What do Thai people do on holiday?  I had seen pictures of the floating house boat type things and was hoping to get to do one.  This wasn’t quite that in that the house boats didn’t go anywhere, but still, it was enough for me to feel like I could check it off my list.  Noi picked me up in the morning at the hotel.  I got to meet her sister, daughter, son, some brothers and some neices and nephews.

We went to a temple first.  It was one of the most beautiful temples I’ve ever seen.  It was a compound of temples.  They were all wood with beautiful blue roofs.  The dragon statues in front of the temples were the most ornate and fantasy like of any I have seen. It was such a big and beautiful place to be in the middle of nowhere.  It was at least an hour or more outside of Chiang Mai.

Then we went to the lake.  After we parked, a songtheaw picked us up and drove us to the top of the dam.  There we loaded into two longtail boats.  The boats took us about a minute upstream to a floatilla of floating houses.  There were a bunch of tables, one of which was ours.  We had lunch and then the kids had swim time.  The kids and Rraine.  I was the only adult interested in swimming.  There was a floating trampoline.  We didn’t spend the whole day here like I thought we would.  That was good as I was over it after about an hour. Then Noi said there was a change of plan and we were going to go to another temple and get coffee because the adults didn’t swim and they were bored.

The first temple we went to had a ceremony going on so we got back in the cars and went to another temple.  At the next temple, we all met in a room with the monk.  They had brought offerings of florescent light bulbs, food and toiletries for the monks.  There was some chanting and bowing and a lot of laughing.

Then off for coffee.  The first place we went was in the middle of a farm and was closed.  The second place we went was near a farm (or maybe there’s nothing but farms up here).  The whole family got coffee, sat around for a little bit and then took off.  Noi took me back to my hotel and said she’d pick me up in the morning.

It was so wonderful to get to meet her family and it was so nice of them to let me tag along on their holiday family outting.  But for the most part, it was me just sitting around akwardly not understanding most of what was going on.  As much fun as it was, that is exhausting so I was happy to have the evening to myself.  I went to my favorite pizza place for dinner, read a little and now I’m done for the day!  Who knows what time she’s picking me up tomorrow.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore