More basketball, welcome Presley, Xin Nian Kuai Le ( 新年快乐), and a busy weekend

Basketball has been going strong and the girls had another tournament a couple weekends ago in Shenzhen. The girls are definitely improving, as one of the scores was only 18-6 (yes, they received the 6). BUT, the point spread was much lower than usual. The girls are still really enjoying it and are looking forward to their big tournament here in Macau in a couple of weeks. We are hoping for a win!

We want to give a shout out to Ian and Allyson back in Edmonton. They had their daughter Presley right before Christmas and as expected, she is cute! You are going to be wonderful parents, guys. Pops is proud! And so are the rest of the Kiats!


The Chinese New Year is fast approaching and the school had a pretty amazing concert to celebrate. Almost 1000 people participated in or watched the concert. The highlight was definitely when the dragons and lions came out. The lions threw candy and oranges out into the audience and the kids scrambled to get their hands on whatever they could. Here are a few pics.






Last weekend we were pretty busy with shopping, tutoring, basketball and cocktails. But, the highlight was definitely our Sunday trip to Zhuhai. We headed over for the day (all but Kylisha who was sick) with Dane and Kirsten and went for foot massages. It was Kaidyn's first massage and he enjoyed it a lot. A one hour foot massage for the 3 of us set us back about 18 CAD!! The ladies in charge of our massages thought Kaid was pretty cute (at least we think that's what they were saying, as we couldn't understand a single word they were saying)! We can't wait to head back for another round.


After the massages Amanda went for a pedicure while Dane and I took Kaid for a hair cut. His hair has not been cut since our arrival and while Amanda likes his little curls that popped up in Thailand because of the heat and humidity, it was time for a cut, as people were starting to think he was a girl! The China hair cut was horrendous (and that's putting it mildly). While we didn't get a picture, this is basically what it looked like:


Monday evening Dane and I took it into our own hands to "fix" it. With the help of Dane's clippers we got rid of the Zhuhai cut.


Well, Amanda's friend Lynn arrived late last night so I'm sure I'll have some good 2 am texts from them that I can post in the near future. Fingers crossed! Amanda picked her up from the ferry terminal at 2 a.m. and when they got back here Lynn unpacked all the loot she brought from back home. When I got up this morning this is what awaited me:



That's true friendship at its finest!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!! Especially to all my fellow rabbits!

New Year's Eve-Thai style

On New Year's Eve day we went to Krabi from Phang Nga and hung out at a beach for the day. That evening our resort was packed with people and there was a bit of a New Year's Eve party. The staff there gave all the guests giant tissue paper lanterns. At the bottom of the lantern was a piece of (what we think was) coconut attached by thin wire.
The coconut piece was covered in some sort of waxy material (obviously an accelerant). When we lit our coconuts, our lanterns filled with hot air and they eventually (after a few minutes) flew up into the sky.

We made wishes as our lanterns floated straight up into the dark night. It was pretty incredible when the sky was littered with the orange glowing lanterns. It was also amazing to see how quickly they rose and eventually disappeared.


Amanda wanted to buy some to take back to Canada, but it was a good thing she couldn't find any-at the airport my dad saw some westerners having their big lanterns confiscated.

Happy New Year to all of our friends and family back home. We hope your 2011 is filled with good health, lots of laughs and great adventures!

Thai deliciousness

A small sampling of some of the delicious things we ate in Thailand:

Kylisha swears that the 7-Up there is better than usual. Less sweet.


The end of one of the greatest green curries ever (nice and spicy)! We ate a lot along the side of the road from vendors and small restaurants. All six of us (or seven when Jord was there) could eat a feast for about 15-20 CAD!!


Deep fried bananas and plantains. The batter was soooo good. It was full of sesame seeds. Don't even ask how many of these we ate. It was A LOT!:


Sweet rice wrapped in a banana leaf. It had some sort of seeds and beans in it. Good:


YUM:


Phat Thai in Rawai where some charming lady boys served us:

Tom Yum (one of about 8 in two weeks). Amanda asked for spicy and they (aforementioned lady boys) did not disappoint. It was the hottest Tom Yum of the holiday:




Our first fried roti experience. You can choose any fruit (or other things like nutella, tuna, cheese etc) and have it fried in some roti. Then you can choose a topping . Kylisha always chose sweetened condensed milk. The rest of us usually went for chocolate. We ate a great deal of these!!






