Back in Bangkok

We are back in good old Bangkok after our Christmas/New Year trip to Belgium. The weather was and still is abnormal for the time of year: it rains on occasion and the temperature on some days is higher than normal for the so-called "cold season". We welcomed our first visitors of the year: An & Tom spent a few days in Bangkok with us after they had already toured around Thailand for 2 week. Last weekend, we enjoyed the cool climate of Khao Yai Natural Reserve once again. More news later.

Happy 2553!

Dear readers,

A very Happy New Year to you all! No typo in the title: in Thailand, the year 2553 (Buddhist Era) just started! We went back to Belgium for the Christmas/New Year break and were welcomed by a snow storm shutting down several airports, including Brussels, on the day of our arrival. After having been diverted to the Cologne/Bonn airport and a bus drive through the snow (-10°C!), we finally arrived with a 6 hour delay. But we were rewarded with beautiful snowscapes and a white Christmas for the first time in a long while!

During our trip, we managed to see a lot of family and friends. We could, alas, not meet all, but send our best regards via this medium.

We were also able to attend the Ph.D. presentation of my brother, Alexander. He presented his doctoral thesis (full title: "Multi-View Object Class Recognition and Metadata Transfer"!) in the Arenberg Castle, a university property in Leuven.

After many heavy meals and lots of drinks, and trips across the country (Leuven, Brussels, Tervuren, Ieper,...) we were ready to go back to the Land of Smiles.