A few months back, we had a lovely family vacation, leaving the tropical heat and humidity of Singapore for the cloudy, drizzly and cool (to us anyway) environs of central Vietnam – Da Nang, to be precise, right in the middle of the country (and, as it happens, the place where U.S. Marines first landed way back at the start of what the Vietnamese call the American War). We didn’t get much sun, but we had a great time. And here, better late than never, a bunch of pictures and videos. Here we are at Changi Airport, checking out our plane and Nyan checking out one of the giant climbing things they have to keep kids entertained.
Nyan on the flight: The security lines at Saigon Airport. For travelers coming from Changi Airport – truly one of the best, and definitely one of the most efficient airports in the world – returning to the reality of a very average airport was a shocker! But we made it to Da Nang.
We stayed at the Pullman Da Nang resort. It was just lovely. Highly recommended. We were there a few days before Christmas, so it was relatively empty at first, which gave us pretty much the run of the house.
A while back (pushing three months ago, actually, but who’s counting?), Nyan took Mommy and Daddy on a lovely long weekend escape to the Malaysian island of Langkawi. Here, better late than never, are a bunch of photos and videos to commemorate the time.
One of the highlights of the trip was when we bumped into another family, British expatriates living in Singapore and working in finance, and spending a long weekend in Langkawi. Sounds familiar, no? They also had two kids, including Sienna, who is about Nyan’s age. They hit it off great.
One cool thing about the resort was they had these big pools full of fish, and every morning a staff member would come out with big buckets of fish food for guests to toss in. Nyan and Sienna had a blast:
Can’t really see in these pictures or videos but there were two huge (six-feet long) water monitors, big slithery lizards that are native to Malaysia. Very cool. Also a giant catfish.
Here’s Nyan, bouncing and then doing something called the crab dance. Showing off for the ladies, in other words.
There was plenty of time on the beach too, with proper protection against the sun, of course:
And oh what a beach. What a place. We loved it. Just gorgeous.
Just for fun, because it’s not the most illuminating video ever: at night, we had races on the beach. Can’t see much in this one, but you can hear Nyan being Nyan and eventually he shows up… just watch:
Another night, we walked by the resort’s lounge and someone was playing a lovely song on the piano. Nyan and Mommy couldn’t help but dance. (Note how Nyan says incredulously, “He’s making song for us??” and then starts in on his ‘dance’ (but at least it’s not the crab dance this time):
More nighttime fun: Nyan found a flashlight in our room and pretty much wouldn’t put it down. Even interrupted his meals to wander around and shine it on things. The resort was almost empty, and we had the restaurant pretty much to ourselves, so no problem.
The weekend was mainly a late-birthday celebration for Mommy, so one night at dinner, Nyan made sure that the waitstaff and a string quartet gave Mommy a fitting serenade:
Here’s Nyan at lunch (the white noise in the background is a little waterfall at the restaurant), showing off his coloring skills.
And just a random assortment of photos from the weekend:
Nyan was, as always, an excellent flyer on this trip. To pass the time on the 90-minute flight, he took some shots with Daddy’s camera:
Finally, here’s our boy at the airport and on the plane, happy after a fun-filled and relaxing family weekend.
We live on a tropical island. In fact we live a 10-minute stroll from the shore, and a long stretch of sand. Unfortunately that sand looks out onto one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and those ships don’t much care if they dump their trash overboard and if that trash then washes ashore. Jerks. But no problem: when we need a fix of sand and sea, we just hop a ferry or a plane and in no time we’re on another tropical island, one with clean beaches.
Nyan had never spent time on a beach before we moved here, but he’s taking to it like a fish to, uh, sand. Here he is, showing off the latest swimwear for this season:
Here’s our boy on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia, this past weekend:
This is Nyan on Bintan, Indonesia – digging in the sand (while staring at the group of girls who would later chase him around) and splashing in a small tidal pool.
Some video of Nyan, kicking and splashing in that same tidal pool:
And finally, what’s a day on a breezy beach without a kite?
It was an odd moment: we’re on a fairly deserted beach in Indonesia, enjoying the crashing surf and the sea breeze, watching Nyan build a sand castle. Suddenly we sense something; we look up; and standing there are six or seven local girls, ages from about four to 10 or so, standing and smiling at Nyan.
What does our Don Juan (Nyan Juan? Don Nyan?) do? Why, he runs away, of course. The girls chase after him, he giggles, they giggle, on it goes. Of course we captured video:
They spoke almost no English – one of them asked us what our names are, and asked if we speak Indonesian, and that was about it. Eventually a young man came over, with a few younger boys; turns out all these kids were from the local village, and they spend Saturdays with this young man who tutors them. Or maybe he’s their regular teacher at the village school? Not really sure. Anyway, we figure it’s rare that they see such a young foreign kid on their beach — the resort we were at does not exactly cater to children, as we learned the hard way — so they decided to come over and say hello. They were sweet and friendly, and it was just one of those really nice moments you come across sometimes when you travel.
The teacher asked if they could take a picture with Nyan so we got a few group shots. Nyan of course had to vamp for the camera and make faces. Oh, Nyan.
