Flight Tracker 24 is fun to watch when two of your kids are on their way to join you in Thailand even if they don’t arrive until 1:30 am. And they bring our extra toiletries!

We decided to head back to Chinatown to get them acclimated to Bangkok. Of course we had to take Em to have little tiny fish eat grossness off her feet! Will politely declined.

Some quotes out of Em during the fish foot spa:

“I feel like I’m really going through it”

“I didn’t expect to feel it so much”

“looking at them makes it so much worse”

“there are two sandwiching my toe!”

“You fish on the bottom- step it up! I feel like I am going through labor. Is this what labor is like?”

“I don’t know if I can emotionally do it again.”

“I was feeling a lot of emotions. Most of them were fear.”

Will and Em had their first round of mango sticky rice in Thailand. I think it is safe to say they are hooked.

It was blazing hot so we also let Will and Em in on the trick of finding a coffee shop or mall to cool off. A/C and food is fantastic.

While swimming in the pool “ummm that’s not how mermaids work “. This was a comment made to Megan by Em when Megan bragged about her mermaid abilities. It was determined that Megan playing Hippo while Em “moved so fast” behind her was a better acting moment. Proof is in the picture.

23, 22, and 18 yet they still act like dingbats in a swimming pool. The view of Bangkok from the pool was insane.

There. Are. Temples. Everywhere.

So. Many. Temples.

Sometimes we plan ahead and have the requisite sleeve and knee covering for the women. A sarong is a perfect for the task if you have a t-shirt on. If you don’t have a sarong or you happen to be wearing a tank top and shorts, you can rent a skirt and shawl. Stunning! We do wish the skirt was made out of lighter fabric. This particular one that Em is wearing would make nice upholstery fabric.

This lovely Buddha is 46 meters long and 15 meters tall. That is nearly 151 feet long and 49 feet tall. I don’t really understand why they made it lying down. Maybe the designer had a thing for toes? “Those are some BIG dawgs” was heard out of one of my kids.

Megan and I have gotten a bit used to the heat and humidity. It is going to take Will and Em a little time. Right now they are like vampires, trying to avoid the daylight. Moving from the shade of one tree to the next. To be fair, we all went into a few extra temples just because sometimes they have a fan blowing. We spent a number of minutes in a temple museum. Couldn’t tell you anything beyond the fact that the museum had two massive fans. Everything was written in Thai. We pretended to read.

The statues at the temples run the gamut. This guy is covered in gold leaf and is obviously important:

This guy needed an orthodontist and nobody used a filter for his statue:

There were dozens of nearly identical statues of Buddha around Wat Po temple. Will asked a nice Thai gentleman why there were so many and the answer was “decoration?”.

We had our first “squabble” as a family of four traveling Thailand. Too many strong, smart and independent thinkers can make it hard to formulate a plan to get back to our AirBnB. Let’s just say, we have instituted the thumbs up, sideways and down technique. Thumbs up is “Yes! I am in!”, sideways is “I can get on board without complaining but also don’t really care” and thumbs down is something like “hell no. Not happening”. If you vote with a thumb down you have to offer an alternative plan. Fingers crossed that this method works. Or should I say, thumbs up?

We met Will’s friends Yoh, Chain and Yoh’s Mom (Pho) for dinner. We had a chance to meet Pho at the Digipen graduation just a coupe of months ago. She came to the United States for her first time to see her son graduate. They joined us for dinner at our home. She returned the gesture by taking us out for a traditional Thai dinner. I can honestly say, Pho is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. After we had walked back to Yoh’s apartment after dinner, Emily realized she had left her bag at the restaurant. Em, Megan and Pho RAN back to the restaurant! It was closed but that didn’t stop Pho. She called the owner and found out that the door was not locked. They were able to get the bag and hustle back to the apartment. Megan’s takeaway from the event was “she runs fast!”.

We have been using Grab cars a couple of times a day on most days. 99.9% of the time it goes very smoothly. When it came from getting picked up from Yoh’s place to head back to our room, not as smooth. First one we called, we canceled so the ladies could rescue Em’s bag. The second one got lost trying to find us. The third one was an upgrade to “fancy” because we thought that might help, and as far as we can tell, the only upgrade was, she told us not to smoke when we got in. No worries. Not smokers.

After a handful of nights in Bangkok we were off to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. Em made a friend in the airport. I like him too. He seems happy to be cleaning. I am putting googly eyes on my Roomba as soon as I get home. Give it some personality.

Chiang Mai has a much different feel than Bangkok. There are still temples at every turn but it feels like you might actually be able to see more things because it doesn’t take an hour to get a few kilometers.

It took a bit to find our condo when we first arrived. I can’t remember if we needed to resort to the thumb vote. I will say that addresses in Thailand can be confusing. Even the two guys working the coffee shop in what turned out to NOT be our building, thought it was our building. Nope. Thankfully it was only a ten minute walk down the road.

