Phuket - then and now

I promised a few posts ago that I would tell you more about our trip to Phuket.  We had visited this island to the South West of Thailand about 20 years ago when we lived in Hong Kong,  It was so nice, we went twice, and loved every minute of it.  So it was on our list of "must-dos" for Malaysia.  I knew the resort where we had previously stayed still existed, and it still looked virtually the same online, albeit bigger, sowe decided to spend five days there, just before Christmas.

Last time we were in Phuket, the airport was tiny, virtually a hut.  The scenery en route to the hotel was pretty much like this:

Now, the airport has been re-built and is much bigger.  And the roads most emphatically do not look anything like these photos.  They are built up, full of shops and eateries, bars and garages, and every other sort of outlet that virtually every modern conurbation has these days.  And yes, that includes Starbucks and Tescos.  No photos to show you of these modern day roadsides, they were just too commonplace to bother taking pictures of.

Our favourite restaurant, Gusto (with the great tagline "No view, but taste") had inevitably disappeared, but we did find another great place to eat, just a few doors further down the road, and still within very easy staggering, erm, walking distance from the hotel.  The drinks have changed a little in their presentation though.  This is a Mai Tai cocktail 20 years ago, beautifully presented in a hollowed out pineapple:

This is how they serve the cocktails today:

Yes, Phuket has definitely changed.  It is noisier, far more tourist oriented, and in places somewhat tacky.  But it still has plenty to recommend it - beautiful beaches, friendly people, fantastic food, and a lovely laid-back atmosphere.   We all had a great time - and when you have to meet the needs of two older-than-they-used-to-be adults and two teenagers, that is no mean feat.  That - together with gorgeous scenery and fun times (see below) - is why we're going back again at Easter.  Can't wait!

Follow the yellow brick road!

We've always loved The Wizard of Oz in our family, so I thought it was high time I documented this family favourite in my scrapbooks.

A fiarly simple layout - didn't need much doing given the paper I used (from PaperArts in Stroud).  I created the photo montage using images from the internet, and a Jessica Sprague photoshop template.

Thanks for looking.

Happy New Year!

The view from our balcony at midnight last night, taken with my new camera :)

Happy New Year - may it bring you everything you wish for.

More elephants!

While in Phuket before Christmas, we decided to visit Phuket Fantasea, somewhat ambitiously hailed in their marketing as the ultimate cultural theme park.  The focus of it was a 1 1/4 hour show - absolutely fantastic in its theatrics, with acrobats, pyrotechnics and elephants!  I must admit I spent half of it wondering what on earth the storyline was supposed to be, but the sight of 16 elephants on stage was one not to be missed.

Here is the layout I did to mark the event.  

The main photo shows us all with two elephants before the show.  It's always lovely to meet and stroke these creatures, they have the same smile-creating capacity as dolphins.

The journalling sums up the evening pretty well.  It reads:  "Phuket Fantasea was a bit of a curate's egg, with a mediocre buffet, a ban on cameras for the show (to the extent that they took them off you unless, like me, you hid them well and told fibs), and a propensity to try and squeeze as much money out of you as they could.

"However it was still well worth going.  We got to stroke elephants and get our photo taken with them, Will was very taken with the white tigers and albino crows, and the show was very lavish (even if the plot was hard to decipher).

Plus, how often do you get to see 16 elephants on one stage, actively taking part in the show?!"

For the benefit of my crafty friends, the paper used is Basic Grey Skate Shoppe and the decoupaged bit in the bottom corner was already done for me - I took it off the folder that held our very expensive elephant photo, where it was forming a pocket, and made it into a pocket on the layout.  It holds a little concertina book with more photos and the journalling.  The title is also from the folder, but scanned, printed and cut out,and the elephants are from a fab bead and charm shop in Chinatown, turned from silver to gold with a bit of alcohol ink :)  Not entirely sure why there is a big bow on there, I must still be in present wrapping mode!

Bad blogger!

