Sarah in Thailand: PARENTS!

MEGA BLOG POST

Mom and Dad flew into Chiang Mai about 3 weeks ago and spent 16 days in Thailand!
I was so happy to see them at the airport!! Happy tears were shed. :)
Thank you Mom and Dad for flying out here and doing so many fun thing with me! I'm so lucky!

On the way from the airport in a Songthaew

Went to Doi Suthep on the first day!

And went to a small little place to eat I had never been to. No english menu this time...

We were super busy while they were here. These are the highlights!
~~(Also - we have so many pictures, but Mom and Dad have them on their memory card. So thank you Google Images.~~
Now I have pictures to add!

-Explored the temples and markets of Chiang Mai for the first few days.
Dad surprisingly really liked the markets and couldn't get enough! Who knew?
Also we went to the Chiang Mai Cultural Center Museum and about half way through our tour, our tour guide told us he didn't actually work there. Haha (But he used to... I think he just wanted to practice his English - he was SO nice!)

First coconut

Wat Chedi Luang

Finally just tried crickets the other night, and they are actually pretty good! Better than the bamboo worms

Cooking class!
A company took us to a big food market on the way to their organic farm. At the market we learned how to make different curries, about different kinds of rice, saw the making of coconut milk, and all the different fruits, veggies, meat (pigs heads just chilling on the counter), and sauces that we would be using in the class. We also saw veggies and herbs in their garden and then each made and ate 5 different dishes! We love Tom Yum Koong, a soup flavored with lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, chili paste, onions, tomatoes, and prawns. (and fish sauce if you like it..)

Our lovely instructor and instructor in training.

Now we can go to Lotte Plaza and know what to buy!

Showing us all the veggies in the organic garden. Dad really enjoyed this day :)

Making red curry paste. Ingredients: red dried chillies, shallots, galangal, kaffir lime, garlic, lemongrass, krachai (Thai ginseng), cumin, coriander, salt)

We each made one - red, green, and yellow!

YUM! And after this we made 3 more things each.

- Elephant Nature Park!
I wrote a post about Elephant Nature Park earlier when I went with Kim that you can read. I loved it so much that we came back. This time was better! We saw a baby elephant play in the water and in a little plastic elephant bath tub for about 20 min. SO CUTE! Also Lek, the founder, was there and was photographing the elephants for a while. They all surrounded her to protect her and were kissing her with their trunks. It looked like she could have easily gotten smashed by those huge creatures, but they really do love her.

So happy!

Mom was funny spraying the elephant :) <3

Sluuuuurp. This thing can hold so much water. The trunk also weighs about 3 times as much as me.

Us with Lek!

Baby has a bath

Mamas have a bath

This was amazing.

-Doi Intanon National Park
I also already wrote about this place too. We went to the highest point in Thailand, but you couldn't really see anything because of smog. And there were a lot of trees in the way. But we had fun and learned a lot from our guide.

Doi Inthanon

Stopped at Karen village and bought some woven scarves

Mom learned a lot from our guide

BANGKOK
-What a crazy huge city! We stayed in the business district. Unfortunately Dad got sick for a few days. Mom and I went to the Art and Cultural Center and saw some pretty cool contemporary art.

River taxi

We went to a rooftop bar at the Banyan Tree - 60 stories high. It was actually kind of terrifying. I had to ask to move our table away from the edge. SO HIGH!!!!!!

-Took a river taxi to the Grand Palace another day. It was SO hot, there were loads of tourists, and I didn't have sunglasses so I didn't enjoy it that much... IT WAS SO HOTTTT.

I didn't get too many good pictures because I was sweating through my shirt too much.

Grand palace complex

-toured the Jim Thompson House. Pretty neat!

PHUKET

Mom and Dad went to Krabi for a few days and I went back to Chiang Mai. Then we met up in Phuket. It's super developed and wasn't my first choice, but it was still very nice.

-Kayaked (with guides) around Phang Nga Bay. We saw a monkey and some fish that crawl and bioluminescent plankton in a cave! Super cool.

On the last day we went Scuba diving!!! So glad we had the opportunity. Mom enjoyed snorkeling and hanging out on the boat. I actually have pictures of us underwater thanks to our dive instructor. Great day! Also on the ride back we sat on the bow of the boat and I had my legs dangling off the whole time and no one cared because this is not America and no one wears life jackets or cares about your safety!! So fun!