Hiking Chiang Mai: Chapter 2; (with a little Night Safari thrown in for fun)

When Conrad heard me telling Heinz about my hiking adventure with Ginger, he decided that he really wanted to go hiking too. I was really excited that he seemed to be taking such an interest. There are various hiking groups around town that post their weekend itineraries online and anyone is free to join them. Heinz and I are interested in attending some but the hikes posted for this weekend looked a bit long for some newbies with short legs. As this is Heinz's 2 weeks abroad and I am the lone parent on duty, I felt confident that we could at least do the trail that I had done earlier with Jamie and his dogs. Luckily for Ginger we are currently renting a small station wagon so we could put her in the back and bring her with us. Luckily for me too, as then she also got the much needed exercise that she often doesn't get when I am alone with the kids in a house with a very small yard.

We started out a little later than I had planned so admittedly the day had was getting warm. We were about 5 minutes on the trail when Vivienne decided that she did not like hiking at all and wanted to just go home! I hadn't really noticed the first time around how steep the beginning of the trail is and Conrad's "I want to go hiking, too!" quickly started fading into "I want to go home, too!" Oy! He kept saying "I don't like going up hills." We discussed that perhaps what he really likes, then, is walking, not hiking. But we kept talking and we kept going, we sang some hiking songs and eventually we had made it more than halfway up to the Wat.

  We saw some interesting trees as we walked .

We took a number of water breaks, made the very popular Oreo stop and eventually smiles and happy attitudes returned.

With a renewed burst of energy, Vivienne took charge and forged ahead of everyone.

My fellow hikers decided that they really wanted to make it to the Wat so they could tell Daddy "We did it!" It didn't take us long to get there. I had forgotten that just below the Wat is a log bridge that Ginger had struggled with. Last time Jamie had to carry her back across, on the way down. It's not very deep but the downhill side is too steep for her to climb back out if she goes into the little valley instead of across. But my trekkers had come this far, they wanted to see it all, even if they had to do the last few meters alone. I stayed with Ginger and they went on up the trail.

My good little Hansel helped his sweet sister Gretel back and forth across the bridge and they were so excited to have made it all the way. As promised, the walk back was much easier. In the end I think the positives outweighed the negatives. They are so excited to tell Daddy all about it and they are looking forward to going hiking again soon.
It was quite a busy weekend for my kiddos. Friday night we went to the Night Safari. We had gone in December, when we made our first visit to Chiang Mai, but it is good enough to warrant multiple visits.

Feeding elephants in the guest reception area.

Deer roam freely in the grounds near the entrance area. We had some grasses left over from feeding the elephant and wanted to feed them to the deer but apparently the deer have had enough of people. Every time  Conrad tried to give his grass to one of them, it tried to headbutt him!

My little Thai cowpokes go for a pony ride.

Playing in the Kids' Zone while we wait for night to fall.

Riding the pink dolphin and the green tiger on the two-story Carousel.

Stopping for a snack between trams.

Playing with the turtles.

I apologize that we don't have pictures of the animals but my camera does not take nice night photos and flash is not allowed. My favorite part of the evening was when the giraffe stuck his big head into Conrad's lap as we rode through on the tram and stole all of his carrots and bananas! We had a great time. I highly recommend you experience the Safari when you come visit us. Shall we make a date for it?

Toto, We're Not in Kansas (Ginger, We're Not in China) Anymore!

Two days ago was the 3 week anniversary of our arrival in Chiang Mai. I celebrated in a fairly unique way: by taking Ginger for a hike in the woods. 

I have found it very difficult to walk her in our neighborhood. Our compound is very small and does not lend itself to more than about a 10 minute circuit on concrete streets with nothing to see and little more for a dog to sniff. As it is on a very busy street, there is little space to go off the property either, and when you do "leave the reservation", the neighborhood or "Soi" (street) dogs are another problem. I have found myself really missing our walks on the beautiful pathways of San Marino Bridge! It will be better once we move to the other house next month but in the meantime, desperate for a solution to help Ginger get more physical and mental exercise, I Googled "hike with your dog in Chiang Mai" and found a website by an expat, inviting others to meet him with his dogs for some hikes in the surrounding hills. It sounded really wonderful so I contacted him and we made a "date" to meet for a hike.

