Doi Suthep & Coming Home

We spent our last day in Chiang Mai relishing in the fact that we really did all of this cool stuff! It seemed hard to believe it was already coming to an end. 

Lobby of our resort.

As our last hurrah, we decided to visit Doi Suthep, a famous temple in the mountains just outside of Chiang Mai. It was about a 40 minute taxi ride, and of all the potentially life-theatening things we did on this trip, that ride was possibly the most dangerous. The lady driving pretty much flew up the mountain, crossing waaayyyyy over into the other lane every time we went around a curve. It was kind of terrifying, but we made it to the top in one piece.

Even after all the shopping at the night markets, I loved checking out the goods at this new location too. I talked down a few ladies and bought some cute necklaces.

Can you find me?

After shopping for a bit, we were ready to make our way up the stairs to Doi Suthep!

Holy bright Batman! This one was by far the shiniest temple we'd been to.

It's golden color was quite impressive against the blue sky.

Amid all the tourists, there were lots of people worshipping- some walking around the main structure carrying flowers, others burning incense and praying.

After getting our fill of pictures, we walked over to check out the views of the city below. On our way there, we passed this awesomely huge wood carving.

The view was lame- it was too hazy to really see anything.

Holly & Me being nerds after coming back down from the temple.

We were not looking forward to the death trip back down the mountain. Although she didn't speak much English, I think our driver sensed our anxiety about her driving and she took it a little slower. But there were still moments of sheer terror. I looked back once and laughed when I saw Stacey's reaction to one of her risky driving maneuvers:

This was a re-enactment, but the original expression was equally as awesome.

Then it was on to some final suit fittings and lunch at a cool open air Morrocan restaurant.

Spencer, Adam, & Hollie

We played it safe and left a decent time cushion for traffic on our way to the airport... and then it only took us like 15 minutes to get there. China Eastern Air had pretty much the worst customer service ever, and we waited in line for what felt like a hundred years to check in. I did, however, love these giant warrior statues in the airport.

It was a quick flight back to Bangkok, then an overnight flight to Shianghai. The Chinese kind of rubbed us the wrong way, just being rude and pushy in most of our encounters. When we did an international transfer and had to pass through security again, we encountered the "Security Nazi" (the airport equivalent of Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi"). She was yelling at everyone and was totally condescending. Then we all found empty seats and snoozed for a while since we had a super long layover. When we woke up, the seats started filling up a bit more. And we quickly learned that if you repositioned yourself for like two seconds, you were going to lose a seat. Justin left his backpack on a chair when we went to grab some food, and there was a lady sitting on it when he got back. He told her it was his chair, and she just leaned forward for him to grab his bag. He was like, "No, this is my seat," so she got up and sat in an empty chair just across the aisle. It was totally weird. The whole seat-stealing thing (slash pushy Chinese people) became one of the jokes of the trip.

Spencer, saving seats for Adam and Hollie up to the second before they sat down.

Thank goodness there were no flight delays on our way home! I breathed a sigh of relief when we finally touched down in Okinawa. We were both really excited to see our kids and give them the presents we picked up for them. We called the Perrins, our friends watching Sydney and Shawn, to let them know we were heading to our car. Then about 20 minutes later, we got a phone call telling us that Syd was so excited that we were coming home, and she was jumping around and slipped. She knocked her head on their ottoman, and sliced it open just above her eyebrow. Kathy told us Seth had taken her to the ER for stitches. I dropped Spencer off at the ER to be with Syd while she got seven stitches (two inside, five outside), and I went over to get Shawn. When I first picked him up, he cried and reached for Kathy. Then he calmed down and just started staring at me, totally confused. I took him home and got him ready for bed. When I stripped him down for a tub, I laughed when I saw this awesome tattoo on his little bicep.

It said "foodie." Totally appropriate, ha ha!

Syd came home in good spirits, and Spencer said she was very brave. After eating some pizza, she was "so exciting" to see her presents. It was nice to be able to give my kids lots of squeezes that night! I was just glad we all survived this experience, so a few stitches didn't seem like such a big deal.

Syd's bandaged wound and bloody hair.

