Chiang Mai-July 18-22

Van decided that she was going to stay at the airport.

Our villa had a pool and a bunch of frangipani trees-love this flower so much!

Stand alone reason to visit Thailand! Mangosteen are also called the queen of fruit, so since Violet couldn't remember Mangosteen, she would just ask for the queen of fruit. :)

Booked a tour with a fabulous guide named Moon (Piangduan in Thai) to the Buatong waterfalls-also called sticky waterfalls due to the limestone deposits that allow you to climb up the waterfalls.

But first-fish feeding.

And a walk to the Fountain of Seven Colors spring, which is where the water for the falls stems.

You can't quite see it in the picture, but there were lovely layers of color in the spring!

Waterfalls and forest!

The start of the stickiness. The white material is actually the tufa deposit formed by a limestone rich karst spring. (Thanks, Google!)

Such fun!

The girls with Moon.

There were some steep areas that had helpful ropes to assist the climbing.

There were a few more slippery spots that Moon would warn us about-so nice to have a guide!

Climbing up to the top.

The next day Violet and Lu and I took a cooking class. We took one of the red truck taxis-the girls loved it!

Mod was our cooking teacher. We started at one of the local markets where she showed us some of the different foods, spices, and other ingredients we would be using.

Then it was off to their farm for the classes-the grounds were beautiful and had many of the ingredients were were using. This is butterfly pea flowers in real life! We had used dried butterfly pea flowers in the past for magical color changing lemonade, this time we got to color our sticky rice!

These lily pads behind Van were MASSIVE. Like she could have practically laid in them.

Farm tour! Here lu is checking out the shy grass.

Tasting ingredients!

Such a good helper.

And Lu got to be up front with Mod.

Pad thai, Tom yum soup, and spring rolls!

Pretty dessert dishes!

Lu made a great green curry too!

Many different versions of Violet's decorated sticky rice (she ate all the mango!)

Rice paddies

Later that day we went with Moon to the Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a temple up on the Doi Suthep mountain just outside Chiang Mai. The stairs are flanked by the mythical naga, who are bejeweled and decorated.

Golden reclining buddha

Magda was deemed adult enough to have to cover her legs. She wasn't particularly excited about this.

Such gorgeous flowers!

Each buddha statue represents a day (Wednesday for some reason got two)-you could place an offering at the buddha who represents the day of the week you were born. We figured out that two of the girls were born on Monday (both induced) and two were on Friday (natural labor)! At least I'm consistent.

The legend of the temple is that a white elephant was sent into the forest, and he stopped 3 times, but stayed (and died! but peacefully, they said) at the third stop and that is where they built the temple.

Magda and the white elephant.

Overlooking the city of Chiang Mai.

Happened upon some celebrations at the silver temple-thai dancers, music, monks and all!

The Silver Temple has changing lights at night-so instead of just silver we saw a rainbow of colors!

Procession

Waiting their turn for the stage.

Going through the night market! Lucky for us, Josh is generally taller than most in the crowd so no one got lost when they kept an eye out for him.

Elephant sanctuary!

The idea here is minimal interaction, so no riding elephants or bathing-just watching and some feeding. Which was super fun.

Look at that curlicue!

Much more interested in her food than us.

Baby elephant!

Water Buffalo (they have lots of different animals that they provide for)

Elephant disagreement-I was happy we were in the distance.

Baby elephants in the river-such fun to watch!

Pool time!

Frankie's new Thai dress.

Van at aiports for the start and finish.

She was in charge of the luggage on the way to the island. It's way bigger than her!