Happy Birthday to Me!

As if I hadn't had enough excitement, the day after we got back from Chiang Rai was my birthday.  Jeff and I had talked about doing a night downtown, a river cruise, or at least going out to dinner, but after all the flying around, all I wanted to do was be at home.  I also figured that since it was my birthday, I would have cookies instead of cake, since I like cookies better.

Baking is one of the few things Young is not really comfortable doing in the kitchen, so she let me make the cookies, but she did all the clean up.  I realized it was the first time I've made cookies here, since my main cookie eater is my dad.  Luckily, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are pretty straightforward, and they came out great despite my lack of recent practice.

Not to be outdone, Young made winged bean salad and stir fried chicken for dinner,

with mangoes and sticky rice for dessert.

It was all delicious, and afterwards I was too full and sleepy to watch the movie Jeff had downloaded for me.  What can I say?  I'm getting old.

My favorite present was actually something I got for someone else.  Elena likes to play outside, but it's been so hot, that she can't stay out for long.  Plus, there aren't many shaded areas for her to play in.  We just added some extra pavers to our front patio area, and I decided to take advantage of the space and buy Elena a cool water table to play in.  She was excited by it before we even finished putting it together, and Vivian was intrigued enough to get suited up and join in.  They had fun, but I think I had even more fun watching them enjoy themselves.

Vivian lost interest after the first day, but Elena has splashed around daily since.  She's growing up and becoming such a little person.  She's become very attached to the hat we bought for Vivian in Siem Reap, and she also likes to wear the backpack I got her in the States.  She points and yells until Young or I put them on her, and then she walks around the house.

Another thing about Elena that cracks me up is not only is she not afraid of the vacuum cleaner, but she's actually excited about it.  Young finally caved and let Elena "help" vacuum this week.

Watching Elena turn into a person has been one of the best parts of this past year of my life.  I can't wait to see what next year holds in store.

Chiang Rai - Day Three

Our third day in Chiang Rai was the first official day of Songkran.  We wanted to do the traditional water blessing for the holiday, and so our guide took us to Wat Huay Pla Hung.  We had seen the giant Buddha statue from the plane on our way into Chiang Rai.

What we hadn't seen from the plane, was the great Chinese style temple next to it.

There was even a strategically located chair for fun photo ops.

The sun had come back, and with it, the heat, so the ladies stood in the shadow of the dragon with the breeze coming through a coil, while Jeff (as our family rep) lit good luck incense in front of the temple.  

Then we went inside.  Vivian thought the wooden statues were great and got really into bowing before them.

Elena followed Vivi's lead and got on her knees and bent over.  Young worked on showing her how to put her hands together.  It was really cute.

There were stairs leading up to each new level of the temple.  At each level there was another statue for praying.

The stairs got a bit treacherous towards the top, so Young and I stayed with Elena while Jeff, Vivian, and the guide climbed all the way to the top.  Jeff got some great pictures and put them all together into a panoramic shot.

Then the guide took us to do a water blessing inside and outside.

Next, we went into the town itself to do a little shopping and some quick sight seeing.

We had lunch at a riverside restaurant five minutes walk from our hotel, and then lounged around for the rest of the afternoon, relaxing and enjoying our last full day in Chiang Rai.

The next morning we got up and had a leisurely breakfast outside to enjoy the cool weather.  Then we got on a plane and flew back to Bangkok, home, and the heat.

Chiang Rai - Day Two

We had optimistically asked our guide and driver to pick us up at 9:00am for our second day in Chiang Rai.  Unfortunately, Elena didn't know about the schedule and got us all up pretty early.  We used the time to enjoy the hotel's breakfast spread and the lovely cool weather.  Jeff, Young, and the girls walked around the property, while I sat on the beautiful balcony and got some work done.