Sacrilege & Tiger Kingdom

When we first arrived in Chiang Mai, the cab driver that drove our friends' from the airport was coincidentally LDS. He told us he could give us a ride to church on Sunday, which was about 20 minutes from our hotel. Stacey got his contact info and rang him up on Saturday night to confirm a ride Sunday morning. Turns out he wasn't actually LDS, but had just learned about our church from some missionaries. He kindly didn't charge us for the ride, and opted to wait for us in the parking lot instead of coming in to worship. We were late and only made it in time for half of the Sacrament. Most of our friends were good and went in to worship for the whole hour, while we were sac (i.e. sacrilegious) and ditched out right after to go play tourist. I had to laugh when I later told my mom that we ditched church to go visit a Buddhist shrine. That made it sound even more sac. Ha ha.

The church was on a huge lot and was way bigger than our meetinghouse in Okinawa.

Adam, Hollie, Spencer and I walked over to Wat Phra Singh. It was ornate and shiny, like all the others Buddhist places of worship.

Wat Phra Singh

I love looking for consistencies in our religious worship and in the worship of these Asian religions that are so different from ours. Even if it is something as simple as not wearing your street shoes in a temple.

Band playing near the vendors next to Wat Phra Singh. They were a busy group, as we saw them performing later that night at the Sunday Walking Market.

When we got to this building, Hollie had just come out. She told us there were four monks inside that just stare at you, and it was super intense. We went up to take pictures and check it out. As Spencer got closer and closer, he realized they weren't actually real. We had a good laugh about that.

Intense fake monks, with pious followers Adam, Hollie, and Spencer.

On our way out, we saw a lady by the main entrance selling little birds. Apparently it was good luck to release them in front of the temple. We were sold and thought it would be fun to take part.

Two little birdies, about to be free.

Adam & Hollie

We had to undo some twist ties on either side of the wooden cage to open it up. The closer we got to releasing the birds, the further we leaned back away from them. Spencer was practically doing a backbend by the time we let them go.

Spencer's face in this picture is the best!

After meeting back up with our friends, we stuck with our not-really-LDS taxi driver (a decision we would all later regret) and had him take us up to Tiger Kingdom.

We started out petting the baby tigers. They were soooo sleepy, the trainers said they sleep for like 18 hours a day. 

This one may as well have been dead for how unresponsive it was.

This baby was kind of in and out, but mostly out.

This one was awake!

And it was cute as can be.

Next we went in with the big boys. The setup was four tigers in a huge cage, with four different groups of people in at a time, each with their own trainer.

We watched several other groups go in and come out alive, which made me a little less nervous. I was the only girl from our group who wanted to go in with the adult tigers, officially making me the most irresponsible mother.

The big tigers were also quite sleepy, resting on these concrete slabs in the shade while we all nervously took turns petting them and taking pictures with them.

Our second tiger was awake, and the trainer was using a stick with leaves to play with it. It made me really nervous to see our friends get up so close to the tiger when it was in play mode. Then, tragedy struck when Adam dropped his sunglasses while holding its tail. He was bending down to pick them up, being oblivious to the tiger's interest in getting those leaves.

Within a second it jumped up on all fours, his tail hitting Adam in the "tenders" in the process. At that point I was unashamedly using the four men in our group as human shields to separate me from the tiger. Spencer said the guy next to Adam jumped about 10 feet in the air when he heard Adam cry out in pain.

Recovering from the impact.

Spencer, taking precautions when it was his turn to get closer.

I was only brave enough to get down by it when the trainer put away his "toy."

The third tiger was another sleepy one. I love this photo sequence of Spencer, showing how brave we were when the tigers were just laying there, but how quick we were on our guard if they made any sudden movements.

Practically spooning.

Sitting up after it moved a bit.

Gettin' the dodge out of there when it looked back at him.

Back to partial spooning.

When it was over, I enjoyed another "We made it out alive!" moment. Some of the group went on to see more tigers, while the rest of us went to find a place for lunch. Enter the most annoying taxi driver in the world. He was in the building and tried to tell us where to go, even though he had no idea of our plans. Then when he found out where we were thinking of having lunch, he told us we shouldn't go there. When we went anyway, he followed us up and sat at our table and watched us eat. He was clearly in breach of some unspoken rules of the typical driver/drivee relationship, and it made for a pretty awkward experience.

At lunch, we felt cool drinking our coconut shake out of a coconut.

Before we left, Adam, Hollie, Justin, and Stacey took turns doing the Zorb Balls in a pond next to Tiger Kingdom. It made for some good entertainment.

We were happy to say "siyonara" to our driver after he dropped us off at the Sunday Walking Market. After shopping and dinner, we took another classy tuk-tuk back to our hotel.