Jim Thompson Farm

Before we moved to Thailand, I had never heard of Jim Thompson, but he's a big deal here.  He was an American who helped promote Thai silk products.  At this point I've been to the Jim Thompson House, regular Jim Thompson stores, and the Jim Thompson Outlet, but I found out there's even more Jim Thompson outside of Bangkok.  There's a farm.  It's only open to visitors from mid December to mid January, when everything is in bloom.  It also has a traditional village that you can visit and explore.  The embassy organized a day trip on a Saturday, but it's about a three and a half hour drive each way, and that seemed like it would be too much for the girls.  We still wanted to go though, so I looked for a nice hotel along the way, and I figured we could drive up one day, spend the night, explore the farm the next day, and then drive back.  Young had never been there, so we asked her to come too.

I found the hotel on Agoda, and I wasn't sure what to expect.  I thought we were getting two rooms, but it turns out we were getting two "villas" which could probably be better described as bungalows. Jeff and Vivian explored while I got us checked in.  They got some good pictures of the grounds and the main building.

There was a wonderful breeze.  It was called Mountain Creek Golf Resort, and even though we didn't take advantage of the 27 hole golf course, we still got a ride in golf carts to our villas.  This is the view looking back at the main building.

We ended up with one villa with twin beds which was meant for Young and Vivian, and one down the hill a bit with a king bed.

Luckily there was a big couch at the foot of the big bed, because Vivian decided the other villa was too far away from us, so we ended up bringing down the bedding and having her sleep with us, leaving Young her own villa to enjoy in peace.

The best part about the villas though, was the porch.

Although, Elena might have disagreed.  She loved the HUGE bathtub and the complimentary toiletries.  Young was a good sport and hung out in there with her while she played.

Eventually Vivian came to tell them we were going to the pool, but it was hard to tear Elena away from her tub.

The pool turned out to be a fun diversion though.  Jeff and Vivian got in first.

I honestly didn't think Elena would want to get in, so I hadn't changed her, but then she tried to get in fully clothed, so we had to do a quick change.  Jeff had invented a game with the leaves for Vivian, and Elena joined in too.

After fun in the pool, we got the girls cleaned up and dressed and then headed back up to the main building for dinner.  Vivian got pad see ew gai (of course!)

Elena has discovered she likes Thai style soup with noodles and pork meatballs.  This is what it looks like all put together.

Young and I broke it into component pieces and cooled it off though, before serving it to Elena.

The sun set as we were finishing dinner.

By the time we got in the golf cart to head back to our villa it was really dark out.  I don't think Elena has ever experienced that level of dark.  She kept saying, "Dark, dark."  Then, for some reason, she decided this meant we should be quiet, so she amended it to, "Dark. Shhh," and put a finger to her lips.  She didn't nap on the drive up, so we were hoping she would go to sleep smoothly.  She fought it a bit, but she was asleep by 8:30.  Vivi and I spent some time on the porch looking at the stars, which she thought was really cool.  Then we put her to bed, and Jeff and I had the porch to ourselves.  It was actually a little chilly with the breeze, so I was wearing a sweatshirt, gasp!  It was hard to leave the wonderful porch, but as it got later, we realized we did have to go to sleep in order to be ready for the next day's adventures.

Of course, the first thing we did the next morning was go back on the porch for coffee.

We placated the girls with blueberry muffins, and Jeff and I had second cups of coffee.

We finally made it up to the main building for official breakfast and got ourselves checked out.  We hardly saw another person the whole time we were there.  It was wonderfully peaceful on top of being lovely and cool, definitely a great hotel stay, but the original reason for being in that part of the country was still ahead.

We had another 45 minute drive to get to the farm.  We knew we had arrived because there was hay everywhere and a huge dirt parking area full of cars.  It was a slightly surreal experience.  It was like a fall festival transplanted to Thailand in January.

Vivian and Elena frolicked while I went and got us tickets.

The ticket sales people spoke some English, and they gave me a map in English, but that was the last English we saw for a while.  Most of the people there were Thai, and that was who the farm was catering to.  We were especially grateful we had Young with us.  

There are buses to take you around the property, because it's quite large.  

There was a person providing narration the whole time, but it was all in Thai.  Young said they were talking about the different things that grow there.  I decided I was okay with not understanding what he was saying, because the view was enough for me.

Our first stop was in fields of flowers mixed with a "pumpkin patch."

