Thailand - Phuket

So Thailand was a lot of fun but pretty exhausting. We traveled to Phuket, Koh Samui, and Bangkok. I think the twins enjoyed Koh Samui the most because it was pretty chill and they enjoyed sitting by the pool and beach. But I got to tell you, it's tough to get sands out of socks!

Bangkok was a ton of fun but I had to keep the socks motivated to travel and they got tired pretty quickly from the humidity. As for Phuket, it felt a little sketchy at times and it was rainy season. There were times when I thought to myself, "This isn't the best place for young socks!"

Anyway, below are some pics from the Phuket leg of the trip.

Sawasdee ka!

 The "ladies" on Bangla Road aren't actually ladies if you catch my drift. The socks didn't really understand that. I didn't explain.

It was rainy season in Phuket as evidenced by this pic. Fortunately, it wasn't like this the entire time we were there, but it wasn't as sunny as we had hoped. When it was raining a lot, the socks just chilled indoors and watched American movies. Typical behavior for young socks.

One night, we had dinner at a seafood restaurant that had an Asian Elvis. The socks really enjoyed the show. For some reason, other tourists found it peculiar that I had my twin socks eating at my table. They stared a lot so I had to give them the evil eye. What, they haven't seen socks just hanging out at dinner before? They were well behaved so it shouldn't have mattered. Some people! Pssh!

Big Buddha is still under construction.

At a Muay Thai fight.
The socks asked me "how come those fighting men don't have socks on their feet?" I explained that in Muay Thai, feet are usually bare. Then the socks tried to convince me that they would fight better with socks on their feet.

Street meat is the best! And so cheap.

Look familiar? Ko Phi Phi.... Jurassic Park scene supposedly. Unfortunately, the waves were a bit rough so the tour guy couldn't let us go down to the island where the beach was shot. That was disappointing. Also, one of the twin socks got sick and threw up over the boat. The other sock laughed.

Monkey Island! So we had a bit of an adventure here. The twins wanted to get up close. That was a bad idea. One of the monkeys grabbed my socks and then ran off! I had no choice but to pursue. But the monkey was too fast. So I tricked it by trading some pineapple for my socks. Stupid monkey fell for it. My socks were not pleased and vowed never to play with monkeys again!

On the way back, the boat had some problems. I started to think that we would need to be rescued or possibly, just die out in sea. But fortunately, they fixed the problem and we made it back.

Ironically, with the Phuket part of the trip coming to an end, the sun finally was out and Patong Beach looked great. I took this pic when we got back from Phi Phi.

On my last night, I went and grabbed a beer at the Hard Rock (and took this pic) and then had dinner at a seafood joint on the main beach road.

What a great trip! Wish the weather was better, but off to Ko Samui!

Socks in Hong Kong!

Well, you never know how hard it is to take young socks on an international trip until you give it a shot and so that's what I did. The location?

Hong Kong and Thailand!

So first a little bit of background. I was headed to a friend's wedding in Thailand but decided to swing by Hong Kong first. I've never been and I'm certain the socks' former owner never took them anywhere exotic, so I immediately knew that this was going to be a great life experience for them.

Hong Kong is quite humid in September so the socks got all sweaty and stuff. Fortunately, they didn't get bad BO and I tried to keep them in the shade as much as possible. They were troopers and sure, they complained early on about the humidity, but once we started doing activities, they forgot all about it.

Anyway, below are some pictures from our Hong Kong leg of the trip.

 

View from Victoria's Peak. We hiked 2+ miles. It was quite the workout in the heat.

 

We took this picture from Star Ferry. They do a light show which the socks found quite entertaining. 

Here's a pic of the twins hanging out at the wet market!

Hong Kong was a lot of fun. If you have any socks you plan on taking overseas, I'd recommend trying to keep them awake on the plane if you're traveling during the daytime at your destination location. Socks typically need a good 10-12 hours of sleep a night and they also tend to be heavy sleepers. When my socks fell asleep on the plane, they were wide awake when we got to HK (12 hours ahead) and so their bio-rhythm was all messed up. It's a good thing I gave them plenty of beer and whiskey to "adjust" their  sleep pattern. Sleep, passing out, what's the difference, right?

Game Night!

Last Saturday, I took the twins out to enjoy game night in Brooklyn with some friends. Usually the twins prefer to play video games but I think it's important to teach them about playing games with real people. Social interaction is an important part of growing up!

The night was fun and the socks did a great job working together as a team. Right now, they play together all the time. At some point, I'll let them play against each other, but for now, they're a bit shy and only want to do things in tandem. Sigh. The hard life of being socks! Always clinging to each other!

Williamsburg Smorgasburg!

This past weekend, I took the socks out to Williamsburg, Brooklyn for Smorgasburg (a Brooklyn Flea Food Market). It was a lovely day and they were excited to get out!

The weather was beautiful, the people were out, and the twins were just enjoying a chance in scenery.

But there was danger....

At the food market, we spotted the scary man.

His back was turned so the socks and I fled for our lives. We were lucky that the bad man didn't know they were there, or else he would certainly have tried to kidnap them!

Anyhoo....

Later that night, the socks would go to their first concert at the Knitting Factory. While they tend to like pop more than rock, they seemed to enjoy the show a lot. They even tried to dance around on my feet though I resisted!

It was a fun weekend for the twins. They're initial fear from seeing the bad man from afar was wiped out once we fled. Hopefully, we will not have such a close call again!

Eric is at Comicon

Today the twins asked me a surprising question. They asked me about Eric and whether this evil man will ever try to abduct them. I was surprised by this question which seemed to come out of the blue. I think they've been sneaking in some TV viewing and caught some bit on the news about some kid being kidnapped or something. Remind me to set the parental socks controls so that doesn't happen again.

Anyway, I explained to them that Eric is like a villain in a superhero comic. But that just like in comic books, the good guys win! And that the villains may have some power, but eventually the forces of good will always beat the forces of evil! They seem to buy this as I pointed to examples in movies like Spider-man, Avengers, Superman, Batman, etc. Good thing that all Hollywood movies follows the "good guy wins" formula.

Yes, it was a bit contrite, but they're little socks and they don't need to know the truth about how evil people work. I did tell them that Eric was far away in California (ironically he's at comicon this weekend). So they had nothing to be afraid of!

Whew! Who know being a parent to a pair of socks was so hard!

Atlantic City!

Now some would say a good parent wouldn't promote gambling to such young socks, but I disagree. There's a lot of money to be made from suckers who go down to AC and I want the twins to be ready as soon as possible. Because yeah, they need to pay their share of the rent in a few years (and as far as I can tell, Eric did a lousy job teaching them anything, especially gambling).

Anyhoo, here they are at the Trump Plaza, chilling in room.

So since they're underage, I started them off on video poker. It's not the same thing as a real live game, but I'm also not sure if casinos allow socks to play in tourneys against people. They did great their first time out! They spent about $30 in slots and made $17.50. Not bad for their first time!

Time for a run!

So I don't usually take the twins out on a long run, but I decided that they were up to the challenge! So this past Monday (4/16/12), the twins and I went to central park for a nice 4-mile run. I've decided to run the Brooklyn half marathon in May, so I need to start training. The twins have been very supportive! And they said they wanted to run with me, so off we went!

What a fun time!

You can see the loop we ran below!

Weather is great!

Well, the twins have been growing up the last few years, but they're still kids at heart. The weather is nice again, and softball is back, so hopefully, they'll get some play time in again!