Umbrella making very cool. Bombarded by pink wave of Thai tourists. We were the attraction. 15 minutes of touching, pictures of US. People love that we have 5 kids. The men go on about Peter's power. Uh, what about mine? ;) Try, try, try to find silk factory to watch make silk from cocoon. Very sad couldn't find. Drive beautiful rice fields. Peter doing good driving on left. Australia trip and Guatemala good practice for driving here. Left in Aussie and crazy in Guat. Thai is both. Can't master the blinker though, always turns windshield wiper on instead. Thankfully, gas pedal still on same side!
About 20 minutes after leaving Chiang Mai, we reached the town of Bo Sang. We stopped at a paper factory and unfortunately, they weren't doing demonstrations that day, but I was in heaven with all the hand bound books. Then we went to an umbrella making factory and aside from getting mauled by a sea of pink, it was very enjoyable. In retrospect, it was kind of fun to be so liked, but at the time the children were naturally a little intimidated with all the touching, swarming, and picture taking and we were genuinely relieved to extricate ourselves.
It looked like the store had some cool stuff, but they truly would not leave us alone. If we attempted to move somewhere else, they would follow us and another person would start taking pictures and grab at the children. It was impossible to shop with all the gawking.
Umbrella Making
Carving on Lathe
All that work for a $3 umbrella!! Once we were done there, we headed down the road a few minutes to San Kamphaeng. We drove back and forth down the main road (no easy task to navigate) about six times and on a few side roads looking for the silk factory with no luck. Man, Peter was cranky. We found somewhere decent to eat and then tried looking some more, but still couldn't find it. We did manage to finally find a battery for my watch and another memory card for the camera. Even with food in his belly, Peter was fed up with looking for the factory. So, we moved on and I was sad, but after seeing some beautiful scenery I got over it. Both our crankiness was completely washed away when we came upon the "Supper Highway" signs. There were also some quaint looking monasteries, but the road was narrow and winding, so we didn't stop to take pictures of them.
Rice Paddy
Scarecrows...wonder what they are called in Thailand
Thailand is the world's largest exporter of rice
We were going to take the scenic route to Lamphun and see the rubber trees. In the end, we decided to go as fast as we could while the baby was still happy, so we got on the "Supper Highway". No rubber trees, but we did get to see this HUGE statue from the highway.
I took another close-up of the front, but frankly I'm doing you a favor by showing you it from a distance
He looked like a giant gold Yoda...OK that is an over-exaggeration.
What can I say? There's a little bit of us sprinkled all over Thailand.
In a regular-sized pick-up truck
Due to all the smoke, the sunset was always a fire orange
Another grandiose plan I had was to take a horse-drawn carriage ride in Lampang and then try again to find some silk. This is real-life, so we wisely scratched that plan and still made it to the hotel barely after sunset.
Doi Inthanon first let down, no real countryside, just towns, city. Then mountains dry and not so pretty. Waterfall beautiful and make rest worth it. Squat toilets quite the experience.
Had to cancel Thai massage to do laundry. Took three hours cause only one dryer. Me sitting on wood bench whole time. Thankfully found tuk-tuk to take me back to hotel. Will still have to try Thai massage even though some describe it like a spider monkey jumping on your back and contorting you.
More proof of why Thai skinny: 1 teaspoon syrup with waffles. Banana split is literally a banana split. OK, they did put a tiny ball of ice cream. When saw asked if could add chocolate sauce. Bring back with 1 t sauce, if even. Menu said banana spit, black paper sauce. Other translation mistake: Ratest news...I love translation errors.
Took video of boys punching rock bed. Very funny, will share when back home. Start journey south to BK. Saying little prayer for softer bed tonight. 5th time a charm?
Ily
Doi Inthanon (8,400 ft) is the highest mountain in Thailand and is almost 2 hours from Chiang Mai. It looked a lot closer on the map at only 36 miles away. We enjoyed these beautiful falls and then had lunch here. I loved that the restaurants there used large tree stumps with smooth tops for cutting boards. Ingenious.
Wachirathan Falls
Rachel had fallen asleep in the car and apparently, it takes a while for legs to work again if awaken before ready
Close up of rocks
Family at left
Close-up of family
Climbing to top of waterfall
Back down
Peter & kids
Florence & kids
Going down river
Isaac & Josiah
After lunch and cleaning a mountain of rice off Eva, we headed to Siribhume Waterfall. We saw a trickle in the distance and got out to find the path. All we found however, were the Royal Gardens and at this point we were getting tired and didn't really want to frolic through a hot garden. Feeling slightly bad for the lonely gate-keeper who looked excited to finally have a visitor, we turned around and climbed back in the car. I took some quick pictures of the village we drove through to get there. No clue of the name, but Doi Inthanon is home to both Hmong and Karen tribes.
There were many places on the mountain where they were growing flowers under these canopy-type structures. Reminded me of Guatemala on the way to Biotopo.
Chicken cages
After that we had a choice....20 minutes more and we'd reach the summit. We decided just to head home. My at-home-rested self is annoyed that we didn't just do it, but my traveling-self understands and forgives. Before leaving the park, we stopped at one more waterfall. No squat toilets here, so mother nature was our bathroom. With seven of us, someone always has to go.
Siritan Waterfall
These ants were HUGE (~1 inch) and after a few got on Caleb, he decided not to use the handrail
Once we got back to Chiang Mai, it was later than we had planned, so I cancelled my massage and immediately took off to do some much needed laundry. The hotel provided a service, but you had to log in every item and of course, the price was inflated. With seven people, that is a lot of socks, underwear, and clothes to write up, so I decided to go to a local laundromat.
Hard bench I spent several hours on
When I took this picture, I still had a few hours to go. It was dark by the time I left.
Rachel is sitting next to me now and when she saw this she said, "I love my mommy."
It took a few minutes for a woman to secure her basket of clothes onto her motorcycle
THREE hours later, the clothes were done and so was my bum. Hungry, tired and wishing I had my own motorcycle, I started walking home in the dark with two heavy bags of laundry. Thankfully, a few blocks into it, I found a tuk-tuk and even though he ripped me off, I would have paid more not have to carry those bags anymore. I got home to all the children asleep and tales of the fun they had playing hide and seek. I'm glad someone was having fun.
One of the many hiding places in our very large hotel suite
