We travelled north to Pai on the suggestion of Adam and Nikki, who had been prior to joining us in Koh Phi Phi.  We stayed in the bungalows they recommended: Paiklangna Cottage.  We had our own bungalow.

The only “surprise” was the semi-outside shower.

Pai was exactly what we expected Northern Thailand to be: friendly, rural, and youthful with such delicious food!  We spent our time hiking around visiting waterfalls and local villages.

The village of Bann Pam-bok built the Kho-Kuu-So Bridge so the monks in the village could travel to the monastery in all weather, including the rainy season when the rice paddies are completely flooded.  The bridge building was an entire community event which took only 3 months to create an 800 meter network of bamboo bridges.  Tourist fees to visit help maintain it.

 

The Santichon Chinese village was originally comprised of refugees  fleeing Mao Tse Tung’s China in 1949.  Opium became the economic mainstay throughout the second half of the twentieth century.  When Thailand cracked down on the opium trade, they helped the descendants still living there convert their crops into tea. The village showcases the traditional Yunanese way of life including dress, cuisine, reproduction traditional clay houses, and trinkets.  Tourism as well as tea trade now sustain the 200+ families living there.

Then we drove to the mountain top above the Santichon Village for the view of Pai which is in the distance below.

Our afternoon beer break by the river.

On our final evening in Pai, we realized we had not yet made it up to Wat Phra That Mae Yen – The Temple on the Hill.  It had been recommended that we watch the sun set from there.
As the sun was low in the ski, we sprinted up to the top (the stairs seen in the first picture were already about 2/3 of the way up!)

And we made it in time!

 

 

We added Chiang Rai to our itinerary thanks to Phyllis and Jay and were so thrilled that we did.  Firstly, we stayed at one the cutest places so far our our trip: Nak Nakara, which is named for Nag, the serpent.

Second, under the heading of better lucky than good, we picked the dates based on logistics of air travel, availabilities, etc., and lucked in to being in Chiang Rai on the exact 2 days of the annual flower festival!!!  How lucky are we!  There was a smaller festival in town that we ventured out into the first night. The pictures do not even begin to capture the enormity of the event and the beauty of the flowers.

There were 2 stages with live music, one with classic Thai performers, the other with modern artists including hip-hop.

The street food was amazing.  We tried at least 5 things we had never tried before, and all were delicious!

The next day we had so much to pack in.  First we went to Wat Rung Khun – The White Temple.  It is a modern art museum in the style of a Buddhist temple built by artist Chalermchai Kosipipat.  Again, the pictures do not even begin to show how amazing this place is.  Photos are not allowed inside, where the artist really expresses both his sense of humor and his anger at the corruption of and destruction caused by modern life.  Outside is white for purity with glass inlays throughout, shimmering brilliantly in the sun.

The reaching hands in front we are told represent unrestrained desire.  We cross from here to the main temple, passing toward eternal bliss by crossing over a bridge that proclaims the way to happiness by forgoing temptation, greed, and desire.

Inside there are pictures with a mix of classic Buddhist stories and modern ones including super heroes, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and the twin towers burning, to name a few.  There are several other buildings, again mixing classic and contemporary.

Next we went to Baan Dam – Black House, which is also an art museum in the Buddhist Temple style by a private artist, Thawan Duchanee.  It is actually 40 buildings on a several acre property. Both of theses temples/art museums are both revered and reviled by the Thai, depending on one’s point of view.  As expected, the Black House has a much darker, death related theme.  But it also has functional rooms for living.

 

Then we visited a tea plantation and had a tea tasting.  Yes, believe it or not, I went to a tea tasting.

Then we drove up to the Golden Triangle, which is where Thailand borders both Myanmar and Laos.

The peninsula in the middle is Myanmar; the far coast Laos.

Finally on the day, we made it back to Chiang Rai in time before the sun set to visit the much larger flower festival by the river, again eating our way through the many food stalls surrounding the gardens.

The next morning we found the energy to visit one last temple before leaving Chiang Rai, the Blue Temple.

 

Our first night in Bangkok, after already 10 days in Thailand, we decided to westernize for the night and visited a mall: Terminal 21.

It was an amusing mall because each floor was themed based on a city: women’s clothes in Paris and Tokyo, men’s clothes in London, jewelry in Istanbul, etc.  The top floor is Hollywood, which is a multiplex cinema.

Our favorite was San Francisco, which was a giant food court.

We wandered the city a bit.

The next couple of days we did the typical tourist attractions.  Having been warned about the traffic in the city, we were proud of ourselves figuring out how to get around with a combination of the sky train and the public water buses.

First he Grand Palace

Wat Pho with the famous reclining Buddha

 

And then the ferry across to Wat Arun

And finally, another mall, one of the highest class I have ever seen.

And now it is on to Northern Thailand, ahead of the storm!

 

Where New Zealand was all about the beautiful vistas, Singapore is spectacular for its architecture.  After traveling for 10.5 hours by plane we arrived in Singapore at almost 5 pm (10 pm in NZ), and were immediately drawn out into the evening streets.

One of our first encounters was a street Zumba class.

As night fell, the buildings began adding lights.  The Fullerton Hotel goes from just beautiful

To adding a 5 minute long video light showing featuring flora and fauna of Singapore.

