And We're Back...

Back to Shenyang and my own bed.  After an exhausting night we made it home at lunch time today.  Our flight left at 1:15 am which meant we had to wake the kids at 10 pm for the one hour drive to the airport.  The lack of sleep and driving didn't work out so well for Nicholas.  He felt like he was going to be sick for the whole time at the airport.  Just as we were handing our boarding passes to the agents we had to go searching for a garbage can.  He didn't throw up but we had to grab a plastic bag and hurry back because we were the last people to get on the plane.  Once we got him laying down across us on the seats he felt better and eventually both boys fell asleep and stayed that way for almost the entire six hour flight.  Unfortunately, as we landed, the motion sickness caught up with him and he did barf.  We only had an hour to make our connecting flight and it was tough with him holding an airsickness bag and not feeling like walking.  We did make it to our connection though and he managed to hold down some food during the last flight.  He was fine once he was on the ground.  I think I'm going to have to find some motion sickness patches before our next flight.  It will just be me and the boys for 20-something hours and it's so much harder when he's not feeling well.

Anyway, our last few days in Phuket were nice.  On Tuesday I went scuba diving and had an awesome time.  My instructor, Matt, was Canadian and absolutely loves what he does.  He gave me all kinds of details about what we would see and where we were diving.  Our first and second dives were in the Phi Phi Islands on two smaller islands call Koh Bida Nok and Koh Bida Nai.  They were absolutely beautiful with green water and colorful fish and corals.  It was on the second dive, just after jumping in the water, that we saw a turtle down below.  We quickly descended to get a better look.  Here is the video with me in the background, waving:

Here are a bunch more pictures and a couple videos that Matt took on our second dive and again at Shark Point (we didn't see any sharks on this day):

That's me!

See Nemo??

My China Pose

Wednesday we went out for breakfast then drove to a mall in Patong Beach, a very busy area, and went bowling and played video games.  It was a lot of fun and the food we ordered at the bowling alley, Pad Thai and Thai fried rice, was some of the best we had the entire week.  We all had a great time with the bowling, games and shopping around a bit.

For our last evening with the car, we drove to Cape Phromthep to watch the sunset.  It's a very popular spot to see the sun go down, although our kids understand what was the big deal.

Thursday, our last day, we swam in the pool a lot and went to get lunch at a local eatery on the Rawai Beach waterfront.  It was a relaxing day.  Here are a few pictures from that day and another earlier in the week.

They chose barbecue chicken.

Long Boats on Rawai Beach

Yummy food at this restaurant, although it doesn't look like much.

Nikita's Restaurant - A Favorite!

The Locals

So, that was our week in Thailand.  Like any vacation it had it's ups and downs.  Our Paradise Villa, although incredibly beautiful, had some issues that put a bit of a damper on things but overall it was very enjoyable.  The first few days in the pool were awesome until Ryan's incident which left him scared to go in more than a couple more times with us holding on to him.  It was unfortunate because he was having so much fun before that happened.  Hopefully he will forget by the next time we go swimming.  It was really nice though to get away from the cold, dark days of winter in Shenyang and see the greens, blues, and pinks of Thailand.  It is a beautiful country with great food and lovely people.