Our main agenda item for the day was the Doi Tung villa and gardens.  This is a property that was built by the king's mother later in her life.  The region around Chiang Rai has very good soil and growing conditions, but people were mostly using it to grow opium.  The king's mother made it a project of hers to redirect these efforts.  Now the area is known for coffee, macadamia nuts, and beautiful flowers.  It was about an hour drive to the villa from Chiang Rai, which worked out perfectly for Elena's nap.  It was quite rainy for the first part of the drive, and it was still raining a bit when we got there.

Doi means mountain and tung means flag.  Our guide pointed to these banners at the entrance as an example of tung.

We decided it would be best to visit the villa first since it was still a bit drizzly.  It was actually chilly!

I hadn't packed warm clothes for the girls, but I had a shawl which we wrapped around Elena when she was in the stroller.  We couldn't take the stroller into the villa though, so she was just walking around and enjoying it all.  We also weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so all I have are pictures of the outside.

We each got an audio guide that described the architectural style as a cross between a Swiss chalet and traditional Thai architecture.  The flower boxes had carvings of local images and elephants.

We came in a side door.  The main doors are only used when the royal family comes to stay.  In case you get any ideas, there's a guard on duty.

Vivian got really into the audio guide and listened to the full explanation at each number which was really cute.  The house was interesting, and the view was beautiful, even in the rain.

By the time we were done with the villa, the rain was letting up, so we walked down to the main gardens.  They were absolutely beautiful.

There were also a lot of fun features that Vivian enjoyed.

She was especially excited to find a maze.

We spent about an hour exploring the gardens, and then we were ready for lunch.  There was a little restaurant there, so that's where we got our food.  I tried the chicken with macadamia nuts which was yummy.  Elena has definitely crossed the line from baby to toddler.  She had fried rice for lunch,

and drank water right from the glass.

She's walking everywhere by herself now, but she slowed down and took a nap on the ride back to the hotel.  The weather had cleared up by the time we got back to the hotel, so Jeff and Vivian went to play in the pool, Young took Elena down to the kids's club, and I did some homework.  That evening we left the girls to chill with Young again,

and Jeff and I went back to the Italian restaurant.

This time we knew to pre-order our souffle for dessert.  It was totally worth the extra time and went really well with a glass of port, yum!

Even with the rain, it was a great day, and we really loved the Doi Tung villa and gardens.

Chiang Rai for Songkran - Day One

I got back from my trip to the States on a Monday, and we had a family trip planned to start on Saturday.  At first glance, this seems insane, but there was an underlying logic.  Vivian's spring break was that following week, and Jeff had Monday through Wednesday off for Songkran, so it seemed like a waste to just stay at home.  Songkran is the Thai new year and the celebration lasts three days.  Part of the Songkran celebration involves pouring water over Buddha statues at temples as a cleansing ritual to earn merit.  Since it's celebrated during the hottest month of the year, the water part really caught on, and Songkran now means a water free for all.  You cannot walk down the street in downtown Bangkok without getting splashed, hosed, or sprayed at with a water gun.  Out in the burbs, Vivian and some of her friends armed themselves with water guns, and a very brave mom drove them around in her golf cart so that they could spray water at people and get sprayed at in return.

I knew I would be loopy from my trip, so I didn't want to go anywhere too far away for our vacation.  I also knew it would be hot, so we decided to go as far north as we could go while still being in Thailand.  Chiang Rai is up in the northwest of Thailand right near a spot called the Golden Triangle where Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet.  It takes a little over an hour to fly there, and the morning temperatures there were a good 20 degrees colder than the ones in Bangkok, so it was worth the airport hassle.  Young had never been to Chiang Rai before, and we thought it would make the vacation a lot more fun for me and Jeff if we had her to help with the girls, so we asked her to come with us.  She ended up enjoying herself and being a fantastic help, so we're planning our future vacations to include her as much as possible.

