The Joy Luck Club Goes to Bangkok!

This picture pretty much captures the essence of the holiday! Four mums sans bubs, three massages, 2.5 days. Bliss

OK this is rather overdue but I have to record my first trip away from Jordy for posterity's sake!

A few months ago, the lovely Adora mooted the idea of the four mums going away for a long weekend to Bangkok sans bubs. Yes, you heard right! But first, we had to get our wonderful husbands on board with the idea. Amazingly, all four Joy Luck Club men were pretty open to the idea, everyone pencilled the dates down in their calendars, and off we went to book our tickets.

Being the Type A mom that I am, I started planning for the trip a few weeks ahead. And was rather excited to type up an Excel spreadsheet (lame I know, but there you go!) for D as a resource for his solo-parent weekend with Jordy. I present to you an excerpt from the three-page long document. I put in as much detail as I could think of, and am thankful I did, as the handover was rather seamless!

7.00am	Breakfast	Milk: 180ml (3 scoops) before breakfast. Weetbix x 1, milk, prune juice, mashed banana	Give 5ml of Multivitamins (in fridge) after breakfast. Spoon is in container next to fridge. Brush teeth. Take out fish nuggets from freezer to defrost on counter.
9.00am	Morning tea	Assortment of crackers, Gerber star puffs, Cheerios, raisins, rice crackers (depending on where you take him)	Spare crackers and Gerber puffs can be found in food cupboard above dish drying rack.
11.15-11.30am	Lunch - Homemade Fish Nuggets	1. Fish nuggets: Heat up on gentle heat in frying pan. 2. Wholemeal bread (1 slice): Spread very lightly with Vegemite and cut into squares. 3. Grapes (10+), cut into quarters.	Wash or wipe his hands before lunch.

So, with admin matters wrapped up, it remained for me to pack my very few belongings and head to the airport! Of course these few belongings now include, courtesy of my wonderful husband, the latest model of the iPod Touch. It is beautiful, sexy, sleek and I am a little too obsessed with it for my own good. I actually got a little thrill when I whipped it out in Chathuchak market to refer back to my Christmas shopping list.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I won't go into a blow-by-blow account of where we went and what we ate, but suffice to say that we stayed in the truly marvellous Legacy Suites in Sukhumvit, grazed continually throughout the day on the gastronomic delights that only Bangkok can offer, squeezed in three massages in two and a half days, and talked and talked and talked.

I'm not sure which I cherished more, the "me" time that was so mentally and spiritually liberating, or the shared confidences with other women -who-happen-to -be-mums who share so many similar values to me. If one thing the last 15 months have taught me, it's the irony of motherhood being both the great leveller, but also the great divider.

Meet any stranger on the street, and if they are a parent, there is usually enough fodder to sustain a good 10-minute conversation. But sometimes, very quickly into the 10 minutes, you discover a thing or two that either unites you, or causes you to take a few steps back and walk in the opposite direction!

Example: a mum at my local playground asked me rather aggressively how I could even think about sending my child to a non-airconditioned childcare centre. "It will be too hot for them!" she exclaimed. I then told her that it was precisely because it was non-airconditioned that I wanted to send Jordy there. She looked at me with great dismay and didn't say anything to me after that. Hmm.

I don't mean that there is one correct style of parenting, of course not - I say amen to different strokes for different folks - but there are just some issues, sometimes even really superficial ones, that just make me want to run away screaming from the person I am talking to! Maybe this comes from one too many strange conversations with all types of caregivers at my local NTUC.

Alas, I digress yet again. It was just so lovely to be away from the routine of life with a toddler, and to not have to think about cooking the next meal or hauling a bag crammed full of Jordy-stuff for an outing. It also made me really treasure what I have, and miss my two boys in a Norman Rockwell painting kinda way.

Now, how to broach the subject of an annual Joy Luck Club holiday with D? Heh heh...