I’m waiting on Tyson to build the new WordPress theme for MelbourneLoft.  Then I can start posting the same format photos that I post on Facebook.  Facebook has been killing MelbourneLoft a little for the past couple of years as I usually post all my pictures there for friends and family to see.  But I’d like to continue posting update here as well.  The site needs a good makeover.  No more webcam image and no more tag board.  It needs to be simplified…  a lot!

Okay it’s been a while (2 months) since the trip to Thailand.  I’ve been so busy since getting back to Australia that I haven’t had a chance to post much about it.   The trip started on the Gold Coast with my family.  We planned a long time ago to fly on the new carrier Scoot Airlines to Singapore and on ward to Bangkok.  We were going to meet the rest of our family at Bangkok airport.  Here my little brother and my dad are checking out the plane as it lands at Gold Coast airport.

Everyone enjoyed the trip, but agreed that they would rather take a direct flight in future on a full service carrier.  Scoot was okay, but the service wasn’t as good as some other airlines.  Here we all are sitting in the back rows after paying extra for forward row seats.

Singapore airport…  Bangkok airport…  my fellow travellers are getting very tired.   We still have a 2 hour road trip ahead at the end of this to get down to Pattaya.

In Pattaya we stayed at the very glam Hilton hotel.   The hotel actually seems a bit out of place in this beachside town.  But we all enjoyed the beautiful rooms, the club lounge, the pool, the cocktails etc etc.

Pattaya itself is a bit of a fun and wild town.  It’s not really the place to bring your parents, but mine seemed to have a good time.  They really liked walking around the markets and hanging out around the hotel.  My brothers and sisters liked going out to the bars and seeing the night life.  I got a chance to head around the headland to see Jomtien Beach.  I much preferred it over there where there were some nice resorts and it was much quieter.

One thing that I always enjoy in Thailand is the amazing food.   There just aren’t enough meals in the day to get to try everything.  The food, the cocktails, the juices, everything is delicious!  I could go to Thailand just to eat!

Even my dad liked to try out new places.

I can tell that this is going to be a long post about the trip to Thailand so I think I will break it up over several posts.

When am I not planning for an overseas trip?  To round off the year with my 4th overseas trip (I think it was 4), I’m heading to Europe in search of a white Christmas (again).    Last year we only saw light snow flurries in Budapest.   So this year the the plan is to hit up Budapest – Berlin – Bucharest.  And hopefully we’ll see some good dumps of snow while we are away.  On this trip I have booked apartments instead of hotel rooms for most of our stays.  It will be nice to be able to cook our own food and wash clothes as we travel. I’m VERY excited about going back to Budapest.  That city is beautiful!   And we will be in Berlin for Christmas again where we will meet up with some of our other friends from Melbourne.  I’m not looking forward to the 31 hours of flights to get to Budapest though. That’s a killer!

My Oneworld plane collection so far…

I’m finally back from Thailand! Okay, so I ended up staying on an extra 2 weeks after the family left. It gave me a chance to spend more time in Bangkok and try out working remotely from overseas. I’ve got tonnes of photos and stories. So I’ll just make this post short and sweet. Here’s a shot of the Scoot Airlines plane parked at the Gold Coast airport in Queensland. It’s the latest low cost carrier airline to fly between Australia and Asia. All 6 of us travelled to Bangkok and back for around $1200. Pretty good huh!

I’m in the middle of organising my family’s trip to Thailand next week. The small troupe of 4 people has now grown to 9. It seems that no one wants to miss out on this one after we all had such a fun time there last year. This year we are visiting the wild town of Pattaya followed by a few days in Bangkok, one of my top 5 cities in the world. There’s a strange serenity that I like in the big crazy city of Bangkok. It’s always a nice experience visiting there. Here’s are my mum and sisters squeezing in to the back of a taxi cab during last year’s visit.

We’ve had a little makeover this weekend to improve the office space in the loft. The place had become really messy since we brought in all the furniture from the other apartment. So during the week the old blue couches were donated to one of the charity shops to make some more space. And on Saturday we went and bought some new chairs and desks. The new space looks great! Here’s a few pics.

I’ve been away from posting here for a bit. Mostly because I’ve been busy with my work and Facebook seems to suck some of the creativity I was giving to MelbourneLoft. But since the Loft is 10 years old this year, I’ve decided to give it a kick once again. I returned to find a couple of things that surprised me. I hadn’t been receiving notifications for the comments on the posts. I I have approved a lot of the comments now. Well, the ones that weren’t spam. And I found the tagboard filling up with quite negative tags. I’ve worked out how to delete some of those. I like happy people. If you want to leave me a post in the tag board, please give yourself a name and be happy.

Here’s one more shot of Sam going on one of his walks.

Can you spot Sam?

Sam is our pet python snake. I was letting him out quite often in the leaf up to the Palm Springs trip in April. But he doesn’t like coming out of his tank at all during this winter. My place is much colder than the previous apartment he lived in. In fact I think I’d love to live in his tank. It’s kept a nice warm 30 degrees all year round with it’s big heating lamps. So it must be quite a shocked to be pulled out in to the apartment which is almost half it’s normal temperature. And I had no idea hold cold snakes are until I held it. I’m sure Sam will be making appearances on the loft again as soon as it starts to warm up again.

No sleeping in this morning. The whole road is being stripped and re-surfaced.

Sent from my iPhone

No sleeping in this morning. The whole road is being stripped and re-surfaced.

Sent from my iPhone