Our Monday starts a lot better than Sunday did. Nobody is sick, just one very sunburnt mom still… With teeth that ache. Can’t wait for my dentist appointment tomorrow, to get this checked out!
Téa and Maylin have been bitten by the “build-a-fortress” bug, and steal every cushion and pillow from the living room and our bedroom. Their fortress is cozy, but not really sustainable. As soon as they turn their backs, it collapses. Fun to play with while it lasts, and luckily, kids move on to new activities in the blink of an eye.
The girls play so much and so nicely, while Joe and I get our suitcases out and take down Christmas. Suddenly it’s lunchtime, and Joe heats up yesterday’s noodle soup for the girls, while he and I eat toast and whatever other scraps we find in the fridge. It’s not much though, so by the time 1pm comes around, we’re hungry again.
We aim for Market Village (I’ve been calling it Village Market lately, and the kids are so frustrated with me. I can’t help it when words mix up in my head!), and the girls are taking the opportunity to beg us to go to McDonald’s for a snack. We promised them we’d try McDonald’s in all the countries we come across, so I guess this is our Thai McDonald’s experience!
The girls get Happy Meals with (what I think is) cheeseburgers, fries, milk and a toy. Here, you can pick your own toy, and with there being two to choose from, they get one design each. I order a Quarter Pounder with some sort of parmesan cream sauce? And fries and an iced tea. Joe gets a Samurai pork burger, and plans to steal at least half my fries and drink.
We grab a number “tent” and go sit down. Soon thereafter, an employee comes over with our trays. Turns out, the cheeseburgers are chicken cheeseburgers, but the girls still happily eat their meals. Joe’s underwhelmed with the samurai burger, but my burger was good. Too big though, so Joe finishes that as well.
After our snack, we spend some time trying to win more tickets on Maylin’s precious game card at the entertainment area upstairs. The girls play and win reams and reams of tickets. The most fun part is at the end, when you get to feed your tickets into this machine, and then pick your prize at the counter:
Maylin ends up picking a couple of prizes, and a special cartoon pen for Téa.
Then we head to the grocery store. Not because we need groceries, but there are a couple of things we need to replenish before we travel onwards on Friday. We browse the aisles, and Joe jokingly points this out:
Tonight is the only night between now and our departure that Tamarind Night Market is closed. It’s honestly our favourite place to grab dinner. Everyone gets to choose what they want, there’s always something we haven’t tried yet, and also always good old favourites to fall back on for the kids (hotdog, Maylin?). So tonight we have to eat elsewhere, and it’s always a bit of a decision to make.
Ever since we arrived in Hua Hin, I’ve been seeing ads for two Norwegian-run restaurants: Siam Viking, one block away from Tamarind, and Little Scandinavia, ten minutes by taxi north east of Market Village. I’ve been seeing ads for Little Scandinavia’s Christmas Dinner, and I want to try it. It is (supposed to be) the pork belly I grew up with every Christmas Eve in Norway, and so I pull my bossy mom card and say I want to go to Little Scandinavia tonight. Seeing as we’re already so far north in Hua Hin, it doesn’t really make sense to go home to the AirBnb and then taxi all the way back, so we go for a super early dinner.
The taxi drops us off close-ish to the restaurant, in the middle of the seedy, “lets milk each tourist for every dollar”, and “see what else my massage studio can offer you”, kind of area. We hurry along according to Google Maps, and soon find our restaurant. I quite like the atmosphere, it’s an open garden patio kind of atmosphere, and only two other tables are occupied. We sit down and place our order from the only server at work, and enjoy the warm shaded spot.
If you know our family, you know that Joe is the protein chef of our family. I recently admitted to my sisters that I have never cooked pork belly, which is the Christmas Eve staple I grew up with. (There are generally three different Christmas meals in Norway: pork belly with crispy skin, pinnekjøtt (salted and dried lamb ribs), and lutefisk, what North American Norwegians scare their family members with during holiday buffets. The only one I’ve ever cooked is the lamb, as it’s the easiest…) In any case, every Christmas Eve so far, he’s cooked us a perfect Norwegian pork belly dinner, and because we didn’t get to have that this year, I’ve been craving and looking forward to this.
There was really only way this could go, a huge let down. The pork belly was cut into pieces and deep fried to warm and crisp it up. The pork skin was now deep fried shoe leather, and completely impossible for someone with a toothache to actually chew. The “medisterpølse” was ok, the “medisterkaker” were flavourless. I laughed to myself when I saw the vegetable portions – half a tablespoon each of the sauerkraut and redkraut, with a teaspoon of lingonberry jam. Disappointed, but still – in my travelling heart it’s all about curiosity. I will forever stay curious. I was so curious to try a Norwegian Christmas dinner on the other side of the world, in this tropical climate. I’m glad I got the chance to try it.
The girls enjoyed their meat balls (even though they tasted of absolutely nothing), but poor Joe said his fish cakes were nowhere near as good as the ones he’s used to from Norway. This is when I realized I have ruined Joe’s fish cake appreciation, as every time we have fish cakes in Norway, its hot and house-made from the deli counter at the grocery store near my mom’s house. We’ve never bought, prepared or served him the affordable bulk options in the refrigerated section, which is exactly what’s on his plate. Perfectly ok discount fish cakes, in fact very similar to what I grew up with as a standard weeknight dinner.
Our server puts our plates down, tells us “I’ll be right back”, and takes off on his motorbike! The other two tables have paid up and left by now, so we’re the only customers there. Luckily, in the 10 minutes he’s gone, nobody else walks in! (That was my fear while he was gone.) We finish our meals, and after a while, a lady emerges from the back to collect our plates. We contemplate having a waffle with ice cream for dessert, but opt to head home before the sun sets and releases all the mosquitoes.
It turns out it’s a lot more complicated to get a Grab or Bolt in these back alleys, so we walk to the nearest road with accommodations (taxis have to reach hotels, right? Right??), and book our ride. It’s still a long wait. We do some people watching while we wait, and see dogs, horses, people, bikes, mopeds, motorbikes, cars, tuk tuks and minivans. One lady is clutching her baby with one arm and maybe (hopefully?) holding on to the back of the moped with the other hand. Another one year old looking girl is happily sitting on her dad’s lap on the front of his moped. Life is so much more relaxed over here, but so are the rules, I guess?
We have a 15 minute ride to get back to the AirBnb, and once we get there, the girls and I go to Tops to get our dessert:
The night is spent playing Christmas Trivia, however, this time Maylin keeps score, Téa reads the questions, and Joe and I battle it out. I win, of course, and get to choose which movie to watch. (We were all cheering for me to win, Joe was threatening to watch hockey all night!) I pick my favourite Christmas Movie, Santa Claus the Movie, which I grew up watching and nobody else remembers. We have popcorn and watch as Dudley Moore throws a hissy fit and betrays Santa Claus. Luckily, it all ends well.
That moped set-up sounds very familiar to what was common in Colombia.
It scares me every time, but the kids look so relaxed and excited!