Family Visit with Trips up north Dec 2007

It has been a long time since I posted as we have been so busy with hosting family. Amara, Dave and Emma (in reverse order of importance :-) visited from Dec 14-26 and Marisa visited from Dec 24-Jan 5. You can see they had an overlap of 1.5 days in Bangkok for an "official" Christmas lunch at the "Polo Club" hosted by our friend Siriporn. It was great having them here and sharing "our Thailand" with them. Dave and Emma had never visited and Amara who lived here until she was 3 had only visited once in the intervening 24 years. Traveling with a 7 month old is challenging in some ways and fun in others. I will add the comments from Emma and Marisa so you can get a sense of their experiences.

Here is Emma's description (her mom helped her type :-) Click here to see their album
This past month was a jam-packed one! Mama, Papa and I flew to Thailand for two weeks. I do not recommend flying 17 and a half hours when you're only 7.5 months old. I had to sit on Mom and Dad's lap the whole time! I was so happy to see Granny B and Grandpa Westy! We spent some time in Chiang Mai where they are living. Dad had some trouble adjusting to what the Thais call "winter," 85 degrees cold! Apparently we visited a couple of night markets although, I, of course, slept comfortably on my Mom the whole time, so have no hope of remembering them. We did a trip up north in a wonderful vehicle that Grandpa Westy rented with no car seat and no suspension. We drove through beautiful mountainous areas, up and down winding roads. We stopped at a Red Lahu hill tribe village that has no regular water or electricity where Dad attracted quite a crowd. See, apparently these hill tribe villagers "sling" their babies like Mom & Dad do, BUT you really only see the women "slinging" the babies, NOT the men. We were quite the hit. Which brings me to this observation: Thais LOVE babies. LOVE LOVE LOVE babies! I was the hit of the town/village/street! Everywhere we went people of all ages and both sexes came up to me and pinched my legs, arms, cheeks. I could get used to all the attention! So we visited the village which was really beautiful and eye-opening for Dad. The villagers live in bamboo huts, cook inside and sweep the scraps below to their pigs, chickens and dogs. We were lucky to have Grandpa & Granny there to translate, it's definitely not a side of Thailand most tourists are exposed to.

We headed back to Chiang Mai, where Dad went on what he calls the hardest, most technical, thrilling downhill mountain bike ride he's EVER done! He had a blast! One of the evenings we were there an elephant, a real live elephant, came strolling by Granny & Grandpa's street! So cool! Grandpa got the mahout to walk it down in front of their apartment and Mom & Dad fed the elephant pieces of sugar cane!

From Chiang Mai we flew to Bangkok were we spent 5 days and Auntie M joined us. We visited the Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha, where, as if on cue, I fell asleep AGAIN! Mom is just too comfy :-) Good thing we have pictures to prove I was there! We all had lunch on Christmas Day together with Auntie M. I also met the woman who helped Granny B take care of Mama when she was a baby! Thailand went by too fast! I didn't want to leave the land of mango & sticky rice. (My mom told me to type that). Now that we're back in CT, I finally have a tooth coming in. I also love tofu, yup, you read that correctly! Yours truly, Emma Mei (7.5 months old). P.S. I have a leg up on this whole blogging thing, my Grandpa is a bona fide "nerd."

Here is Marisa's description Click here to see lots of pictures from Marisa's visit
We just got back to Chiang Mai this afternoon after our trip up north since Monday. It was quite an adventure but it was a lot of fun. Dad rented another rent-a-wreck from Pop's, and we took off on Monday morning for Chiang Dao to visit the caves. The caves were pretty cool. Dad and I went further into the caves than Mom, go figure, but it was fun and some of the caverns were huge! Afterwards we headed to a town called Wiang Hang that Mom had read about in the Bangkok Post. The road there took us over many mountains on steep, curvy roads. It took us about 2 hrs to go 50 km, but the views were amazing! We got to Wiang Hang, and really there was nothing there, except for the guest house/restaurant where we were staying. We did visit one chedi that mom had read about, and then we hung out in our room. This was New Year's Eve and we were in bed by 8 so we could huddle under the blankets/quilts as it was so cold! I had luckily bought a fuzzy in Chiang Mai before heading out on our trip and it really came in handy.