Again, slightly surreal with a giant scarecrow and pumpkins, but definitely beautiful.  There was a food and drink stand right where we got off the bus.  Vivi said she was thirsty, and there were lots of juices there, but all the names were in Thai.  When I asked Young what the flavors were, she said they were all Thai fruits and Vivi wouldn't like them.  There was also ice cream, but no vanilla.  I persuaded Vivi to give the coconut a try, and she loved it.  So did Elena, so Vivian shared with her, a bit grudgingly.

Our lazy morning on the porch, meant that the sun was in full force by the time we were ready to explore the flower fields, so I got on our hats.

There was a giant pumpkin at the top of a hill of flowers, which you got to up a path lined with small pumpkins.  Obviously, we had to go and check it out.  Elena tried to smile for the picture, but the sun got in her eyes.

It turned out that the pumpkin was made of corn.  We found some nice shady places to sit inside.

On the way out, Elena took some time to appreciate the craftsmanship.

Looking down the hill, we saw a valley full of a rainbow's worth of flowers,

so, into the rainbow we went.

We wandered among the flowers,

 and climbed the big structure in the middle.  

Then a colorful platform structure caught our attention.  We didn't know what it was meant for, but it was great for climbing and photos.

There was another interesting structure, but it didn't have anything to climb or any shade, so we didn't last long there.

Instead, we found some shade in the gourd arcade.

We had explored most of the first stop, so we got on the bus and went on to the next one which was a replica village.

They had displays on wool,

and silk.

There was also an area where the kids could "help" with getting the rice out of its husk.

Elena was very impressed with Vivi's efforts, and insisted on trying it herself.

We also found another structure we didn't understand,

and some pretty decorations.

The most important find though, was a lunch of fried chicken followed by popsicles, eaten sitting on hay bales with a hay bale table all covered in plaid cloth.

The girls were getting worn out by then, and we were treading dangerously close to Elena's nap time, so we decided not to get off and the next two stops.  One was a place where you could watch them weave silk, and the other was a shop to buy Jim Thompson products.  We didn't feel bad about skipping either one.  We also got a kick out of one last idiosyncratic touch, a wagon wheel fence.

We agreed that it had been a lot of fun, but we were really glad we did an overnight instead of a day trip.  Jeff was a champ about driving.  The roads were good, but our company on the road was always interesting.  We passed these guys when we were first leaving the city, and knew we weren't in Bangkok anymore.

Overall though, it was a smooth trip, and both the hotel and the farm were a nice change from all the city stuff we've been doing lately.

Elephant Haven

There are lots of places in Thailand that offer the experience of spending time with and helping to care for elephants.  Some of the best are in the Chiang Mai area, and Judy REALLY wanted to do that while she was here this trip.  Unfortunately, by the time I checked, all the good ones were booked for our time in Chiang Mai.  A good one is one where you know they care more about the elephants than the tourists.  A good indication is whether or not they offer elephant rides.  The rides with the seats on the elephant's back is really bad for it.  There's one in Chiang Mai that the school uses for field trips, and when I looked at their website, I saw that they have a new one closer to us in Kanchanaburi, about a 2.5 hour drive away.  I booked it.

Judy was thrilled, but in order to get to the elephants early in the morning, we had to leave the house at 5:30am.  I hired a van, and we were all going to go, but mom and Jeff got sick, so it ended up being just me, Judy, my dad, and Vivian.  In a way though, it worked out really well, since we all had plenty of space to spread out in the van and go to sleep.  I had put Viv to sleep the night before in her outfit for the day, so it was really easy to transfer her from her bed to the van.

I tried to stay awake for a while on the drive down there.  It was dark when we left the house, but the sun came up as we were driving along.  We were out of the city proper by that point, and there was mist over the fields.  It was absolutely beautiful, but my eyelids were too heavy to keep open, and eventually I fell asleep.

We were meeting a van from Elephant Haven at the Kanchanaburi bus stop, so we got off of our first van and took a quick (and authentically Thai) bathroom break before getting on the next one.  I love that Vivian is completely unfazed at this point by switching out her shoes for "bathroom shoes", bringing our own toilet paper, squatting over a hole in the ground, and "flushing" the toilet using a bucket of water.

After our bathroom adventure, we got into the van, and it was a quick ride into the forest and Elephant Haven.  We pulled up, and there were elephants, hanging out and being fed by another group that had arrived a bit earlier.  We got assigned a guide who offered us tea and coffee, and then he took us over to some tables with buckets.  Inside the buckets was a big pile of sticky rice.  We each got several small bananas to peel and add in.  Then he gave us bunches of fresh tamarind (VERY sticky, but supposedly helps the elephants' digestion) and we were supposed to mash all of it together and then make it into balls to feed the elephants.  By the time I realized what a great photo op this was, my hands were completely covered in sticky mush, so, no pictures.  You can just imagine everyone's facial expressions as we mashed it all up with our hands.

