Advertisement
Published: December 27th 2007
Eva Air Flight Attendants
We loved these ladies. Salt of the earth!!Hey everyone,
Oh my goodness, what a great time we are having!
It took about 24-hours to get here, it felt longer then that, but it was so worth it!! The flights themselves were fairly uneventful, but we did make friends with some of the flight attendants, well Audrey did!! Everytime they had a break in meal service, they would come by, grab her and take her to the back to play with her. She was passed around the plane like a little doll and loved every minute of it. This was our Eva Air flight and poor Sophia was so tired that she slept through the whole thing. We arrived into Thailand around 4pm and to our hotel around 5:30pm, they lost our luggage for awhile, so it took a little longer. Our guest house is beautiful, a little noisey, meaning that you can hear other guests throwing paper away because the walls are so thin but it really is wonderful and the owner is just a jewel of a man, speaks virtually no english but we are getting good at communicating through hand signals. Anyhoo, we got checked in and were alseep by 6pm. We all slept
Audrey Hanging Out!!
At this point we had been flying for 19-hours. We were spent until about 6:40am and were up and ready to go.
Sergeant Kai arrived to pick us up around 8:45am. I wasn't sure what time he would be here so I putzed around and in true Angela fashion wasn't ready when he got here. He was wonderful though and just waited for us. He immediatly took us to breakfast, which was pretty yummy, for about $6 for all of us. We met this great group of people from Isreal and a couple of the other tour guides in Sergeant Kai's group. They are all so sweet.
We started off our touring, visiting the Hmong tribe. This isn't a main tourist site, they don't even have any shops to buy anything. We really had the opportunity to see how children and members of the villages live. We visited the school, which was a little wierd at first. We felt out of place just walking into the school as outsiders watching them, but the adults and children were really sweet. We showed up at lunch time and they were having a special lunch. Normally, the children need to bring rice to school along with thier wn bowl and spoon but today
Childrens Cafe
Can you imagine this in Auburn? rice was prepared for them with lots of good stuff inside. We toured the Kindergarten room and Sophia was amazed how after lunch the children need to take a 2-3 hour nap. They took thier naps on the floor with these dirty little blanket and pillows. It was shocking to me, most peoples dog beds look cleaner, but this was all these people had. The village came into existance about 75 years ago and were heavily into the Opium trade. When opium was outlawed, they lost thier way to survive, so the King of Thailand, developed a plan to teach them to grow agriculture, provide them with the seeds, so they could grow and sustain themselves. We then moved into the village, gosh, what a way of life. Many of these peoples houses have wood log floors. They cooked inside their huts and were just so sweet. The girls met a 20 month old baby that was just a sweet little munchkin!! I loved it there and it was really good for the girls to see how other people live. Upon leaving Sophia got really homesick, but after some talking too and nurturing, she was better.
From there we
drove around through some of the rural areas of Thailand which was absolutely amazing and then made a stop at the monkey school. This wasn't actually something we had planned to do, but I am so glad we did. The show was totally hokey, but the girls LOVED IT AND SO DID EDDIE AND I. We got to shake hands with monkey's, feed them and Sophia even got a kiss. This is a pretty interesting place, what they do is train monkey's to climb coconut trees and pick the fruit. These monkey's can pick up to 1000 coconuts per day which a person could never do and allows families to support themselves. The monkey's themselves were hilarious and crazy. There were some 8-mos old babies that we took a liking too and one totally out of control monkey that would probably assault us physically, if he could. He would jump 8-10 feet in the air at us.
From the monkey farm we went to a honey farm, another unplanned stop, and it too was amazing. We met the owner and he took us on a personal tour. We started out in the museum looking at the tools of the
Little Chick Eating
Isn't this cute. They put cabbage on a stick and this little guys jumps on it and eats. The girls loved all the animals that are everywhere. trade. From there he took us over to see some bee hives. Did you know that is takes 15-days for a bee to grow from an egg to a full adult and then they only live a total of 3-months? This was truely awesome and very informative for all of us.
From there, everyone was hungery so we went to this outstanding outdoor restaurant for lunch/dinner. The restaurant is under the shade of these fruit trees and overlooks a river and water fall. The food was amazing. I had cashew chicken, Eddie ordered this fish thingy and they made Sophia chicken strips special at Sergeant Kai's request. We insisted he eat with us this time and he ordered a pad thai type dish with chicken, oh we also had shrimp cakes, at Sophia's request. The food and the company were out of this world and came in at a whopping $19.00 for everything including 5 beverages.
From there we went to Doi Suthep Temple. Amazing!! I know, I am saying that word a lot, I should probably expand my vocabulary. We get to this temple area, see a view of the entire Chiang Mai region and upong walking
Buying Tiger Balm
Sophia got to buy Tiger Balm from the monkey. into the temple see the most beautiful golden monument I have ever seen. We were also very fortunate to be there in the evening when the monks said a blessing, so we got to experiance that as well. It doesn't matter if you are Buddist or not, it was truely a beautiful and interesting sight. While the monks were chanting Sophia, Sergeant Kia and I slipped away and went over to the fortune telling sticks. These are basically sticks in a cups that you shake vigorously until one falls out. You then look at the number on the stick and that corespondes to a fortune. I tried it first and couldn't get a stick to come out. Finally, after much attempt and even more laughter, one came out. Then it was Sophia's turn. She shook the cups so hard that half of them fell out. Sergeant Kai and I laughted and he told her that she would have much luck and that she should close her eye's and pick one, she did and we all had fun with it. By the time we were done at the top of the temple it was dark, so we headed back to the
Kisses
Sophia played it cool, but she loved being kissed by a monkey. Now I won't let her live it down!! overlook to see Chiang Mai at night.
Finally, we headed back to the hotel around 8pm. What a long and magnificant day we had. Tomorrow is the Elephant Nature Park and then we are in Chiang Mia for a couple more days with Sergeant Kia. We all love him and he has become apart of our family. Eddie has some great conversations with him, I love the stories he tells, Sophia is quite taken with his humor (he loves to do magic tricks with her) and Audrey has adopted him as another parent. She just thinks he is the greatest!! In fact everyone here is wonderful. We have yet to meet a stranger.
Until next time!!! Love and miss you all!!!
Angela 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.07s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0345s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mom
non-member comment
thank you
Thank you so much for sharing your trip. I am so happy to hear about it and all the fun and excitement you're experiencing. By the way, I was up and on the computer looking for your blog this morning before it was posted. I was so excited to see it a few hours later. I love you all so much. All is well here. I look very, very forward to your next blog. Give my love to the girls and give them a big hug and kiss for me. Love, Mom