Ratchaburi and the Floating Market

This was a nice, relaxing trip away from the big city.  We still had our crazy kids, so it wasn't completely laid back, but I feel like we, the parents, had a little more patience for the toddler melt downs than we normally did. ☺

We took a taxi to our hotel which I found on booking.com (agoda.com is another good one that we have used for booking things in Singapore, Malaysia, and Cambodia) called Maikaew Damnoen Resort.  It was great!  It definitely was not a 5 star resort, but the people were friendly, someone was always there that spoke English, and I felt a bit of Thai culture there that I appreciated.

So the taxi was the most expensive choice of transport we could have gotten but Jason felt it would be the easiest because they would pick us up at our apartment and drop us off at the hotel.  If we took a bus or train, we would have had to find transport to the station and from the station to the hotel.  It cost us 1300 baht when the others would have been maybe 400 baht for the whole family.  But it was a good thing because the day we left, there was a grenade thrown that injured 28 people at Liberty Monument, which is the major train and bus transport hub!  I am so glad we were not there that day! (This is because of the strikes going on in Bangkok right now not because Thailand is normally a dangerous place.)

Towel bunny on our bed.

We checked in, which by the way, they got the message that I left them from booking.com about needing a baby cot (that is what a pack n play is called out here) and so they had it set up and ready with even a mosquito net over the top of it (but no bedding).  I bought Beckham's blanket but nothing else so I was a bit unprepared for that one.

They welcomed us with a complimentary plate of pomelo slices and a bowl full of sugar and chili powder (that is how they eat most fruit here.)  This was the first time I had tried this fruit and I thought it was delicious!!!

After putting our luggage away, we went straight to the restaurant, and I got curry soup!  Finally!  I have been craving this since before we came to Thailand and I haven't seen it anywhere.  It was delicious, but spicy.  The flavor was very different from what I am used to eating so after about 10-15 bites I couldn't eat anymore of it.

Jason ordered fried rice and they shaped it into a star!  We got the boys ham and cheese sandwiches and garlic bread.

This is the light switch in our room.  If the key card is not in that spot, the lights turn off.  Good way of saving electricity. ☺

Here was the room!  I really liked it, there was room to move and I felt like I could stay there for a lot longer than just a night.

Here is the shower... behind that half wall.

Here is the hallway that you go down to get to your room.  It reminds me of when we went to Guatemala.  To the right is a lush, green garden and a pool.

This was back by the restaurant and the fish pond.  Just a cute sitting area.

For breakfast we all got juice and milk.  Will thought it was awesome that he got more than 1 drink and Beckham downed 2 juices within a couple minutes of having them.  One of those was mine. ☺

Pad thai, omelettes, and pomelo fuit for breakfast.

You could buy fish food to feed the fish!  There was also a playground that I'm almost positive that it was a part of the hotel, we just didn't go play on it.

The boys loved it!

For 400 baht, we got a ride in this boat to go see the market.  It was an hour and a half tour and the whole reason why we came to Ratchaburi.

They even provided life jackets for my boys!

The view from our boat down the canal to the market.

We turned the corner to a much bigger water source where there were houses on either side of the water.

And motor boats beating us to the market!

Here is our first look into the market.  Each stall on the sides had a huge hook (like those long hooks they would use back in the day to get horrible performers of of the stage) to bring your boat over to them so you could buy something from them.

There was a ton of things there from food to clothing, to bird feeders and lamps.

Of course we got some mango and sticky rice.

A lady selling tropical fruits.

It got so crowded sometimes that we had to wait for the other boats to pass.

A boat full of cute Thai kids.

Cooking meat on a skewer.

Hat anyone?

The prices are pretty high here.  This whistle was bought by a friend at Chatuchak Market for 10 baht.  The lady who sold it to us wanted 90!  I eventually haggled it to 2 whistles for 50 baht I think.

The "motor" boats were actually just paddle boats with an old car engine on it with the transmission still attached!  Jason got a huge kick out of that! ☺

On both sides of us were lush jungles!  I loved it!

Check out all these spices!!

I found it really difficult to take good pictures in a boat easily cap-sizable while trying to keep your 18 month's fingers in the boat so they didn't get smashed.  So I didn't get my "magazine worthy" shots like I had wanted but I think they are still pretty good.

Precious moment with dad and Will.

To get to the hotel, we had to go under a bridge that was too short for us to sit regularly so we adults had to duck.

When we were all done and ready to go back to Bangkok, we asked for a Taxi to get us to the train station.  She said she could get a something and asked us how many seats we wanted.  They didn't have an ATM and we only had 300 baht left over from the market so luckily they tickets only costs 90 baht per seat.  Beckham could sit on my lap I thought, no biggie.  They told us that it would be here at noon.  Noon came and here comes this tiny bus van thing with no place to put luggage.  So they wanted us to pay for a seat for our luggage but I told them that I didn't have enough money to do that so guess what?  Will no longer had a seat.  Will sat on my lap, and Beckham on Jason's lap with our luggage on a seat in the back.  The driver packed the bus full driving around places near our hotel picking up people and eventually drove us the hour and a half back to Bangkok.  They boys did great cramped up on our laps, slept the whole way.  The dumb bus driver then dropped us off at Liberty Monument where the grenade went off the day before!  I didn't see any signs of a bomb anywhere, and everyone there was super nice and friendly, but still!  How stupid?!?  We quickly got on the metro and went home.