After a 20 minute drive, I met Jamie and his dogs at the base of Doi Suthep, the mountain where one finds Wat Prathat Doi Suthep, one of the best known temples in Thailand and the largest Wat, or temple in Chiang Mai. We started up The Pilgrimage Trail which leads to Wat Doi Suthep, our destination being halfway up at the Buddhist temple of Wat Pha Lat, which in northern Thai means "monastery at the sloping rock".
Very early on, we came across this: buddha statues stuck into a termite hill.

My new friend could offer no explanation for that. 

We saw some very unusual plants as we walked:

Jamie mentioned that occasionally you will see the orange robed monks on the trail, making their pilgrimage. Along the way, a number of trees had orange sashes tied around their trunks. My understanding is that some of it is to mark the trail, but some of it is in the interest of conservation: the orange sashes indicate that a tree has been "ordained", is sort of an honorary monk and the tree is to be left alone (read: not cut down for fire wood).

Ginger on the trail - off leash! She was such a good girl and was so happy!

Close to the top.

It only took us about 25 minutes to reach the 650 year old temple grounds of Wat Pha Lat. It is still a functioning monastery and as I am yet unsure of the protocol for when one should or should not photograph religious sites here, I kept my picture taking to a minimum.

There are numerous buildings on the site, including the cave containing the nine stone Buddhas. The statues within are about 1 1/2 times life size, robed in the traditional orange. 

According to www.chiangmaitouristguide.com, this cave "is said to have provided refuge for those fleeing Burmese forces. Plans for renovating this structure are underway. And one of these relics within apparently continues providing protection from flocking crows, viewed in Thai culture as omens of bad karma. Folklore also has it that if you bring meat to Wat Palad while venturing to Doi Suthep, your innards will become plagued with discomfort. Yikes!"
Another shrine on the site:

The view back down to Chiang Mai and the valley was really beautiful. 

A tired dog is a good dog: Ginger slept quietly in a corner for the rest of the day and evening after our little outing! Jamie has a few more trails that he regularly hikes with his dogs and he has offered to share them with us. We are really looking forward to it. Many people have asked me about the heat here and I, in turn, asked Jamie if this, April, truly is the hottest month. Will July and August be cooler? He said that yes it is; the rainy season will start soon and it will be cooler for the rest of the summer. I was so happy to hear that because if this is the worst it gets, then this is great! Now, don't get me wrong, it gets to 37C often (104F), but it is that all so important dry heat. It is nothing like a humid Shanghai summer, or Kuala Lumpur, or Singapore. In my opinion, truly hot is when you want to change your clothes by noon because they are drenched with sweat, but all you've done is gotten in and out of the car a few times, doing errands. Often I don't even have the air conditioning on in the house all day. It's even better than I expected.  

So many good things to find in The Land of Smiles. Go ahead, make your reservations to visit us because it's not too hot. And bring your hiking boots when you come and we will share these wonderful trails with you as well! Hugs to you all~

Willkommen in der Christlichen Deutschen Schule Chiang Mai

On April 8th, 2013, one of the most important goals of our move to Chiang Mai was achieved: Conrad and Vivienne started conventional school.

Lunches packed, backpacks on, we headed off. The entry drive to their new school is lovely,

a tree-lined grove blooming with beautiful lilac-like flowers. "You have arrived at your destination":

Christliche Deutsche Schule Chiang Mai

In the picture below, the kindergarten building is on the left and the playground is on the right. Behind the playground the covered, open-air gymnasium building can be seen.

This is the path we walk every morning and afternoon, from the carpark up to the Kindergarten, between the gymnasium and the playground. 

The school has a lovely system for helping the children organize themselves and their things throughout the day: each child is assigned an animal and their places in the circle, at the lunch table, for their toothbrush, backpack and shoes, are labeled with their animal. I can't help but think of it as their avatar.

Vivienne is the parrot, "der Papagai".

Conrad is the bee, "die Biene".

The school shares photos of the week's activities with the parents. Some shots from Conrad and Vivi's first week:

 

The playground is naturally one of their favorite parts of their new school. Vivienne loves to dig in the sand and Conrad loves, well, all of it: running, jumping and shouting with his friends.

 The boys have an informal lesson in balancing weights:

Time to go home and hose off The Bee.

Life is funny. Days before, my children were walking among skyscrapers. Now they will spend their days in the countryside idyll of a rural school. Big city, small town; close to family, foreign country. Trade some things for others; weigh the pros and cons. How do you ever know what is best for your children? I think we were so lucky to find Miss Rebecca in China, given our situation with the wait list at the German school there, and their language skills really flourished under her tutelage but I am so happy that the kids are finally in school now. Conrad is so social; he came home the first day telling us all about his new friends. Frau Haller, their teacher, laughed when she told me Vivienne seemed to seek out other English speaking children, that she seemed to test the waters: with whom can I get away with speaking English? In just 2 weeks, though, she seems to have made the switch. At pick up and drop off I now hear her speaking more German than English.