We got to Chiang Rai around 1:00pm, and we had arranged for a driver and guide to pick us up.  They took us directly to our first stop, the White Temple, officially known as Wat Rong Khun.  It's a new temple, still under construction, being built by a local artist as a merit making activity.  It was damaged a bit during a recent earthquake, but they're working to repair it and make additions.

The temple is simultaneously beautiful and weird.  First you have to walk through hell and all the suffering souls reaching up for help.

You walk by angels guarding the entrance and up the path of balance and harmony.

You're not allowed to take pictures inside the shrine, which is really too bad, because there's a fantastic mural all over the interior walls.  Buddha and enlightenment are in front of you when you enter.  On the wall behind you are lots of pop culture images.  Batman and Superman are there, so are Michael Jackson and the Millennium Falcon.  On the side walls are images of people flying on leaves.  They are all facing towards the Buddha and away from the pop culture.  It's not subtle, but the overall effect is pretty cool.

After visiting the shrine, we walked out one of the side gates

and over to a wishing well.

That, of course, was right up Vivi's alley.  Our final stop was at the "golden toilet."  The bathrooms are housed in a building that is almost as impressive as the temple, but in gold instead of white.

Elena had fallen asleep right before we got to the White Temple, so Young stayed in the van with her and the driver while Jeff, Vivi, and I got the tour.  Then we went back to get her, and I went with her and the guide for round two.

It's the kind of place you could stay at all day and keep noticing little things.  Some of them were weird,

but most of them were beautiful.

After two rounds of the White Temple, we were ready to go to our hotel.  We stayed at Le Meridien which is a chain I had never heard of before we moved to Thailand.  The first things we noticed in the open air lobby were the painted elephants.  Vivi thought they were awesome, 

and she proceeded to sit on every single one.  The hotel staff seemed okay with this, so we just let her go for it.  As we explored the hotel more, we found the painted elephants all over the place, with no two alike.  I think Vivi sat on every single one.

We had two large, connecting rooms.  There was one with a king bed for me and Jeff, and one with two double beds for Vivian and Young.  We put Elena in the room with me and Jeff, since I wanted to make sure that Vivi and Young didn't have their sleep interrupted.  The best part about the room was the balcony.  It was large and had a built in padded bench with big triangle cushions on either end for lounging.  You could look out over the pool and the grounds.

I spent most of our hotel time sitting on the balcony, enjoying the breeze, and doing my schoolwork.  Vivian and Jeff set up camp on the pool loungers closest to the room, and Young took Elena to the kids' club (which was really just a small room with some toys).  You can see top of the wooden gate to the club in the bottom right corner of the picture.  From the balcony, I could keep an eye on my family and wave and admire as required.  It was a perfect arrangement.

That night it was raining, so we scrapped our plans for taking the hotel shuttle into town for the open air night market.  Instead, Young and Vivian ordered room service, while Jeff and I made a run for the hotel's Italian restaurant on the other side of the pool.  It was worth getting a little wet though, since the food was good and the service was excellent.  We had the whole place to ourselves, and it made for a lovely date night.  We decided that our vacation was off to a great start, and we celebrated by ordering decadent desserts and watching the sun set on our first day in Chiang Rai.

Flying Solo

My doctoral program is pretty much all online, but once a year I also go to a "residency" which is an in-person, week long class.  Walden, my university, offers residencies throughout the year and around the globe.  They have one in Istanbul and Paris this year, but they also have one five minutes from my parents' house in Arlington, Virginia, so tomorrow I am getting on a plane and flying home.  While it will be great to see my friends and family in Virginia, I don't know how I'm going to do with being apart from my family here.  This will be the first time that Vivian and I will be apart for more than a night since she was born.

That paragraph was the start of my blog draft over three weeks ago, and I am now finally caught up enough on my schoolwork and my life to get back to blogging.  The trip went fine, and my family survived without me, but, as always, there was some excitement along the way.

I started the trip by reveling in my solo travel status and taking airport pictures, both of the pretty

and the amusing.

