The previous post in this series is here..
The main reason for this entire trip during and after Thanksgiving was our friends son’s wedding.
Most of Cupertino descended in Phuket at the JW Marriott to celebrate.
The kids (they will always be kids to all the uncles and aunties) show a level of maturity that made us think “were we like this at that age?”
There was a sense of calm with the bridge and groom that was amazing to watch. There is a lot happening around them and they are actually tying to direct the groups to the right people, interact with everyone, check on people. At one point I told the groom “You should just not have to check on anything!” and he just gave his usual smile.
We have attended a few weddings in the recent years given the next generation in our extended family is all growing up. This was our first destination wedding outside of the US. So it made for an interesting experience. The other recent weddings we attended all had the boy and girl from different cultures within India.. Tamil-Telugu, Tamil-Gurarathi.. etc. but here both the kids were from the same community, but still there were subtle differences in their family traditions when it came to wedding ceremonies. Our local priest from Cupertino who also flew in to conduct the wedding did an outstanding job of juggling everything, explaining things to the audience and made the entire event memorable.
I was strictly told to keep my hands off cameras and leave it to the pros.. and there were 5 photographers running around in circles making it difficult for anyone else to get photos anyways.. Did capture this candid shot of the kids from the iPhone.. Sincerely wish they stay as happy the rest of their lives. They have all their Cupertino uncles and aunties watching them.. the next generation has a lot more challenges than us as we are definitely leaving the world in worse shape than we got it.. or so I feel.. but inspite of all our attempts to screw things up for them, they are in every way better than us. They have what it takes to navigate things. Saw it in their eyes and the way they handled things.. had happy tears watching them go around the fire… blessed them with all my heart!
There were people on boats from the sea taking pictures of the mandap as were tourists walking on the beach.. think they photobombed a lot of the pictures. They must not be used to seeing the groom show up in a decked up horse to the mandap for a baraat..
We had an amazing time.. got to sing songs during the wedding ceremony. We had practiced for a few weeks before the wedding! San got to dance with the other “aunties”.. (I will get flak for this sentence alone but it is what it is).. We got to dress differently for the different events..
There was a short gap between the wedding and reception and we finally spent some time as a group walking around the beach and taking pictures.
My friend gave a speech but sadly we had to leave mid way into the reception as our flight was late that night and it was a 90 minutes drive to the airport. We did catch the video later. He is still giving me crap for missing his epic speech. I had to get back to work Monday morning and literally dropped suitcases at home and went to work to take care of a few things. Phuket airport is not anywhere close to the other airports we visited on this trip.. It could seriously use some more disciplined people. The airport was dirty, there was no crowd management at the lines, no proper lanes, airport and restrooms were not clean.. Thankfully we had to spend only a couple of hours there. Our stop at Seoul aiport was much nicer. We enjoyed the three hour break there before flying back to SFO.
We said bye to everyone and Phuket to wrap up a fantastic 10 days in southeast Asia!
Will summarize all these stops in one blog post to share the entire trip itinerary.