This will be the last part of my Thailand adventure. If you missed part one or part two I’d check them out before you read part three. Just so you kinda have an idea of what is happening! 🙂 A little recap is we saw elephants, went ziplining and played with the sweet kiddos!
Tuesday, Lo had the day off so we went up to Bua Tong Waterfall, otherwise known as “sticky waterfall.” It was about an hour drive from where we were at, but we were all very excited to see and climb these waterfalls! Before we were on our way, we stopped by to see all these colorful lanterns that we would see every time we drove back to the orphanage. The whole time we were in Thailand we saw lots of lanterns because there was a huge lantern festival coming up that we were lucky enough to be able to see!
Once we got to sticky waterfall we headed straight to the waterfall and it looked so cool! There were a few different levels of the waterfall and so we thought it would probably be easier to go up the waterfall to start rather than going down. They had stairs to go down and so went close to the middle level and started our climb up the waterfall! We spent hours here running up and down the waterfalls–once we climbed all the way up we didn’t want to climb the stairs back down and so we climbed down the waterfalls! It’s hard to describe what it was like on the waterfall because it was like rock what you were stepping on, but somehow your feet stuck to it a little bit and it wasn’t slippery! We’ve heard there’s not really anything like these anywhere else in the world and so it was very cool that we were able to experience it! After we were done we saw a temple close to the waterfall so we went to the temple and climbed all the stairs to the top. We were a little tired from before, but we made it!
That night we went into the city to have some Thai food for supper and we got to eat by the water which was pretty awesome! After supper we walked around the streets of Chiang Mai for a little bit and got some Mango Rice, which is a type of dessert that people in Thailand eat. The fruit we had in Thailand was very good! It was a lot better than the fruit we have here. There was another smaller night market happening that we walked through and then we stopped and got rotee which is another type of dessert. It was very good!
On Wednesday, the big kids go to a nursing home and sing songs to the elderly and we were able to go along with them. It was so fun seeing the kids sing and seeing the elderly people’s faces light up when the kids got there and have them sing along with them. It was pretty sweet! For lunch, Lo told us we had to try these burritos from this Mexican Thai food truck because they were so good she said. They did not disappoint! Amanda and I agreed it was probably one of the best burritos we had ever had!!
After we had lunch, Amanda and I got another Thai massage and Lo went back to the orphanage. Once our massage was done we got a grab and were back in time to play with the kids outside. That night we watched a Christmas movie and made no-bake cookies and ate way too many of them! 🙂
Thursday was the day we were going to see a couple of different temples. It was also the day of the lantern festival, Loy Krathong. And it was also Thanksgiving in the United States! The first one was the temple in Chiang Mai and it was Wat Phrathat Doi Kham. As we were driving to it we could see the temple/statues before we had even parked. The statues were huge! Lo had told us that there were quite a few stairs to climb to get to the top. We had to take a couple breaks, but we made it to the top and there was 501 steps that we climbed. It didn’t help that all of the steps were various sizes and so there would be one step that could have been like 3 steps.
After we made it back down we had brunch and then we decided to travel like the Thai people do and take a songthaew up to our next temple, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. We were all glad we did it because we got to experience more Thai culture and it was very crowded, but there wasn’t a lot of air flow and so we were all glad when we reached the temple. It was about a 45 minute ride up the mountain. There wasn’t nearly as many stairs at these temple, only around 300.
That evening we had our Thanksgiving feast of pasta with chicken before we headed out to Loy Krathong! Now this festival goes off of the full moon so the days of it change every year. We were very excited to be able to experience this! There were so many lanterns and so many people! It was a little overwhelming! It was very cool to see all the lanterns being lit and go up into the sky though! We did see a few lanterns that didn’t go up right away land on people’s hair so we were very aware of our surroundings!
Friday, we went with the kids on their Friday outing and we got to go to a play place and play with the kids for over an hour. We had so much and so did the kids! We had a chill rest of the day which was nice. We started packing up some of our things since we were leaving the next evening. We played with the kids that evening outside as well. I promise the kids are in the pictures below you just can’t see them, but as you can tell we had just as much fun there as the kids! 🙂
On Saturday, we got to hang out with Imm! We had lunch with her and then headed to Art in Paradise in Chiang Mai which was a lot of fun! We walked around and saw all the different galleries. I had brought my hammock with us to Thailand and so we set out to find a spot to hang the hammock. We also got to teach Imm how to flip into a hammock which was quite fun! 🙂 We got back to the orphanage around 3pm and Lo had set up for us to get one last Thai massage before we left. We got our massages and then headed out to dinner. After we had dinner we headed back to the orphanage to say our final good-byes to the kids and then we finished packing.
We got to the airport a little before 10:00pm on Saturday and we got our bags checked and headed to the security line. Our plane left at 11:55pm and so we said our goodbyes to Lo and waited until we could board our flight. We had another 28 hours of travel in front of us. We went from Chiang Mai to Seoul, South Korea to Atlanta, Georgia to Kansas City. We landed back in Kansas City a little after 1:00pm Sunday. When we got to the airport in Chiang Mai it was like 80F and when we stepped out of the airport in Kansas City it was snowing and a blizzard! Just a little different than the last time we were outside!
We had such a fun time going over to Thailand and getting to see Lo and the kids and getting to experience the Thai culture!
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