June 28 Pottery Village - Yingge

We had a wonderful outing to Yingge (also referred to as Yingko) – the pottery capital of Asia. The town has a terrific array of shops and hands on pottery stations. Check out the photos of the boys (James is one of the boys). They had fun producing the next generation of Ming vases. So much fun that the day slipped by without making it to the Ceramics Museum.

In the evening we went out to the Shih Lin market. What a crazy zoo! The highlight of the market was watching the quick shutdowns as the police popped by (many retailers are there illegally!). Despite the throngs, we managed to buy a few things!

June 27 Transformers

Heavy rains quashed our plans to go to the beach for Canada Day celebrations. Instead, the girls went shopping and the boys went to see ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’. We reunited at Chili’s for a cold drink before heading home.

James, Anita, Joe and I went out last night to celebrate our anniversaries. Joe and I will have been married for 14 years on July 7th. Anita and James are celebrating their 25th! We went to a Thai restaurant and chatted for hours – the boys meanwhile were back at the ranch enjoying a movie (Wild Hogs) and chips, etc. A great evening for all!

June 26 Taipei 101 World's tallest buiding

Anita kindly hired a driver for the day to explore the city. Our first stop was Taipei 101 – the highest building in the world (soon to lose this distinction to a building in Dubai, however). An audio guide assisted us with the interpretation and the views were incredible! Architect C.Y. Lee incorporated the shape of bamboo flowers, the Chinese pagoda, and the lucky number eight into the tower’s interior and exterior design. Its huge typhoon and earthquake motion damper sphere on level 88 is open to view and a source of great interest to us. We also took in Taipei’s newest, youngest, and hottest shopping district in the Hsinyi District, centered around the Taipei World Trade Center and Taipei 101.It was interesting to learn that Taipei does not have any embassies, but rather foreign ‘trade offices’.

We then were treated to an afternoon at the American Club – a beautiful facility with pool, tennis courts, library, hairdressing salon, restaurants, etc. The boys and Anita played tennis and we had a bite to eat at a restaurant overlooking the courts – very civilized! Afterwards we all cooled off with a swim.

In the evening Anita and James had a group of their ex-pat friends in for a dinner party. It was a spectacular evening! Incredible company, delicious Greek food, lovely wines, as well us the sharing of colourful travel stories and much laughter. It was fascinating hearing about people’s experiences living in Taiwan. All loved it, especially due to the close proximity to Bali, Thailand, etc. We are so very grateful for their warm hospitality and it is so wonderful to spend time together after so many years.

June 25 Taipei Taiwan

Our flight to Taiwan was excellent on China Airways. And, our reunion with James and Anita Kirk was fantastic. James met us at the airport and whisked us off to his beautiful apartment in the north of Taipei. Wow! Anita is still as beautiful as we remembered! It was a terrific reunion and we truly appreciate their warm hospitality.

It was the boys first introduction to Anita but as you can see in the photo, the boys spent no time at all reacquainting with James!

The boys were also quite impressed with James’ and Anita’s daughters, Naomi and Tanya (one heading to medical school and the other an actress and model in Hollywood – check out Jesse McCartney’s latest music video, How Do You Sleep, which includes a small love scene on the hood of a car. Meet Naomi Kirk!

We stayed up to all hours, catching up on all of the news. We felt like we were home!

June 24 Thai Cooking Course (photos to follow)

OK, cooking school was a lot better than I imagined it would be! Deb, the boys and I are now certified Thai cooks, prepared to whip up Pad Thai, Spring Rolls, Sweet & Sour soup, salads, sticky rice and a gamut of other delicacies. It was amazing, and we got to eat our creations. Under the supervision of Pot and his wife Nan at the Siam Rice Cooking school, we were producing creations in no time at all. He took us to the market to help us identify all of the ingredients and to check for ripeness and freshness (lemongrass, ginsing, spring onions, spices).

After cooking our masterpieces, we even learned to carve those fancy carvings from simple vegetables. A day well spent. And all Brendan-safe foods!