For now, I feel confident that we have found the best situation for them, given the options. We are settling in and finding our way. Our shipment is expected to arrive in Bangkok tomorrow, so hopefully we will have our container within the next 2 weeks. Yea!! Then I'm looking forward to some new adventures. I've started a list...watch this space!

T-1: 13:30

Day 3 of a silent house with nothing but the hum of the air conditioning to distract me. No more VPN issues, kids are at school and we've solved the device issues...finally I can sit down and catch up. I feel as if I am decompressing VERY slowly. So much has happened, I am at a loss with where to start!

In a nod to my triathlete Ironman sisters, whom I am missing terribly, I have come to think of this latest aspect of our Asia adventure in terms of a triathlon, a three stage, physically grueling, emotionally draining test of endurance, with two high-stress transition phases in between (T-1 and T-2).

Stage one: preparations to leave Shanghai.
Moving house is quite simply one of the most loathsome tasks I have ever had to face, no matter how excited one may be about the new destination. International moving heightens that loathing exponentially. International moving with 2 small children, who are not yet in school, constantly under foot? Shoot me now....

There was no avoiding it, however: the movers arrived on the 28th, ready or not. It is amazing how they come in like a swarm of bees and make such short work of your house that just hours before was cozy and orderly. And that constant sound of the ripping of the strapping tape is truly enough to put me over the edge. When they left on day one, Conrad and Vivienne quickly made use of the boxes for one of their favorite activities: making a "höhle", or cave. (The other day at a friends' house the kids were invited to build a fort. They had no idea what their friends meant. My multi-cultural kids only know the German word for it!)

Xiu, our wonderful ayi, was with us in the house right up until the end, spending time with Vivienne, especially. It was very hard to say goodbye to her.

But eventually the time comes when they finish packing and load all the boxes, leaving just the shell of a former life.

So off we were to the hotel for 6 days. Between the schedules on our Thai Visas and the China Custom's requirement to retain our passports for a few days while our goods are processed out of Shanghai, our stay in temporary housing in the city was a bit longer than typical. It was very interesting though because we stayed in the same hotel, in the same suite layout, with the same view as during our look-see visit over 2 and a half years ago. Talk about dejavu! My friend Karin said "How 'Ground Hog Day'! Are you sure the last 2 and a 1/2 years in between haven't just been a bad dream?" I'll go more into the hotel stay itself later, have a few ideas I want to record about it, but for now suffice to say that with the wonderful people we have met along the way I could never refer to our life in Shanghai as a bad dream.

I was dreading the hotel stay. The stress of moving, tight quarters, living out of suitcases with 2 small children to entertain is a recipe for some really long days! Lucky for us it was around QingMing, or Tomb Sweeping holiday in China and most of the schools take their week long spring break then. So in the end we had a lovely week.

We spent a day having a picnic at the park with some good friends, some of the first friends we had made in Shanghai. Thank you Lisa, Shabi and Sarah for a lovely morning and afternoon!

 

What do you get when you put an Aussie, 2 Brits, a German, a Malay, a Kiwi and an American in one room? An awesome send off. Thank you again, beautiful Sarah, Lisa, Sylvia, Meeta, Shabi, and Hilary for a lovely evening, taking my mind off of the stresses surrounding me. Hugs to you all!

We said good bye to Liujiazui with some others.

Thank you Karin and Jada for being our tour guides!

Thank you to the Zachems for being such great neighbors! Conrad misses his buddies!

 

And finally made it to the Shanghai Wild Animal Park with a few more, some of the last friends we've met in Shanghai. Thank you to the Purdy's for an amazing day at the park!

We've been so fortunate to have met so many awesome people and made so many wonderful friends in Shanghai that, as difficult as life there sometimes was, and for all the reasons that we could not stay, in the end it was very hard to say good-bye. But, like everything else that cannot be avoided, the morning of the 4th arrived bright and early (okay, not so bright but very early) and off we were into the first transition phase: the trip into Thailand.