The next morning we were up early, I had adjusted to Mom and Dad's schedule of going to bed at 8 and waking up between 5-6. We huddled in our beds, drank coffee/tea and took some what hot showers before taking off for Piang Luang, another small town about 20 km north. We walked through the main street of the town and it was really interesting to see such a small town. The people here are of Tai Lai origin and the temple architecture is quite different - there are also lots of signs in Chinese. From there we headed just 4 km north to Lak Tang which is right on the Burmese border. We could see Burma and the barbed wire fence as we walked up to see another chedi - it made us realize just how arbitrary borders can be. From there we needed to head east because we had to get to the Lahu trekking hut. We followed the map and went on a road that was no longer a road. It had changed to dirt and was very, very bumpy, curvy, and steep. We moved even slower; I don't know if Dad ever made it out of second gear. It was quite the driving experience and it took us out into such beautiful countryside where there were hardly any villages visible from the road. Mom and Dad said that they did not think such roads existed anymore in Thailand. We did finally make it to the hut, which is so beautiful We got there around 4 so we had some time to relax and went for a walk around the village, and picked up quite a following. We left the hut with 4 girls and a one year old boy who wanted to walk with us. Then we picked up the local drunk who followed us all the way back and also about 7 guys for awhile before they went to play soccer. I thought we might have the whole town with us by the time we got back to the hut. Dad and I also got a massage at the hut which was amazing! I know my woman really worked on my back and could pinpoint the problem areas and Dad said his guy had really strong hands. We had a traditional dinner cooked in bamboo with Sila and Jateboo and then again we were in bed very early.

On Wednesday we took off after a great breakfast around 9. I really liked the prik num (means young pepper spread) which they served with the food. We drove into Thaton and visited the many levels of the temple (Click here if you have Google Earth installed) and then drove by the river. We then headed south through Fang, stopped at a market which was not a tourist market at all. A lot of hill tribe people had come into town for the market as well because it was just a few days before the Lahu New Year (Jan 8 this year) so it was crazy busy. After the market we headed to a national park called Doi Pahom Pok which Mom had also read about in the Bangkok Post. We checked in thinking we would spend the day hiking, going into the hot springs, etc, only to find out that the location only had hot springs and if we wanted to hike we had to drive 2 hrs. So we just opted for the hot springs. We were sitting on a nice porch over looking the hot springs so mom sent dad to buy a beer at the park restaurant and later we were going to head into Fang for dinner. Well when Dad got into the car he realized he had a flat. He got out the wrench to change the tire only to discover that the tool did not fit our tires. So we drove it down the hill and we stopped a man who works in the park to see if we could borrow the correct size wrench because we had a spare tire but the wrong tool. The guy ended up calling a "chang", someone who would come and fix the tire "on site". Then we waited for him to arrive. The good news was it was a restaurant so we could have a beer while we waited! So the chang arrives on his motorcycle with tools, takes off the bad tire, puts on the spare tire, but it doesn't have enough air. So now the restaurant owner offers to take the "chang" and the tires to a shop to put air in one and fix the other (the spare looked in really bad shape). The guy whom Dad had originally asked for help was nice enough to drive the chang into town with both tires. So we waited...for a long time. They finally returned and the tire had been fixed but it took so long because they got to town and all the stores were closed, so they had to call the owner of a store to get them to come and open the store and fix both tires. So about 2 1/2 hours later we were on our way to town. We drove almost 400 miles along some really rough and very isolated roads and the tire went flat at just the right time! Next time I don't think I will use "Rent a Wreck" 4X4 Suzuki - tom

Tom here - Well that was way too long but you can blame it on Amara and Marisa