The first group left with those elephants, and a new group of elephants came over for us to take care of.  We all fed them our hand made yum balls, which disappeared really quickly.  Then the elephant minders brought big buckets of cut up pumpkin and watermelon for us to feed the elephants.  I finally got my hands clean and started taking some pictures.

To be totally honest, I hadn't been super excited about a day with elephants.  I figured they would be smelly and too big to be cute, but it just took one bucket of yum balls for me to fall completely in love.  The elephants at Elephant Haven are all female.  They were big, but not intimidatingly so, and they didn't smell at all.  When you held out your hand with food, they would take it gently from you with their trunks, which almost felt the same as a hand.  We could have fed them all day.

I think the feeding was to establish that we were cool, because after that the guides took us and the elephants into the jungle for a walk.  We had one main guide who spoke English, and he was in charge of explaining things to our group.  Everyone in our group spoke English, but I think we were the only Americans.  There was a large group from Canada and a young man from Germany.  There were also a bunch of elephant minders with us.  Our guide explained that each elephant had one person who was in charge of taking care of her, and the same person and elephant were together every day.  You could tell that all the people who worked there really loved the elephants.

The walk part was fun.  We were getting used to the elephants, and they were getting used to us.  

It was pretty warm by then, and the elephants were thirsty, so we all walked down to the river, so that they could get a drink.

We did some more walking through the forest, so that the elephants could eat some greenery.  By this point, Vivian had become very attached to one of the elephants and decided to name her Ellie, even though she already had a Thai name.  It turned out that Ellie was a bit of a loaner, so she tended to lag behind the other elephants.  Vivian decided to lag along with her.

While they were hanging out, waiting for the elephant, the minder showed Vivian how to use a vine as a swing.

Vivian was the only child in our group, and, in typical Thai fashion, all the people there gave her lots of attention.  There was one older guide, who didn't speak much English, but he kept telling Vivian, "no danger, no danger" and pointing at the elephants.  He even photobombed her picture once she got comfortable being close to the elephants.

Another one of the elephant minders made Vivi an elephant princess crown out of banana tree leaves and flowers.  He presented it to her when we stopped for a rest on a shaded platform.

We sat up there and watched the elephants wander around the field.  It wasn't long before Vivian left her crown behind and went to wander with them.  The grass was pretty tall though, so you can only see the top of her hat peeking out to the left of the elephant.

Judy and Dad decided to borrow the crown and pose for pictures with the elephants.

By that point we had worked up an appetite for lunch, so we headed back to the main area.  They had tables and benches under a thatch roof equipped with fans, so it was nice and cool for lunch.  There was a buffet of Thai food laid out.  Only a few things looked familiar, but everything I tasted was delicious.  I had figured that lunch wouldn't work for my picky eater, so I had packed a sandwich and some snacks which Vivian was perfectly content with.

After a leisurely lunch, our guide told us that the elephants were going to go play in the mud, and we could come along.  

Of course the only person who wanted to get in the mud with them was Vivian.

Even she had an ewww moment, but she still managed to convince Judy to get in with her.

The elephants seemed to get great joy from flinging mud and dirt onto their backs.  I think it can work like a sunscreen, but I also think they were not averse to tossing a little playful dirt at the people around them.  Basically, we were all pretty dirty by that point in the day, so it was time to go back to the river for washing up.

As we walked back towards the main camp, we went by a house where puppies had recently been born.  Of course, we had to stop and visit, and, of course, Vivian had to hold one.

During lunch, Vivian had made friends with two of the Canadian guys, so she ditched us to walk with them for a while.  Luckily, they were amused by her and had no problem with it.

We got back to the camp, picked up some life jackets, and then headed to the river.  The elephants wandered in, and the guides gave us buckets to throw water on them.  Judy and Vivian plunged in with gusto, despite an initial bucket malfunction.

At first, my dad wasn't going to participate, because he hadn't brought a change of clothes, but he couldn't resist, and after a few minutes he waded in and starting throwing water.

He didn't say anything about it, but I think even he developed a soft spot for the elephants.

After a lot of splashing and fun, the elephants headed back up the hill, and we followed.

