Chiang Mai -Part 2

Realizing the benefit of space and interacting with different family members, we decided to have a guys day and a girls day.  The guys headed out to find bikes and see what sort of trouble they could get into. Their first thought was to find some mountain bike trails in the nearby hills and so they peddaled uphill until a child cried and then enjoyed the ride back down. 

The joy of arriving somewhere but no idea where - note the sign

Around lunch time they rode to a local burger joint only to learn it was closed that day so they settled into a cafe for lunch which turned out to be an excellent spot. Next the thought was maybe they should play golf - why not, having not swung a club in over 6 months? So they rode to a local country club and explored. Here, the course had woman caddies but no childrens clubs to rent, so they wandered over the driving range and hit some balls experiencing something never seen before (an auto-ball-tee-er-upper). Following golf, the guys decided to take the long way home and rode around the outer ring of half of Chiang Mai. 

Why not hit some balls in Thailand?

Meanwhile, the girls had some shopping to do!  Mom and SJ hopped in a tuk tuk and headed across town to a boutique shopping street where they had fun wandering around and stopping at for some snacks.  Chaing Mai is known to be a creative hub and so it was interesting to find some goods that were different than the items sold at the endless markets.  Of course, as is typical on our girl dates, we also had to stop at Starbucks, but the electricity went out in the store right as it was our turn to order.  We waited around a bit and decided to move on, only to have the electricity go back on right as we were leaving!  So we grabbed our coffee and hot cocoa and hopped in another tuk tuk to head to the next stop.  Here we found some interesting tribal items made in the many villages around Chiang Mai.  We started to get a bit tired, so rested while we had our feet massaged.  Then we ventured out a bit more before meeting up with the boys for dinner.

Relaxing foot massages!

After dinner mom and the older two boys headed to the night market to pick something up quick, but ended up having an unfortunate run-in with one of the sellers.  We later learned that many of the sellers in the market actually work for other people and are not from Thailand, which explained why this man was didn’t care about losing face as he lied and yelled at us.  Thankfully, the night ended with a sweet lady telling our oldest that she appreciated it bargaining skills and maturity, a much better experience!

We’d read on a fellow traveling family’s blog that they had had their teeth cleaned while in Chiang Mai, and it was a good experience for them.  We’ve all been feeling a bit fuzzy, and we knew SJ had a cavity that we’ve tried to get fixed the last few months but couldn’t get in anywhere.  So Thursday morning we headed to Dental World. 

Dental World, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Much to our dismay, we ended up spending 7 hours there and still everyone had not been seen!  While it was a knowledgeable and clean place to be seen, some of the tools used seemed not to have silencers on them and we missed the comforts of our home dentist.  Unfortunately SJ didn’t just have a cavity, but in fact needed a child’s version of a root canal and crown.  We scrambled to use Skype in a new way to call our Dentist back home. His wife thought we were a prank when we mentioned we were calling from Thailand at 11:30 at night.  Thankfully he agreed to take our call and confirm that it was the best way to proceed.  She was put in a straight jacket and mom held her to a wooden board while this 45 minute procedure took place.  It was awful, but in typical SJ fashion, once the Novocain and shock wore off,  she braved the pain just fine and even was proud of her new silver tooth!  Thankfully the dentist was able to fit the rest of us in to finish up our cleanings and work the following two days, so our teeth were in great shape before we left Chiang Mai!