Via's Visit to Bangkok, April 2004

In mid-April 2004, my older sister, Via visited Bangkok with her boyfriend, David, and two of his friends (whose names escape me). Here we are all having dinner together at Kalpapruek at The Emporium. Kanittha couldn't join us for that dinner, but we made up for it later on.



Here's Kanittha with Via doing a bit of shopping at the wholesale center of Pratunam.



Finally here's David, Via and Kanittha standing in front of Panthip Plaza.

Ancient Ayutthaya, March 2004

Sometime before or after our visit to Manila, we decided to take a day trip to visit the ancient ruins of the former capital of the Kingdom of Siam, Ayutthaya.

There were just the four of us — myself, Kanittha, and her two half sisters, Oh and Na. We got up early one morning, hailed a taxi cab and said we all wanted to go to Ayutthaya, we agreed on a price for the whole day and away we went.



The three ladies just barely awake — Oh, Kanittha and Na.



We also had a chance to visit the elephants. Once upon a time there were literally hundreds of elephants kept in the precepts of the palace in Ayutthaya. It's popular knowledge that elephants are a highly regarded animal in Thailand. They are revered as a symbol of royalty and respected as a beast of burden.



You can barely see them in this image but somewhere up the ruins of that stupa you will see the three girls.



I was able to take hundreds of amazing photographs that day, with the Buddha head overgrown by the roots of a tree being one of those images. Although, one of the saddest and most moving scenes is this silent row of derelict Buddha images.

In Manila, March 2004

Let's start from the beginning...

Kanittha and I met on her birthday (July 18th) in 2003, and by February the next year we were seeing each other quite seriously. In March 2004, I decided to bring her back home with me to Manila to meet the family.

Now that sounds really nice and wholesome, but that isn't really me. So to add a bit of interest to things I didn't tell my mother about her and my father only knew that I was bringing Kanittha home with me a few days before we arrived. Only my sister, Via, and my brother, Nico, were in on our little surprise.



Everything went extremely well... the surprise was well received and she was made most welcome. Here we all are gathered around the dining room table at home, from left to right — Jose, Daddy, Louie, Tessa, Nico, Mommy, Via, David, Franco and Kanittha.



No surprises there, my wife is a real charmer. Here she is trying on a hat my mother gave to her.



We spent time with family and friends... mostly eating. Here's the family having lunch at Banana Leaf restaurant. Again, from left to right — Franco, Kanittha, Mommy, Tessa, Louie, Nico, Bong, Daddy, Jose, Via and David.



But, we were also able to spend time enjoying the summer weather. We took advantage of the really great swimming pool over at Via's condominium to cool off. We tried to get our friend, Bong, into the pool with us but he wouldn't fit into one of Kanittha's spare bikinis.



The photo above is Kanittha sandwiched between our really good friends, Gino and Bong. Perhaps you now can begin to understand why Bong couldn't go swimming with us. This was taken in Café Bola at the Glorietta 3 Mall, in Makati City.



Despite the fact that Kanittha had become quite sick and tired of going out to malls, and that we were both exhausted towards the end of our trip, I think it's safe to say that we had a wonderful time in the Philippines.

Started A Blog

Well today is the first day of this blog... and that's all there is to it.

I thought it might be a good idea to leave some kind of a journal to share with friends and family. Nothing deep or profound, but hopefully nothing too mundane or trivial, just simple everyday "real" life.

I still have to figure out how I can stick photographs to this blog thing... once I do that, I can add in our wedding and travel photographs for all of you to have a look. Let's see what happens next...