working the land

Our time at the farm has come to an end and while we're excited to head to Laos, we sure are going to miss all of the amazing people that we met here.

Most notably...

Cooking and being sassy with Ba Muan--our adoptive mother, favorite cook and Thai teacher while on the farm.

 

Playing with Ba Dao and her 7 dogs.  Ba Dao initially introduced herself to us as Dao; however, after she was put in charge of us on the farm she informed us that her name was now Ba Dao since she was our boss.  Since Ba Dao speaks no English and our Thai is minimal at best, it was quite fun miming in order to figure out what we would be doing each day.  We are now fluent in body language--it's going on our resumes along with French and Spanish.

 

 



 

Talking food and learning life lessons from Ale and David--our fellow wwoofer friends from Italy.

 

Now onto the rest of our trip--Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong Kong here we come!

Happy Trails,

L & H

run to the hills

With the expiration date of our Thai visas fast approaching we had to get the heck outta dodge in order to reset the clock on our travel documents. For us, this meant taking a bus to another northern city in Thailand called Chiang Rai, and then another bus to the Myanmar/Thai border. When we reached the border all we had to do was have our passports stamped and walk back across a bridge to Thailand.

This little adventure left us curious about the country of Myanmar (formerly Burma). We have read cautionary tales about the challenges that Myanmar faces, and how tourists are often used as accessories to government corruption. That being said, we have also met a couple of other backpackers that have gushed that it is the most amazing place they have ever visited. Unfortunately, time was not on our side during this leg of the trip, and the temptation to visit remains.

While we were in Chiang Rai we were able to take a little detour outside the city and visit Wat Rong Khun, know as the White Temple.  The temple was built in the late 90s which made it much more modern than all the other temples we had seen.  The architecture is different than the usual Thai temples with the entire temple being white to signify Buddha's purity.

 

 

Now back to the farm for one last week of country living.

Happy Trails,

 L & H

and we're back!

Sorry to all of those anxiously awaiting our latest posts:) We’ve been on the farm and away from internet access for the past couple of weeks, and then an inconvenient bout of illness struck. Now we are happy to be back in good health and in Hanoi, Vietnam--a city with Wi-fi!

Here’s a recap of our time in Chiang Mai where we enjoyed a couple of days off from the farm:

We stayed at the bed and breakfast that our WWOOF host runs near Chiang Mai University. We enjoyed the cute cafes and walking around the beautiful campus that was literally in our backyard.

While visiting a mountainside temple we ran into hundreds of teenage monks parading to prayer.

We spent one day swinging through the trees on zip lines. Our guides were hilarious and the experience left us wanting to explore some more “outdoorsy” activities!

 

 

 

Hilary went on a daylong trek through the jungle, rode an elephant, and went white water rafting. Meanwhile, Laura stayed in the city and went to a bookstore.

 

  

Next stop Chiang Rai for a border run, stay tuned.


Happy Trails,
L & H