The famous Merlion lights up.

And most spectacular of all, the Marina Bay Sands does both a light and water show.

The next 2 days we roamed  the city taking in sites including Indian temples in Little India:

And a mosque:

and temples in Chinatown:

Singapore is truly one of the most culturally,  ethnically, and religiously diverse countries I have ever visited, which also made for great eating!  The street food is amazing!

At night, more water and light shows, Christmas themed.

Another aspect of the city I loved is the street art.

 

And then it was time to move on to Thailand to meet the kids for Christmas!!!!

We spent our last couple of days in New Zealand in Auckland.  After all the beautiful places we had visited in the country, the city was less spectacular, but we needed the big international airport for our next leg.  We made the most of the day tooling around the city on the hop-on-hop off bus, taking in the sites.

And we checked out the Christmas dressings and window displays

This famous NZ department store did the entire nutcracker story.

And we took a ferry across to Devonport.

And so our visit to New Zealand has come to an end.

 

 

 

We arrived in Rotorua in the afternoon.  We immediately embarked on a hike through the redwood forest.  Redwoods were imported here from California over a hundred years ago.  They, like the pines from California, grow faster here, and are therefore a softer wood.  The pines are a huge export industry.  The redwoods, like California, are now for tourists.

We are walking an elevated path that is suspended from tree to tree, thus protecting them.

 

Those things hanging from the trees are light sculptures.  We came back at night for the light tour, which is also from the suspended path, very cool.  Pictures barely capture the experience.

 

The next morning we went to Te Puia, which is a park that houses both a geothermal valley and activities devoted to understanding Maori life, arts, and culture.

First the geothermal:  Pohutu Geyser, which is the largest in the Southern hemisphere.  We were lucky (and patient) enough to catch it erupting.

And mud pools aplenty.

 

Then we turned our attention to the Maoris.

The park is home to the school of Maori arts and crafts.  We were able to watch students learning how to carve stone, jade, and bone as well as weave all manner of clothing and accessories from flax.

Finally, after a relaxing late lunch, we headed to the hot spring pools to soak in the spring-fed mineral baths.

 

 

Napier is so far the cutest we have visited in NZ with respect to its architecture. We stayed in the Art Deco Masonic Hotel, which is where Queen Elizabeth stayed in 1954.

This is the view from the terrace off our bedroom.

In the morning we took an architectural tour with Christine, a spry 80-something-year-old who, after 24 years of giving these tours, retired after ours.

Napier suffered a devastating earthquake on Feb. 3, 1931 which caused fires that lasted for 2 days.  The town was burned to the ground, over 250 people died, and thousands were injured.  Because it was the depression, architects and construction teams were available to pour in from all over the world to help rebuild the city.  The style at the time was art deco, so that is how the new buildings were designed.  Over time, some of them were altered. but in the 1980s the town realized the gem that they had, and started restoring them to the original.  Now every year in February the town has a huge jazz era festival.  People come from all over in their roadsters, dressed in 30s style to celebrate the resilience of the town.  Christine shared some of the architectural marvels with us.

In the afternoon, we visited wineries.  I forgot to mention that while in Queenstown, we visited wineries of the Otago Valley.  There the specialty is Pinot Noir, of which they have some internationally award winning ones.  Napier is in the Hawkes Bay wine region, which has a more diverse offering of grape varietals.

 

The following morning was Saturday, which meant a farmers’ market in the town park.

 

While in Australia, we were lucky enough to have the Jakaranda trees in bloom.  Now almost a month later and much further south, we get to see them in bloom again!  The red one is called the Maori Christmas tree because of its bright red blooms in December.

On Wednesday we woke early and drove to Picton to catch the inter-islander for the 3 hour ferry ride across to the north island.

We arrived in Wellington in the early afternoon with enough time to take the cable car up to the top of the city.

View from the top.

We then meandered our way down through the botanical gardens.  Eric was on a mission to find the silver fern.  The silver fern is as much a symbol of New Zealand as the kiwi, used by both the national rugby team, the Blacks, and the military.

It has a shiny silver underside that reflects the moonlight, which the Maoris used to find their way through the bush at night.  To Māori, the elegant shape of the fronds stood for strength, stubborn resistance, and enduring power. To Pākehā (New Zealanders of non-Māori descent), the fern symbolized their sense of attachment to their homeland.

 

Found!

The gardens were magnificent.  We certainly picked the right time of year to visit.

 

On Monday we drove the 7 hours (and by we I mean Eric drove) from Franz Joseph to Nelson at the northern tip of the southern island.  We passed through some of the most gorgeous scenery yet with multiple stops along the way.  One such side adventure was to Punakaiki with its famous pancake rocks, so named because of the layering caused by the sediment formations.  The views were stunning.

 

 

Once in Nelson we checked in to our airbnb home, which was the cutest little cottage on a sheep farm.  This is the view from our porch.

The next morning we awoke refreshed and hiked to the top of the “center of New Zealand.”

We then visited the town’s Christ Church cathedral, which was having a Christmas tree competition amongst the local organizations.  So many creative ones.

Finally, in the afternoon we went to the Museum of Wearable Art and Classic Cars.  My pictures do not do justice to the weirdness of theses two creations side by side in a museum.