Three Things at the Mall

I last about 30 minutes in the mall before I start to fall apart. Sensory overload! Bright lights, those ladies who spray you with perfume as you walk by, noisy unpredictable teenagers, shaking walls, haggling shop workers. It's just too much. 

But this mall in Chiang Mai was ok, for 45 minutes because it had:

1) H&M

2) Mango and sticky rice 

3) This awesome car for my dear son:

If a picture is worth a thousand words to describe a thing,

this video is worth a thousand pictures for acquainting you with Lukas.

Fermentations and Funny Fruits

Fermented milk anyone? We didn't know what this was until our new friends at the guesthouse in Thailand bought it as a gift for Lukas. I meant to give it away to the babysitter (!!) but forgot, and as we cannot waste things, no matter how much I want to, we googled it and found out it's yogurt's cousin, so we tried it. It was pretty good! And who wouldn't want a new drink with probiotics when you can have it with a straw?!

Recognize any of these? The hairy one, rambutan, has a fleshy white fruit inside. It tastes good, but mostly it's cool to eat a fruit that looks like that. The pink one is passion fruit, scoop out the goop and seeds with a spoon. The little yellow one is the best apricot I've ever tasted, purchased at our mountaintop coffee shop.

Green Space

Here's our favorite morning walk in the town we've now left:

Here's the crabby wife:

[Daniel: These enormous koroi (raintree) are full of orchids, which were just starting to bloom.  I have not seen this tiny purple variety before.]

We also saw a pair of owls each morning, but they were even less eager to be photographed than me.

More about the Sleep and the Bunny

We do this:

Something about the tip of the ear and the tip of the nose is magical, 

especially when one is tired.

And, do you see the post-nap tattoo? 

This is due to the abundance of nuks available. 

There are 3-4 in the bed at any given time.

The Hike

This was our favorite event in Thailand. Daniel, the expert adventure planner:

used his 2nd best friend, google maps, to discover that there was just the right hike for us, right on the edge of Chiang Mai. It would be just a short drive (it may have turned out to be a long, rather nauteous drive up the mountain, but this trooper knew how to handle that):

and we were teleported to our beloved Superior Hiking Trail. It was a cool 75 degrees at the top of this mountain, after a rather steady 100 at the bottom, and the decidedly beautiful deciduousness delighted our hearts and lungs. Our guesthouse had this hiking backpack that was handy for biking as well, and loved by it's small passenger. 

After the peak, we had a lovely walk on this ridge before the challenging descent that found us on our bottoms more than once:

And this is why I continue to call Daniel the amazing adventure planner. Do you see who greeted us at the end? None less than a cheerful Thai woman with an espresso maker and delicious coffee from the plantation right there on the mountain.

I think it's safe to say this coffee shop has the best view I've ever had from a coffee shop

A coffee tree. After a year in PNG you'd think I'd recognize it but I did not.