Many years ago – about five or so – a young Nyan Thomas went to England (he was living New York at the time) and hung out with his doting cousins, Hetty and Poppy. The three starred in these lovely videos, which you should re-watch right now because they will be very important to understand the rest of this blog post:
With a young Hetty:
With a young Poppy:
Fast-foward many years to autumn of 2016, when all three have put on several years of good living. They all got together again, and decided to recreate those earlier videos. The results? They speak for themselves:
I suppose now we’ll have to recreate these videos every few years for the rest of their lives, maybe? Eh, could be worse.
Just our usual random collection of snapshots and goofy videos from the month of April. Lots of reading, napping, funny faces, playing with friends, etc. Also we’ll throw in a picture of one of his recent drawings, just for good measure.
We got him a history book. He enjoyed reading it to us:
And of course he digs just running around the house, being goofy.
Classes at Nyan’s school end around 5:30 each afternoon. From then til 6pm, the kids go play in the indoor playground as they wait for their parents to pick them up. It makes for lots of great photo ops!
We also often capture some nice memories on video:
And Nyan often runs into various classmates on his way to school in the morning. Here he is holding hands with Kyra, and sharing morning hugs with Kyra and Yew Min.
Singapore has a professional basketball team. Who knew? Not us. But we read that they were scheduled to play Game 4 of a best-of-five playoff series, at an arena a short ride away from our apartment one Sunday afternoon in April. So Daddy and Nyan snapped up a couple of tickets and off they went!
It wasn’t just any best-of-five series; this was against Hong Kong for the ASEAN Basketball League championship, no less! Nyan put on his best Singaporean finery to support the home team:
It wasn’t the biggest arena ever, but it was pretty good sized, and it was packed. We had decent seats too. The Slingers even have their own mascot. I think it’s a Merlion.
Nyan was really into the game – much more so than Daddy expected, to be frank. Although he got a little restless late in the game and decided he’d stand (or sit) just off the court. Nobody seemed to mind.
It was a fun and exciting game – but unfortunately, Hong Kong won in double overtime, and won the series, 3 games to 1, and thus the championship. But we had a blast and will definitely try to catch more games next season!
As you’ve seen in previous posts (see here and here), Gardens by the Bay is one of our favorite places to go – and going there with Kyra and Chryssa is always a great time! So one weekend in April, we went back with the girls and their parents.
There was splashing around in the waterpark, playing at the playground, reading maps, looking at various exhibits, and also snacking.
We’ve said before that one of the great things about living in Singapore is that it’s easy to jet away to all sorts of spectacular places. In late April, we did just that with a weekend trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia, home to the famous Angkor Wat and other thousand-year-old temples deep in the jungle.
Most famous is Angkor Wat itsslef, a UNESCO World Heritage site and, in fact, the largest religious monument in the world. It’s 162 hectares — thanks, Wikipedia! — and comprises a moat and numerous stone buildings, plus lots of open space.
This video gives a hint at the size:
And that’s just one small section of the place, just outside the main temple.
Here are a bunch of photos from in and around Angkor Wat. Click on any photo to enlarge it – and trust us, it’s worth it! A very photogenic place.
Just up the road is Angkor Thom, an ancient walled city with numerous old temples and monuments inside. It was the capital of the Khmer empire and established around 900 years ago.
This was our second stop on the day, and to be honest, we were a little worried that Nyan’s attention would quickly lag. There wasn’t a lot to actually *do* at these places besides walk around and ooh and ahh and be amazed at the sculptures and architecture. But Nyan was a trooper and was really into it! Here we are exploring around Angkor Thom, including a few shots of the moat outside the wall and the wall itself.
As awesome as Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom were, Ta Prohm was definitely Daddy’s favorite temple. Unlike the other two, officials have made a conscious choice not to do much if any restoration work here, so there are tumbled-down stones everywhere and, most stunningly, huge jungle trees and vines crawling all over everything. So beautiful.
The trip wasn’t all temple trekking though. We also spent some time in our hotel’s very nice swimming pool.
And maybe the highlight of the trip, for Nyan at least, was the tuk-tuk rides we took around town.
Finally, random shots from the trip. Including one of Nyan, before the flight, wearing a toy crown he had made at school. He slapped it on and took to calling himself the “King of Cambodia.” Alright then.
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