A destination wedding

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 bride 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.

The name is Pandu.. James Pandu..

The previous post in this series is here..

The first morning in Phuket, we decided to take a trip to James Bond Island. We were told that this is the only touristy place to visit outside of the resorts in that area. We had booked a long tail boat tour for 10 and 7 of us went on the trip. An energetic kid was our guide. He picked us up in a van from the hotel in the morning at 7:30 AM and we drove almost an hour to the dock. There we took a boat ride for almost another 45 minutes to go to the Island.

The island is small and you have four spots to see in total. Given only 4 to 5 boats can stop at the island, as soon as the boat docks, they give the guide a laminated card with the time for leaving. The time allotted for us was 45 minutes. So we had to do a rush rush job at every place, take group pictures, solo pictures, couple pictures and by the time our guide got us out of one spot to the next, he was so relieved.

He even had some plastic guns and fans as props for us to take pictures. Before we knew it, it was time to get back on the boat and then on the van to the hotel.

There is a muslim floating village on the way with nice views. There is also a mangrove forest for most of the route but there were no birds or critters we could see. Only exception was some hawks and kites which I barely managed to capture on camera from a moving boat! The boats themselves are interesting.. they have the engine high up and open with only the propeller going into the water from a long shaft.. They move it up and down for speed and right to left for navigation.

We also saw rock carvings which are thousands of years old in caves. Never realized we were so close to Andaman islands till we saw that the ferries were all Andaman!

Here are the photos..

more photos.. the roads in Phuket in this area were all lined with street lights that had elephants on them. Just beautiful!

A video highlights reel of the morning trip to Bond island..

We came back to the hotel and by the time we went from our rooms to the beach, we were an hour late.. and we missed some of the ceremony.. but were happy to jump in the pool with all our friends to have fun.

All the bond girls on our trip were happy and all smiles after this trip. That was good enough for all the Bonds..

Saying bye to Chiang Mai from an underrated hotel

The previous post in this series is here..

It was day 8 of our trip. We were finally going to wake up late or that was the plan. The breakfast folks came and knocked at 6:30 AM. Given we had gotten used to waking up very early the entire trip, I got up and decided to walk to the local 7-Eleven. San decided to take it easy.

After eating breakfast and having Chai we had time to spend till Joy and Goy were going to show up to take us to the airport. We put our luggage at the lobby and did a photoshoot for San. The hotel we stayed in was called Sunny V Hotel and how it gets only 3 stars is beyond me. It was fantastic and grand and the staff were super nice.

After taking pictures we took a photo with Joy and Goy. We defintely miss the guides and drivers the most after this trip. Genuinely nice folks. Would definitely recommend Joy to others for sightseeing in Chiang Mai.

Then we were off to the airport..

A video highlights reel..

We loved our time in Chiang Mai. The place and the people made an impression! Traveling the world may not be everyone’s cup of tea and not everyone is fortunate to do what we do. When we go places our perception of ourselves and others changes. We can see that people are people. Sincerely wish more people in the United States get to travel the world and change their worldview.

Our next stop was Phuket.. the highlight of the entire trip!