I left Bangkok early Friday morning and flew through Beijing to get to DC.  Beijing is possibly the most intense airport I have ever been to, and they are not set up for people who are using them as a transfer point.  First, I had to walk through an infrared sensor to prove I didn't have a fever and could enter the airport.  They show you this scary video right before you land saying you will be quarantined if you don't pass this test.  Luckily, I passed, but then I had to wait in line for about an hour, because they had one person doing passport check for everyone with an international transfer.  It didn't matter that we weren't entering the country, we had to have all the paperwork filled out, and they sent people back who didn't have all the boxes checked.

It was a good thing I had a two and half hour layover, because I still had to go through security and passport check again to get to the departure gates  At the end, I had about twenty minutes left before boarding.  I foolishly bought a bottle of water, not knowing that they had yet another check point set up after you showed your boarding pass and started walking towards the plane.  They went through everyone's bags again and took away water.  It didn't matter that I had just purchased it twenty feet away.

It was all worth it once I got on the plane though.  I had paid extra for an economy plus seat, and I was in a two seat section next to the window.  No one showed up to sit in the aisle seat, and I didn't have any seats in front of me, just the cloth covered section divider, so I had my own little alcove for the trip.  It was wonderful, and I got a good bit of sleep.  I had no problem getting through Dulles airport, and my mom and sister were there to meet me with big hugs.

I got over jet lag pretty well.  I just faded early in the evening.  The residency was great.  I learned a lot and really started to zero in on my dissertation topic and methodology.  I loved the time with my family, and I got to hang out without at least one friend each day.  I spent the last day shopping and bought Vivi almost a whole new wardrobe.  She's grow so much in the past few months!

It was hard being apart from Jeff and the girls, but we talked on Skype at least once a day, and I knew they had Young to take care of them too.  I had left pretty detailed plans for what Vivi should do each day after school, and I had several friends helping out with pick up and play dates.  Of course there were a couple snafus, but nothing critical.  I know Jeff was stressed about working and being the only parent on duty, but overall things went smoothly.  We definitely couldn't have done it without Young, who took extra special care of Elena and slept up in Vivian's room to keep her company at night.

After seven days in the States, I packed up all my purchases in a humongous suitcase which I figured would weigh more than 50 pounds, and got in the car with my parents to drive back to Dulles.  The first sign that something was wrong was when both lanes of 66 came to a complete stop, but we couldn't have predicted that it would take two hours to get to the next exit, and that by that point I would have missed every flight to Asia for the day.  The traffic was the result of an eight car pile up, so I tried to keep things in perspective and remind myself that missing my flight wasn't that bad, but I was really upset.  I had bought the ticket with points, which gave me a bit more flexibility than a straight itinerary purchase, and after a couple calls to United, we came up with a new plan.  Even though I had missed all the flights going west for the day, I hadn't missed the ones going east, so I could fly through Dubai to get back to Bangkok.  I decided to focus on the fact that I would now be able to say that I had flown all the way around the planet.

The new plan got me home Monday morning instead of Sunday night, so it wasn't too big an adjustment.  I got lucky again on the long flight, and I was the only person in a row of three, so I could lay down across all the seats.  I got plenty of sleep on the flight, and the Dubai airport was a breeze compared to Beijing.  No passport check and just one quick security check with no line.  There was no one next to me for the second part of the flight either, so it was a comfortable and easy trip.

Our favorite taxi driver met me at the airport and brought me home to my family who all had the day off for Chakri Day.  Chakri Day celebrates the establishing of the Chakri dynasty in 1782 with king Rama I (who I know as a road).  It is also the dynasty that moved the capital to Bangkok, so there are lots of Rama roads.  I take the Rama IV road to get to the embassy sometimes.  It was nice to have a family day together, even if I did have a hard time staying awake.  The whole trip was a bit more of an adventure than I had bargained for, but it was great to see family and friends, and it was really helpful academically.