.

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