They had all flung dirt on themselves by the time we got back to the camp, but I don't think the river break was as much about getting clean as it was about cooling off.

Vivian was completely soaked and pretty dirty herself, so I took her to the showers, rinsed her off, and put on a new outfit.  She launched out of the shower area, and went right back to the elephants who were getting a sugar cane snack.

Then it was time to say good bye to the elephants.  I was worried that Viv would have a tough time, saying good bye, but luckily her new friends helped soften the blow.  After the elephants left, we had time to hang out with more coffee and tea and chat with the rest of the group and our guide before our ride back to town.

Our regular van driver had coordinated with the Elephant Haven driver, and they exchanged us at a gas station outside of town to avoid extra traffic.  After that it was a smooth ride back home, and we all napped a bit.  We got home in time for dinner.  It was an absolutely wonderful day.

The next day was New Year's Eve.  We had debated doing something downtown, but everything was ridiculously expensive.  I also doubted our ability to stay up until midnight, so I decided we should celebrate the new year when 2016 actually started, at 5:00pm Bangkok time.  I knew the Sydney fireworks would be at 8:00pm Bangkok time, so that seemed like a good bedtime end point.  We planned to celebrate with some friends, and one of my friends with a bigger house offered to host and cook up a mass of barbecue.  More people were invited, and it turned into a huge party with more kids than adults, which was fun for everyone.  Our hostess even armed the adults with wine sippy cups to avoid spills.

Each family brought a dish or two, so we feasted, watched fireworks, and then went home at a reasonable hour.  New Year's Day was pretty relaxed.  The only major events were meals.  We had a big, late breakfast, and I made a big pot of pasta for dinner.  We did farewell massages, and my family left the next morning.  It's always sad to see them go, but we had such a wonderful time with them while they were here.

A Day and Night in the Sky

Our flight from Chiang Mai didn't leave until early afternoon, and Jeff and I still hadn't seen one of the most famous temples in Chiang Mai, Wat Chedi Luang.  Vivian had also expressed an interest in pancakes for breakfast.  Since the mornings were nice and cool, I figured the three of us could have a nice morning walk to the temple, and then find a good breakfast place.  It took a little research, but I found a route and a restaurant for us.

We retraced our steps from Sunday night a bit, turning onto Ratchadamnoen in front of Wat Phra Singh.

In the light of day, we figured out how the evening street market gets electricity to light itself up.  There are electric outlets attached to all the light posts.  There are even some attached to trees.

It's a wonder the Sunday market doesn't short circuit the whole city.

We also walked by the Chiang Mai police station.  Jeff and Vivian felt the need for dramatic poses in front of the sign.

They also got a kick out of the statue of an officer rescuing someone and attempted to replicate it.

Some of the funnest sight seeing opportunities are not in any guidebook ;-)

The wats are great too.  Wat Chedi Luang has a large stone ruined part from the 15th century, 

but I liked some of the newer surrounding wats even more.

After a little more walking we got to a restaurant called Good Morning Chiang Mai, attached to a small hotel.  They had outdoor seating near the hotel's pool.

The pancakes did not disappoint.  They were huge, fluffy, and served with syrup, which can be hard to find in Thailand.  Vivian was very happy.

We only had one small hiccup with breakfast.  The waiter who took our order did not speak very good English.  Jeff ordered an omelet, and then we ordered three sides of bacon, one for each of us.  Instead of one omelet and three sides of bacon though, we got one side of bacon and three omelets.  We found someone who spoke a bit more English and sorted it out.  They didn't charge us for the extra omelets, but we felt a little bad about wasting food.  Other than that though, it was a lovely morning and a nice way to say good bye to Chiang Mai.

I'm choosing to remember Chiang Mai that way, and I'm going to try and forget the airport which was incredibly crowded and where Elena finally lost it, having an epic meltdown as only a toddler can.  We all got home in one piece though, but that was far from the end of our day.

I really wanted my family to be able to see Bangkok all decked out for Christmas, and the shopping area has some especially spectacular lights.  They also really liked the roof top bar we went to last time they were here.  Since we were running out of nights, I decided we should have the same van that brought us home from the airport take us downtown for drinks at Red Sky.  I may have been pushing things a little, but we made it work.  The view was great, and they loved the lights (no photographs though, sorry, lights at night don't photograph well).

Even though it was a success, and we were home by 9:00 pm, it was still crazy, because we were getting picked up at 5:30am the next day for a day trip to Kanchanaburi.  Yes, I'm a crazy over-scheduler, but man is it a lot of fun.