Chiang Dao, Thailand

About an hour and a half north of us is a fun little city called Chiang Dao. We went there about a month ago because we heard there were some fun caves (which they were). Some friends had also gone to a little resort that has a reputation for having awesome western food. Last weekend we all decided to go up for the day. Unfortunately, Damien woke up sick the morning we were leaving so he stayed home to rest.

There area lot of little things to visit up there. We walked up a monastery - 509 steps. That's a lot for someone whose out of shape carrying an almost 30lb baby on their back. :-) It was worth the view at the top.

I love that the kids know to be quiet and respectful.

We went to some hot springs which were really some pipes coming out of the ground pouring into some homemade cement round bathtub-like things. I should have taken pictures. It was a pretty interesting setup. But there were some local people there and we sort of felt like were crashing the party. But it was right next to this great stream. It was moving pretty fast but was also mostly very shallow. The boys could have played all day!

We went back to the little resort for dessert. There were some cute little kittens and cats that the kids loved. Damien and I never would have even noticed the cats so it's nice that our friends are animal people and help our kids have some pet time.

Poor Mr. R gets practically run over as the kids try to get to the cats. :-)

When we went to the caves a few months ago there was a little boy who followed us around and asked to take pictures. We kept taking them since we felt bad saying no. What we didn't realize was that he was going to run back and print all of the pictures and expect us to pay for them. Woops. The caves cost about $2 and the pictures cost 5x that much. But now we know! I finally scanned a few of them in. The caves were a really fun experience. Although the cave isn't incredibly well preserved, it's also not very developed. You have to pay a local person to "guide" you through them with their hand-held lantern. There were a few pretty small spaces to crawl through which Sora did not like at all. It's good that we had the guide to help us know when to stop at hundred foot drops offs!