T-1: the getaway; 13 and a half hours, door to door (T-1: 13:30)

Without too much fuss I managed to get everything into the suitcases, although space really wasn't the problem, weight was. Traveling on Thai Airways our baggage allowance was slightly less than half of what one usually expects with international travel: 20kg per person instead of 50 pounds per bag. I agonized about it for days: for how much extra weight would we be charged? Would they charge per bag, or as a function of the cumulative weight? The good news on my end though was that at least we were heading to a place with warm weather (lighter clothing and less of it!) and there were no major holidays to accomodate. When we left Indianapolis for Shanghai, Christmas and Conrad's birthday would arrive long before the container with all of our stuff did. Room had to be made in the suitcases, not only for lots of heavy clothes and a few blankets, but to include items for those momentous occassions. The Easter Bunny did, however, visit us during this hotel stay.

(Thinking of you, Aunt Vickie! Remember this little guy?)

We managed to get all of the suitcases and carry on bags closed and took 2 taxis to the airport. In the end the airline never even commented on the weight of our bags! The Kennel had brought Ginger to us at the airport and, poor thing, the dog that usually never barks whined and yelped the entire time we were checking in. It took a long time to get it straightened out. Even after numerous preparatory emails beforehand, no one at the airline seemed to know the process for transporting a dog. Eventually we were on board, assured that Ginger would meet us again in Chiang Mai. Time for a bit of enforced downtime!

We transferred in Bangkok with no complications and although everytime we asked the airlines about Ginger and got an "I think she'll go straight to Chiang Mai" answer, we simply had to trust. Heinz and I laughed that it seemed when we asked about her, the airline people would look at us, puzzled, and say "There's a dog on the plane??" Bottom line, we arrived a bit delayed, and eventually there she was, barking and whining up a storm again. The customs process was quite easy, took about 20 minutes, no quaratine required, with her barks echoing through the hall and people covering their ears! Then we were able to take her out. She was such a Champ, she had not wee'd in the crate for the entire 14 plus hours that she was in it and had not chewed up any of the things in it! (My biggest fear that day was that in her boredom and stress she would eat the absorbent puppy training pads we put in there, or the t-shirt that smelled like me to give her some comfort, and end up with impacted insides. Thank goodness that didn't happen!) She was so happy to be with us again! And we were happy to see her safe and sound.

One problem at a time, as they say, so the next challenge was to get all of us, our luggage, Ginger and her crate to the new (temporary) house. Not happening in the small 4 door sedan we have rented. Luckily, at the airport especially, there are always Songthaew nearby, a local truck-bus that ferries passengers along standard routes, so we rented one for the bigger suitcases, me and Ginger and we were finally homeward bound...

(Karin, Ginger has ridden in the red truck; you're next!)

 ...until the driver misunderstood the address and a 10 minute drive took over 30! We are back in one of those places where getting from one place to another is hardly a direct affair! Very much like Malaysia, between the one way streets and the divided highways in Chiang Mai, seeing your destination is no guarantee that you can reach it from where you are! You may go somewhere via one route, but you will have to come home a completely different way. One cannot exist here without GPS!

Stage 2: making-do while our stuff is in transit
Finally we arrived safe and sound to our next set of temporary housing. It will take 4-5 weeks for our things to arrive from China so during that time we are renting a "furnished" house just south of town, north of our permanent house and the school.

Furnished in this case does not mean kitchen pots or bath towels. Oh well. We knew we would have to buy at least a few things to survive and fill the holes during this stage. And now I really have an excuse not to cook for the next month! But it is a lovely compound with a gorgeous pool. (Once I get caught up a bit I can get back to swimming laps!!) And they've finally gotten the washing machine set up so I've only had to buy underwear for Conrad. He's the only one that ran out of clean ones in the last two weeks. The best part is that I can actually read the buttons on the machine!

So for now all of the suitcases have been emptied and put out of the way, at least until we reach T-2: arrival of the container, when we pack them back up, transfer to the permanent house, the swarm of bees descends again and we do all the packing in reverse. Can't wait. (Insert sarcastic smile here...) It does seem like forever from now before we will be settled again, after Stage 3: finding new places for all of our things.

Until then, the kids have started shool finally. More on that in another post. We've done some exploring, rented a scooter, played some Mini-golf and met the local Swiss Club members. I have even braved driving. We're finding our way, little by little. There is a reason Thailand is called "The Land of Smiles". This really is a lovely place to be. And the food....(smile for real!)

These first days have been a bit overwhelming, so much going on, so many things to find and so many new things to learn, again, (there's always a learning curve, isn't there?) but we will try to keep you updated and entertained along the way with us as best we can.

I'm off to walk the dog and then have a proper swim! A big hug from all of us. We miss you~