Chiang Mai and… home

After over a year on the road, we chose to ease out our travels by spending our last month in Chiang Mai before making our way down to Bangkok for our last flight home.

Chiang Mai was almost unrecognisable from my time there learning kickboxing almost twenty years ago. It has transformed from a quaint town to a medium sized city. Although now flooded with tourists and traffic, it has somehow managed to retain a very cool, friendly, and relaxed vibe. It was a fantastic place to spend the final few weeks of our travels

We moved around to experience different parts of the town. Our favourite place was Isty in the Santitam district which is popular among expats for its local vibe mixed in with some very cool cafes and bars.

Liam and I experienced some of the trails in the beautifully lush hills to the west of the town.

My sister Andrea’s family joined us just before Christmas, staying in the countryside north of Chiang Mai. One of our first outings was to the novel elephant poopoo paper park.

Shozo, Kimi and Jackson doing some poo poo alchemy.

If you’re going to make paper out of poo, apparently elephant poo is some of the best paper poo because of its fibrous nature

There is certainly something deeply satisfying about the texture of poo paper…

Time for some Christmas dinner shopping. We passed on this.

And on this…

An admirable effort, but not quite…

Nailed it!

Sofia was yearning for a bit of a kiwi style Christmas. Having a BBQ and family went a long way!

We visited the beautifully unique Bua Tong waterfalls north of town. The limestone and mineral ‘sticky’ rock meant there was great fun could be had climbing the various cascading tiers of the river and waterfall.

The water was sourced from a crystal clear spring.

Jacky-chan loving his coconut!

We spent a morning hiking the ‘Monks trail’ to What Pha Lat.

Jacky-chan had some issues with authority on the way to the wat.

Then it was off up the Mae Taeng river for a crack at some rafting down some family friendly rapids

The river was higher than usual meaning some parts weren’t suitable for the smaller kids. The bigger kids loved the ride!

Hot chocolate and snacks hit the spot after a wet and cool day on the river.

Andrea and Jackson had their own little brown water adventure…

Andrea got hammered the next morning with a Tok Sen massage

The kids loved spending time at a hedgehog cafe in town

The girls spent an afternoon at the nearby Garden Farm cooking school…

Masterchefs!

The kids couldn’t be in Chiang Mai without going to an obligatory elephant sanctuary.

Sofia went a long way to recover from the trauma of our close encounter with a bull elephant in Botswana

Then it was into Chiang Mai to pick up Andrea’s husband, Icchan and to celebrate New Years

We went to enjoy the atmosphere around Tha Phae Gate

…and then on to the Ping river to release some lanterns laden with our New Year wishes

…but really, who knows what 2020 will bring…

A New Year’s soccer match

Some of us went to ’Art in Paradise’ and had a blast playing with perspective photography and the like

Ah, screen time… one of the biggest parental challenges of 2019

One last Chiang Mai meal…

…and a somewhat less appetising meal for the fish…

…And we hit the road in our van towards Bangkok. Driving was surprisingly incident free. My memories from Thai roads from twenty years back were of harrowing experiences involving a magical ‘middle lane’ that would often appear and disappear from and to nowhere and leave the heart pounding. The experience in 2020 was surprisingly a relatively low key affair which I would summarise as courteously aggressive.

We stopped over at the ruins at Sukhothai

Getting between the ruin sites was great fun!

Jacky-chan taking a break from the scorching sun

Always time for one last souvenir, particularly when it is a dress. Sofia collected several from the various parts of the world that we visited.

And then… after over a year on the road, we packed our bags for the last time and made our way to the Bangkok airport

It was a strange feeling returning to Taupo, where we spent our last night in New Zealand before we left for Mumbai over a year ago. It instantly felt as if we had never left and our last year away already felt a long way away…

And back in Wellington we were greeted by pohutakawas in full bloom accompanied by tui in full chorus.

The kids have LOVED catching up with their friends. Being apart from them was the toughest part of their travels. It is amazing how they just pick up with them right where they left off…

Liam had a true baptism of fire by going straight to a four day cricket tournament in Napier.

Over one year on and the feelings of anticipation and excitement have steadily been replaced by the warm feeling of memories of our adventures together.

As we expected, it has certainly been more challenging than it was six years ago with slightly more difficult destinations and the kids at a different stage of their development. But we have had a blast. The parts of the world that were at the top of our ‘I can’t believe we still haven’t been there’ list lived up to expectations. But of course, once again it has been the people we’ve met along the way and shared parts of our journey that will give us the fondest memories – thanks for being a part of it!

And thanks to everyone else for being a part of it through this blog – we hope you’ve enjoyed it. We’ve definitely enjoyed writing it!

This blog was for two other purposes other than sharing our adventure with friends and family; Firstly, for ourselves – this blog will be converted into a coffee table book for us to look at over the years. But, it was also written for any other travel loving parents considering taking their kids on a big adventure rather than waiting for an empty nest. For anyone considering that, all you need to know is that it is easy and it is awesome and not something that you will regret. The time with the kids, while they are still kids, is pure gold. I love this quote by Randy Komisar:

‘And then there is the most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later’

We will be writing one last blog with answers to the many types of questions we’ve been asked along the way – please message us with anything about our trip that you’d like to know and we’ll include it in there.