Jun 23 Chiang Mai Wat Tour

We slept in! Our guide will be picking us up at 1:00 p.m. to take us on the Chiangmai old city wot tour. Back to a life of leisure: time for a relaxed breakfast, time to blog, to swim, to do school work. Even time to pick up our laundry! Eventually 1:00 arrived and we were off with our guide, Kophi to visit the oldest temple in Thailand (as Chiangmai is the oldest city, about 700 years in the kingdoms of Thailand. Chiangmai was the Northern Capital of the Lanna Kingdom. The temple that we visited a couple of days ago at the top of the mountain is connected to the temples at the bottom both by lore and roads. We visited the Central Temple, the Royal Temple and the oldest temples. Kophi filled us in the story of Buddhism and of the monks that pray and study at them. He was a former monk, now turned tour guide (he is 29 years old)!. Fascinating. We also participated in a new monk’s program called, appropriately enough, Chat with a Monk. This allows foreigners (and I suppose some locals) time to learn about monks and listen to the teachings and for the monks in return to practice their English. We chatted with monks who were 9 years and 3 years practicing.

In the evening, we returnd to the night market for dinner. Check out the baby's play pen!

June 22 Elephant Trek

Ryan: At eight o’clock this morning the Kuffner family hopped into a chubby minivan along with four girls from Toronto (who were at Teacher’s College in Australia), five girls from London, England (who were taking a “gap-year” after finishing high school to travel through Asia) and a Thai guide and driver. We headed off to the elephant camp.

We got there forty minutes later after a stomach lurching side to side and up and down type of drive. We were to watch an elephant show then for elephant rides along the Ping river for two kilometers through lush green forest.

Joe: Before embarking on our elephant trek, we watched a 20-elephant show and learned of the history of these elephants (they were working in the teak forest industry –along with their trainers - that has recently been closed due to teak forested now being protected by the King). The show consisted of demonstrations of how they had worked in the forests, pulling and stacking logs, carrying their tools and chains and following their trainers commands as well as those of the lead elephant. However, the show also included other less noble elephant acts including the elephants demonstrating their dexterity painting scenes on canvas (available later for purchase in the gift shop), kicking soccer balls and throwing basketballs as well as trumpeting and “hamming it up” for the crowd.

Later, we went for the trek aboard the elephants. 2 riders per elephant plus the driver. The driver sat on the elephant’s neck and seemed to steer the elephant by nudging the back of its ears. The boxes in which we sat were comfortable enough although the walk had quite a bit of lateral motion (quite unlike riding a camel or a horse). It was similar to a camel ride, though, in the way each forward step had a slight tilt that became exaggerated when going up hill or down hill. I sat with Ryan while Deb sat with Brendan on another elephant. I could tell that Ryan was getting motion sickness but he toughed it out. The elephant took us through jungle, across the river that we would later raft, up and down rugged terrain. It was thoroughly enjoyable and seemed to be not much of a burden for the elephant (who were also being treated with bunches of bananas and cut sugar cane every few hundred metres). Our drivers were very pleasant and one of them spoke excellent English. This allowed us to have many of our questions answered as well as get our pictures taken and to have our elephants move closer together whenever necessary to pass the camera etc.

Ryan: After that, we met up with the oxen and all four of us fitted in two rows of a crate on wheels. The oxen brought us to another camp where we had a buffet lunch. I had noodles, fried chicken and steamed rice.

After the delicious meal, we went on a 45-minute bamboo river-raft ride (Dad called it brown-water rafting, as the water here is totally brown). We wore life jackets even though the water was no more than 3-feet deep! We also wore rice-patty style cone-hats that made us look quite Asian.. We saw a couple of turtles and some bamboo trees and bonsai trees. The guide said the raft ride would be as smooth as Thai silk. She was right.

After that we got back in the van, to the sound of blasting music. The driver had all the latest music and that lightened our already good mood! Brendan entertained us with some karaoke. We drove to a tiger rehabilitation center where the British group did the fifteen minute activities inside the pen with the tigers. We waited patiently and then went to see the orchids and butterflies. The orchids were sensational but the butterfly farm was a bit of a disappointment. I made an assumption that for every 1 butterfly (fifty in total), there were 8 million fruit flies buzzing around the cut pineapples left out for the butterflies. We then made our way to the Central Airport Plaza to do some shopping (mom bought us three more books) and by eight o’clock we were back in the hotel to watch the US Open.