Holidays and Hospitals
We’re on R&R leave this week. For those of you not familiar with the aid world, R&R stands for Rest and Relaxation. Twice a year Mike gets an extra week of leave we can use to leave Luang Prabang and fly somewhere regional for a little mini-break. This time we’ve headed to the south of Thailand. We’re in Krabi, near a beach called Ao Nang. We’ve rented a small two-bedroom townhouse for six nights that shares a lovely pool with its neighbors. We’ve spent the week introducing Dominic to boats and beaches, catching him as he jumps off the pool’s waterfall, and eating good...
Read MoreBhutan at the speed of baby – Day 1
We left Laos at 7am today and by 11 we were walking alongside a road in Thailand, sweating. The lady at the hotel had said the nearest restaurant was just a ten-minute walk away, but we were twenty minutes into trudging and there was still no food in sight. “How are you feeling?” Daddy asked Mama. Mama sighed. “I’m trying to be a good sport about all of this, but I’m not entirely succeeding,” she said. I’m not quite sure what she meant by “all of this”. She could have been referring to the two days of travel just to get to Bhutan or the hassle of packing (she says packing...
Read MoreHeading back to Laos today
The doctors at the hospital felt confident enough to discharge us yesterday … until I mentioned that Dominic had started to cough and sneeze. As it turns out, he was coming down with his first major cold. When the hospital relayed this information to the insurance company, they strongly recommended that we stay at least one more night. In fact, they stopped just short of telling us they wouldn’t fly us home yet even if we wanted to go. So we spent our third night in the hospital last night with the poor little fellow – this time trying to figure out how to prevent him from falling...
Read MoreDominic’s leg: The ugly, the bad, and the good.
We’re here at Bumrungrad hospital in Bangkok. I tried to organize this into some sort of coherent update by good, bad and ugly categories, but I not feeling coherent enough myself yet to pull that off. So, in no particular order and with no particular artistry, here’s what’s going on. Good: Mike and I are overwhelmed by the amount of love and support people are directing our way from around the world. We are so touched and feel so loved. Dominic, of course, has no idea that so many people are thinking of him and praying for him, but we sure do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bad:...
Read MoreHappy New Year from Laos
So I sort of promised more from Bangkok this week, but I’ve failed on that front. I woke up at 6am in Bangkok this morning and was back in Laos by 11:30am, only to find that the streets are as crazy here as they were in Thailand. The last three days have marked the traditional New Year festivals in both Thailand (Songkran) and Laos (Pii Mai Lao) I’d heard that the locals celebrated New Years in Thailand and Laos by turning their towns and cities into a big three-day water fight, but before this week I couldn’t really understood how that worked. Unless you happened to get really unlucky,...
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