Tantalising Thailand

 

Before embarking on our Atlantic crossing last year we decided it would be nice to catch up with family.  David headed to New Zealand to see his mum, sister and girls while I opted for a rendezvous with youngest son Ryan in Thailand….a place I’d always wanted to go.  Sam tried to make it too….on his way to Italy….but it didn’t work.

                         

I stopped over in Abu Dhabi with my old mate Diane Crawford.  Diane and I grew up in the Waikato and went to journalism school at ATI in Auckland in 1977 (eek!).  We’ve been close friends ever since despite usually living in different cities and indeed countries, but try to meet up whenever we can.  We had a great day and night together.

It was wonderful to see Ryan at Bangkok Airport….firstly because he had actually made it (Ryan has a reputation for missing flights!) and secondly it had been more than a year since I’d seen him.  We had two fantastic days and nights exploring the sights in Bangkok. 

We loved the bustling city and managed to see everything we wanted despite the rising river levels and minor flooding.  Most of the  serious flooding was further north and we saw evidence of the devastation as we flew north to Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai was wonderful  We stayed in a fantastic hotel on the outskirts of the town and used bikes to explore.  It really was a great spot – not too touristy and full of wonderful markets, temples and sights.  The people were incredibly friendly, polite and helpful.

High on Ryan’s agenda was elephant trekking and tiger spotting while I wanted to soak up some of those wonderful Thai massages and do a cooking course.  We compromised and did the elephant trek together but I left Ryan to do the tigers himself – I’m not really into animals in captivity.  Instead I learnt to cook pad thai at a cooking course.

We had some great meals out, saw some fantastic sights and all too soon it was time to fly back to Bangkok for our respective flights home.  It was a huge wrench saying goodbye at the airport……we never quite know when we will see each other again!!