The King Size Bed and other Travel Stories.

• Around about the time Nadi turned 13-15 months old, he started walking independently and all our hitherto pat on the back happy training of him sleeping in his cot went flying out the window as his cot suddenly grew too small for him. Logcially, of course,  the transient solution was to have him in our queen sized bed till we got his new one. One thing led to another and the little tangle of arms and legs every morning turned into a regualr thing. Another year and a half later and that new bed for him has yet to be ordered. And its no surprise that our queen size (once a nice modest sized bed) is not longer large enough to house both k and me- relatively tall people as well as a rotating 2 year old. So it was a nice surprise to discover that there actually is a reasonable amount of difference between queen and king sized beds. K and I have long since accepted that for these few years we will only hug above the child’s head holding hands and below the child’s feet by intertwining feet creating a sort of a huddle amongst the three of us. Initially constricting, this has grown on me to provide a strange kind of security thing, keeping me in body contact with both my people. The bed at Laguna was  huge and despite a Nadi being wedged in the middle of us with his arms and legs splayed comfortably in all directions, there was STILL space for me to angle my legs or sleep curled up as opposed to sleep like a refugee huddled to the edge of my home bed. (you DO know im exaggerating this for story telling value right?) So the first night once Nadi was asleep, I could sense K moving around, shuffling away in bed, his hand was blindly patting the bed away and feet moving around until he finally got up and admitted there was simply way too much space and he couldnt find me over and around Nadi. I guess there just might be a thing as too much space after all.

• I have realized that I love travelling with Nadi. Heturned out to be a fun interactive very observant kid who had us in fits with a lot of his random noticing of things which ordinarily would have missed our attention. He would point at something that wasnt correct in his frame of referecne and then in his put on funny voice exclaim, yeh kitna funny hai. It was liek seeing everything through two yr old eyes and you know what, I realized my thirty two yr old eyes really needed this new vision, this break from being unable to see the magical wonder in a long necked giraffe (really WHAT was God thinking?) or the hilarity in a bird wearing a funny crown on its head or a funnily shaped doughnut or simply the colour of the ocean so different from ours. His sense were on full alert, taking notes, comparing, realizing and commenting away. The randomness  of his observations was addictive and many a time, even when he was asleep or not around, we would find ourselves attuned to the world in a way only a two yr can be.

• I love how he turned out to be our kid in every sense of the word at how much he liked hotel comforts, especially the rain shower. Mama Nadi yeh bath home le jaye ga 🙂 Sigh I wish kiddo.

• The Thai are a very hospitable people- when they can understand you. For a country that has based their life’s earnings on tourism, its remarkable how they have not felt the need to learn English to facilitate the average tourist at all, especially when their own language is unfamiliar and difficult. When Nadi heard our taxi driver babble something nasal at us, he simply could not help the mad giggles that started at this brand new crazy language and within minutes all three of us were rolling in the back and eventually even the taxi driver good naturedly  joined in at the infectiousness of it all.

• The Thai as a people seem to love children a bit more than what I had expected. Nadi would get smiled at, shaken hands with, poked and prodded and spoken to at every turn and wihtin the first two days he had developed a bit of a dodge reflex to people who wanted to touch him. It was funny to see him try to defend his territory much like a little puppy, trying to hold onto all his toy cars while edging away while also trying to remain polite.