We have left the Netherlands for two weeks now, yet nice, warm memories from the last trip still  lingered on. Even though it was tougher traveling with 2 kids, the entire vacation went better than I thought it would. It was tiring, but it was actually quite a pleasant trip for all of us.

Air and noise pollution were pretty much non-existent. For once,  it was nice to be in a country where people actually say what they mean, retail staff are very service-minded, vehicles on the roads abide by the rules and there seemed to be some form of a decent and practical civilization again. There were nice, fresh breads again and most of all, the weather had been kind to us. The occasional drizzles and cloudy days were something I did not mind too much; I actually like it better than the sweltering hot and humid weather in Bangkok.

The chorus of “Weather with You” song by Crowded House:   “Every where you go, always take the weather with you” has been playing in my head for weeks since we arrived in Holland. It seemed apparent that we had brought the Bangkok’s weather with us, and when we left, we had brought Holland’s rainy weather to Bangkok.I wish we had brought the cooler temperatures too!

Funny how weeks before the trip I started getting real apprehensive and thinking of all the worst possible scenario that could happened. But really, it wasn’t that bad at all! The kids behaved, and we all had a splendid time. Most importantly, the kids got to spend a lot of time with not only us, but with their grandparents and great-grandparents; making 2 sets of parents a very happy grandparents.

Interesting, Spud’s Dutch improved by leaps and bounds. She has since started to blabber more in Dutch. She throws me off every now and then with words which sometimes makes me wonder if they are in Dutch or something that she makes up herself (something she is doing a lot now), but, certainly her acumen of the Dutch language has improved tremendously!

This time round, while we were all ready to come home as were the kids, it felt like the holiday was over too quickly. I guess that was a positive sign., and we could only thank the awesome hospitality of my in-laws for having us over. My favourite ornament in their house is this – it just cracks me up:

This trip really has all been good.

Call us brave or plain stupid,  but we both thought that it would be timely to attempt hauling the two kids all the way to Amsterdam by train to visit an old friend of ours who used to live in Bangkok. It was only a 50 minutes train ride, and come hell or high water, we thought that we’d have to do this trip with the kids not only to see them, and to also get Spud re-acquainted again with her long-lost pal, “Lawwie”.

Now, I am not sure if Spud and Lawwie both remember each other, but watching them play together and interacting was pretty amusing. Spud, being Spud, was her usual shameless self. She pretty much helped herself to the toys that were available (and so did Squirt!) while Lawwie got a little possessive of his treasures (and so he should be!), and apprehensive of her.

It took him some time to warm up to her, and when he did, they both were chasing each other around the house and laughing away like crazy. Of course, this happened when we were about to leave their place …

Seeing old friends is always, always something special,  and being able to watch the kids play together is very heart-warming .

It was a real challenge to take pictures of the both of them, but here are a couple of snapshots from that trip:

And here’s a post of them I wrote from last year.  Just look at how they have grown!

The trip to Amsterdam by train with two young kids was pretty cumbersome – it was not stress-free, but my take is that  as long as we don’t have to rush (a potential challenge given that Dutch train leaves on schedule!), the trip can be quite manageable.  

And in case you are wondering about that Hello Kitty top on Spud, NO. I.DID.NOT.GET.HER.THAT.TOP. It happened to be a loan from my mom-in-law’s friend, and Spud had spotted it, and selected that as her outfit of the day.