Oh dear - over a month and a half since I last blogged - that wasn't the plan!  I guess life got in the way!  Quite how I have managed to be so busy I'm not quite sure - it's not as if I'm working any more.  But what with going out and about (I know, it's a hard life!), preparing for Christmas, doing domestic goddess-type things and keeping in touch with everyone (more time-consuming than you might think), the days just fly by, and I still find myself wishing I had more time to do this, that and the other.

So, apologies for going AWOL, I shall try to do better.  In the meantime, here are a few festive photos.

This shows the somewhat OTT Christmas Wonderland display at Pavilion mall - around the back there is also a big sleigh with reindeer.

One of the purple trees at Pavilion:

And here's Alex, Caitie and me, also at the Pavilion:

Here's Caitie and Alex making mince pies on Christmas Eve - there are some traditions you just have to stick to, however hot and sunny it is!

And finally, Will with one of his presents on Christmas Day:

Hope you all had a great Christmas.

Photographic proof!

Last weekend's birds' nest soup experience definitely needed to be captured for posterity - and of course I had to do something with the photographic evidence that we really had eaten bird spit!

So here's the double page layout I have done, with a tongue in cheek Chinese-style title.  The design is based on a Becky Fleck sketch, and the papers used are Kaisercraft Secret Bird Society (very apt, I thought!)  The birds are cut with a Sizzix swallow die cut, the title is cut on the Cricut using Deng Thick font, and there's a bit of inking and stamping on there too if you look hard enough ;-)

Birds' nest soup - yummy! (not)

I dug an enormous hole for myself on the way to Melaka on Saturday when I said to the kids:  "Your challenge for this weekend is to eat something that you've not tried before".  Little did I know that, just a couple of doors down from the hotel where we spent the night, was a newly opened building, dedicated to the history, making and selling of birds' nests.  Not just any old nests, but the edible kind, the ones that are considered a delicacy by the Chinese.  The ones that they believe have great health-boosting properties, and so are prepared to pay an absolute fortune for.  Well, yes, they have been proved to be high in protein - that's so the tiny fledgelings can eat them and grow big and strong so they won't be next-bound for too long.  But frankly if I was going for something high in protein, I think I'd much sooner eat a nice juicy steak!

So anyway, these nests are made by swiftlets. Legend has it that a great Chinese sea captain, forced with his crew to seek refuge from a fierce storm in a cave, decided to try eating them when they ran low on rations.  And he discovered that after a couple of days, the crew were all much healtheir and stronger.  And thus the appetite for these tiny little nests, made of bird spit, was born.  These days a lot of the nests are farmed in purpose-built buildings.  It's a lot safer and easier than collecting them from cave ceilings hundreds of feet high.  The building we saw had become home to the swiftlets when it was abandoned, and the new owner, a birds' nest magnate, paid a fortune for the run down house simply because the birds and their nests were worth so much.  Here's what some of the nests look like, before processing:

And this is how they look after processing, when being sold in the shops:

That big round box on the top had a price tag of 5,878 RM - that's roughly GBP1,175!


Before touring the house, we ordered a bowl of soup between us, so we could at least say we had tried it.  At 50RM (10 pounds) for the bowl, it was apparently a bargain.  We had seen the nests in the rafters, plus a few birds, and we had seen Malaysian workers painstakingly picking out all the bits of feather and other, um, waste materials.  Now it was time to taste the cooked results.

The soup came with a choice of raw cane sugar or honey sugar, we were recommended to use the honey sugar.  To be honest, it was fairly innocuous.  It smelt a little like egg white, tasted of honey sugar (!) and the stringy bits were just gelatinous, a bit like tapioca and semolina, except in longish pieces rather than little balls.  But knowing what it was made all the difference to our "enjoyment" of it - it was hard not to feel ill, and it would be fair to say that none of us has an overwhelming desire to go back for more.

We had a great time in Malaka - I'll be back with some more stories and photos soon.