Chiang Mai, Thailand; Day 2

After school this morning the 5 Adventurers spent some time apart gathering additional ingredients for a very Merry Christmas.

We decided a while ago that we’d try to make Christmas special and familiar for the kids even though we would be in Asia. We also wanted to avoid carrying gifts for each other across 12 time zones and knew that we would be staying in a large enough city to provide adequate shopping options. Waiting until a few days before Christmas might seem crazy but in a Buddhist majority country, today was just another Tuesday.

Crowded shopping was no challenge. The real challenge of the day was getting each of the 5 of us to secretly procure gifts for others without their knowledge of the gift (or even the store).

This took some strategizing as we separated into a Dad team and a Mom team whose membership changed at different points during the day. In the end, everything is sorted except for the wrapping. Everyone is under strict ‘no sneaking or peaking’ rules for the next three days.

The best adventure today (not logistics related) was at lunch at a Japanese place called Shibushi.

Our kids had no previous experience pulling small dishes off of a table-side conveyor belt to cook in a broth pot mounted in the table. The kids had hits (dumplings) and misses (soggy bacon) in their choices but everything looked interesting to try and the novelty of the experience held their attention.

CreeperKitty scored well on a test in school today and got to choose the restaurant. His first choice of KFC didn’t appeal to him after walking in and seeing the Thai version of the menu. He decided to let his siblings persuade him to try the “conveyor belt place” instead.

It all worked out because he ate lots of pot stickers and compelled the restaurant to cook more and more until he filled his belly with them.