So sayeth young Nyan Thomas earlier this month as he jetted from London, to Chicago, to Iowa City, and back again. He’s always been a great flyer – he’s been airborne since he was about four months old – and even as he has become more alert, and more of a handful in some ways, he’s still pretty much a pure pleasure to travel with.
Here’s the lad on our flight from London to Chicago, including a nice long nap.
We had a somewhat lengthy layover in Chicago; our hero passed the time by running around, chatting up strangers, offering grapes to fellow passengers, etc. Standard stuff. Here:
Near the end of that video, when Nyan says ‘I look at bike, Daddy,’ he’s referring to the Harley-Davidson motorcycle we had earlier come across – a chopper that was inexplicably just sitting there in the terminal. Nyan was oohing and ahh-ing over it, and some dude standing there said ‘Go ahead, he can get on it!’ So up Nyan went. Then the dude, who I had thought was somehow in charge of the bike, walked off. Oh well. Nyan had a blast:
We went to Margate a couple weeks back. What’s Margate, you ask, and why did we go there?
Margate is a seaside town about 90 minutes east of London. It was once a popular spot for seaside get-aways, but like most English seaside resort towns, nobody goes there for vacation any more. So what’s left is… not much, to be frank. It is definitely a faded town, without a whole lot going for it. They’ve tried in recent years to revamp it – the town dropped some 70 million pounds on a fancy glass-clad art museum along the waterfront, a lot of the buildings have been restored, there are some nice parks, and there are the usual festivals and whatnot. All well and good, but there still isn’t a lot of there there.
We don’t mean to be unduly harsh on poor Margate. There’s nothing at all *wrong* with the place. Read the rest of this entry »
We’re trying out a new modus operandi here at Nyan Thomas World Headquarters: every Sunday, we try to do a special event, usually an out-of-town trip to see a bit of the countryside, spend some family time together, try to keep the little guy from getting bored. We’ve only recently formalized this process, and here we share our first outing: a road trip, a couple weeks back, to the seaside town of Brighton.
Brighton is about an hour-plus south of London, on the southern shore of the island. It’s a charming little place, with lots of interesting activities and architecture. It’s also a seaside resort, so there’s also a grubby element of carnival rides, cheap seaside restaurants, and lots of touristas wandering about. In that sense, it reminds your blogger of New York’s Coney Island, and not in a good way. The ‘sand’ on the beach is large pebbles, almost small rocks, and the water is a murky green. And the day we were there was densely overcast, with horrible light that made photography quite tricky.
But don’t get us wrong: we really enjoyed it. There were, as mentioned, lots of interesting things going on, it was a gorgeous drive down there, the people were friendly, the town had a nice vibe to it… and there was a giant Ferris wheel right on the shore. Here’s our hero up above it all:
We’ve always been impressed (and pleased) at how well Nyan travels. (Talking here about plane travel only, though on the few longish (4 hour) drives he’s done, he’s done pretty well there too.) Our recent trip to Iowa was no exception. The trips were fairly long both coming and going – something like 16 hours door to door on the way home, and a bit more than that going out – but he handled it like a trooper – napping, playing, looking at people, and generally staying in a good and chipper mood the whole time.
Here are a handful of pictures from our travels (click on any to make it big and start a slideshow). Mostly from the waits at airport gates, but a few from the plane itself.
On our recent trip to Iowa, we learned that one of Nyan’s favorite things to do is to sit in the driver’s seat of a car and fiddle around with the steering wheel, the lights, the horn, the radio, you name it. We shouldn’t be surprised; he’s got an engineer’s mind and loves all things mechanical. Nevertheless, several times a day during our stay, he’d toddle down to the kitchen and shout “Red car! Red car!” which was his way of saying ‘Let me out into the garage, I want to sit in Grandma’s red car and play.” Cousin Meema was more than happy to indulge him, as you can see in these photos:
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He also clambered into Grandpa’s car and somehow managed to turn the radio on, even though the keys were nowhere near. “I didn’t know you could turn it on without the keys,” said Grandpa. Here’s a fun video of the boy, rocking out and showing his dance moves to the car radio:
And some bonuses videos of Nyan, strapped into his car seat with Mommy next to him and Daddy behind the wheel, cruising down the highways of Iowa on our way to some event or other. Of course he’s pointing out each and every truck he sees on the road, and otherwise just happily babbling away.
We’re back in London after a week-plus in America; more on that later. Nyan was, as always, a great flyer, and even managed about three hours of sleep on the redeye flight, which was three hours more than either Mommy or Daddy got. So we all passed out when we got home, sleeping from about 9:30 until 3:30 or 4. This evening, Mommy and Daddy are dragging. Our boy’s asleep at the moment, but earlier, he was certainly not showing any signs of fatigue or jet lag. See here:
We’ll see what happens overnight, of course; chances are good he’ll wake up at 2am, or 4am, or god knows when…
The security lines at Saigon Airport. For travelers coming from Changi Airport – truly one of the best, and definitely one of the most efficient airports in the world – returning to the reality of a very average airport was a shocker! 
But we made it to Da Nang.
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