Whenever we travel with my parents, my mom, Amanda, and Kylisha sample the pina coladas from the pool bars. They say this one is not their favourite. It was too much banana and not enough pineapple. Still looks good!


Christmas Eve:



Here are some banana fritters from the restaurant we had Christmas dinner at. Not nearly as good (or as cheap) as the roadside ones shown earlier!!!

Kylisha tried a mango smoothie. Throughout our trip she sampled assorted smoothies and mango was her fave:


Here's a watermelon one:


We ate A LOT of pineapple during our trip. IT was the sweetest, most delicious pineapple we've ever had. We would buy them on the side of the road and my dad would cut them (he didn't cut this one). He could barely keep up with the amount of pineapple my wife and daughter were eating!!!



More Tom Yum:


A break from Thai food in Ao Nang on New Year's Eve day (with a typical Kaid face)...


All in all, it was a delicious holiday!!

Pictures from Thailand...

91. Kayak in an ocean

I've actually been kayaking in two different bodies of water in the last 3 weeks! In Viet Nam Jord and I went kayaking in Halong Bay and in Thailand we went kayaking in Phang Nga Bay in the Andaman Sea...not an ocean, but close enough!!

Here are a couple shots:





Ducking to get under some rock:



28 down...72 to go!!!

44. See a jellyfish or a sea horse in the wild

We've seen some jellyfish washed up on beaches in Florida before, but Kylisha wanted to see a big jelly fish (or a sea horse) swimming in the water with her. When we were snorkeling at the Phi Phi Islands (near Monkey Beach), we saw a big one. Here is a video that Amanda took of Kylisha with her jelly friend...


27 down...73 left!!

94. Go in a cave

We actually visited a few different caves when we were in Thailand. One of the caves was really long and really dark (so dark that my mom tripped while she was walking through and scraped her leg pretty badly on some coral). That particular cave is actually full of water during high tide, so it was pretty neat to walk though it with flashlights. On the other side there was a circle of land surrounded by high karst mountains. It was full of crabs and mud skippers.

Kylisha and Amanda spent some time hunting for baby hermit crabs and they found several. They were TINY:

It was hard to imagine that when the tide comes in it's actually a little enclosed lagoon (which you could get trapped in if the cave back is full of water!

Here is the view when we were almost done walking through:



The trees on the little pocket of land have adjusted to being covered with water:

One of the other caves that we went to was a lot smaller, but the enclosed lagoon on the other side was beautiful!!
view from inside the cave looking out:



Me and Klash inside the cave:




26 finished...74 to go!!!

95. Go fishing

As you can imagine "Go Fishing" was one of Kaidyn's choices to be put on our list. This past summer he and Amanda's dad went fishing a few times, but Kaid didn't catch anything. He loves to fish though and was VERY happy to discover that he could fish off the dock of our villa the second week we were in Thailand. At first he used his net and caught a few (he was VERY proud of himself).
Then I rented some rods from the resort and he was even happier. My dad, Kaidyn and I devoted a lot of time to fishing and caught A LOT of fish!! Some were actually pretty big, too (which made Kaid even happier)! If we had chosen we could have given our catch to the kitchen staff there and they would have cooked them for us for dinner. But, because we brought Amanda along on this trip, it was catch and release only. This suited Kaidyn just fine. He would fill a bucket with water and put all the fish we caught in the bucket and then every few hours he got to dump them all back into the pond. Fun times for a six year old!!

Kaid and Grandpa fishing:



25 DOWN...only 75 more left!!! WOW!! We are a 1/4 of the way through our list!!!

88. Take a cooking class

One of the highlights of our trip to Thailand for the girls was the cooking class they took on December 29. They learned how to make Tom Yum Goong (Amanda'a FAVOURITE soup), Phat Thai, Som Tam (green papaya salad), and Kluay Buat Chi (bananas cooked in coconut milk). They were SO proud of themselves when they returned to our villa. Two minutes later someone delivered all the food they had cooked and we had a FEAST! It was all delicious and nice and spicy!!

With the cook who taught them:
The man who took the photo did not understand how to use our camera...and he didn't speak English. This was the best of 4 shots!!



Here are the girls with their creations back at our villa:


My mom loved the cooking class THIS much:




24 DOWN...76 left!!