This time we got another two bedroom place. Megan is back to sharing a bed with her mother. Will has a room of his own, and Emily opted for the “extra mattress”, that we put out in the middle of the living room/kitchen. Megan swears she doesn’t mind sharing a bed with me. She said I am respectful about sharing space- apparently I just occasionally reach over in the night to make sure she is still there. Just like when she was tiny. She said Em is more likely to throw an arm over your entire body with a thwap. This method can be startling.

Took the kids to a bar. Favorite quote out of Will was made while playing Dominos stone cold sober. “I didn’t know it was possible to just straight up lose.”. And yes, he was the one losing. Doesn’t happen often and I think he was surprised. “I will say that my arms feel further way than normal,” Em said after a couple drinks. We took a tuktuk back to our room.

Will has been embracing trying new foods on this trip. That is why we had Seaweed flavored Pringles- gross; Thai Green Tea smoothie- delicious and “grassy”, green apple flavored Sugas- okayish, and Dairy Queen Thai Tea smoothie thing with “breadcrumbs” – he would not recommend.

These beautiful blue flowers are Butterfly Pea flowers. They are edible and frequently used as a garnish. They turn everything they touch super blue!

Yep. That is a dead scorpion on the road. Gigantic and we were all glad it was dead. In my effort to get all three kid to avoid stepping on it, I made each one almost step on it. Oops. Screeching “STOP” will in fact make them stop. I shouted three times, they each stopped individually with a foot hovering above the critter. Now if they had all just listened when I shouted the first time only ONE of them would have almost landed on it. Just sayin’.

There monks in orange robes all over Chiang Mai. They are often carrying something that we can’t explain. Two monks carrying big bowls that looked like they could be ceremonial or perfect for a potluck Caesar salad? Who knows. We didn’t take the opportunity to “chat with a monk” that was offered at one temple. Seemed like too serious of a conversation for the weather. We were hot and thirsty.

Some of the temples are new and some are super duper old. This one is from the 15th century.

When kids are hot and tired they can go one of two ways. 1. Grumpy 2. Insane. This is Megan shooting Will in the face with coconut meat that she scraped out of her whole young green coconut drink with her straw. She almost got it in his mouth. She would have tried again if she didn’t think it set a bad example for the actual children at the next table.

Yet another coffee shop to cool down. This one was super fancy and included an art exhibit in the back two rooms. The art was cool but we don’t stay in those rooms. They were not cool. They were hot. We sat up in the front and watched beautiful baristas make pretty drinks. And took selfies because we were tired.

Emily said “this one, eyes closed and tongues out”. This is the result. I will never live it down.

More temples. More statues.

We did a little shopping. $46 US dollars got us two shirts for Will, two dresses, one skirt, two pairs of pants, and two sarongs.

My favorite thing to do is buy art as my souvenir from trips. This dude is coming home with me!

The Saturday Night Market is so big! We walked for hours and did some more shopping. We ate street meat, bought jewelry and another painting. Megan regrets telling the man that she would like some spicy sauce. She was expecting a tiny baggie on the side and instead got fresh rolls drowning in spicy sauce. There may be a couple of gifts coming home for significant others….

Will did not try the scorpion, crocodile, grasshopper, crickets or silkworms. He has limits.

“Big head. Big brain. Clever. Big foot. Big banana.” Favorite line out of Emily was when I asked her what she thought about feeding the elephants, “I really love dogs, elephant creep me out”. She did not swim with the elephants. “I think of elephant has a sticky toddler, the cute to look at, but I don’t wanna get closer.”

Megan got hosed down by a 3 1/2 year old baby elephant. There is a Mahoot assigned to each of the animals that stay with the animals 24 hours a day 365 days a year. A lot of the men and boys that do this work are refugees from Myanmar.

We all know that Megan has had Hold a Monkey and Milk a Cow on her bucket list. She has held a monkey but has yet to milk a cow. She didn’t even know that swim with elephants was on the list until today! Will and Megan absolutely loved the elephant experience at Ran-Tong Elephant Rescue. Favorite quote from this experience came from our guide describing elephants and comparing them to humans.

Never in my life did I think I would be telling my kids to “move to the other side of the elephant. The guide said you can get kicked when they roll over in the water”. So cool.

A popular thing to do in Chiang Mai is take a cooking class. It was a long day with the elephants in the morning but so fun. Between the 4 of us we learned how to make: Pad Thai, fried rice, spring rolls, Khao Soi, and lots of curries and soups.

I am writing this while the 3 kids are at the “Grand Canyon Water Park”. I’m hoping they make it back in one piece. Apparently safety standards aren’t very strict here.