Pun Pun Thailand

4 days ago we shifted from our fairy home in Earth Home Thailand to Pun Pun, an  organic farm in Northern Thailand that has about 16 perminant habitants , many of whom are Thai and, at the moment about 6 volunteers. Pun Pun, Earth Home Thailand and Panya are all  within walking distance of each other in the same village. 

Mmm , I feel soo clean!

Boyd got the solar hot water heater going in our new homes' bath room and the whole family had a hot bath. Well the bath is quite small. So bits of the whole family were concurrently bathing in the hot bath at the same time :-).

I bathed off all the sweat and the smells of the local market that Tara and I visited tonight. We wandered through the whole seathing market of 500 people jammed into a tiny  dirt road by a canal.. I recognized 2foods  and bought them: Mangos and a sticky rice and banana that had been steamed in banana leaves. Tara and I ate something that was quite tasty and resembled chippies from home: deep fried locusts .Tara said that they were her favorite food from the market.

The children have adapted remarkably well to the changing food situation. Likely there is always rice and usually some egg on offer from the community kitchen. But the kids have already adopted tofu as their new favorite food . Boyd closely follows in the remarkable-adaption-to-food miracle.  He has tried more new foods on the past week than in the last 5 years. The community: Pun Pun, is an  seed-saving organic farm that supports and supplies vegetables and vegetarian recipes to its own vegetarian restaurants in the  city of Chiang Mai. So the standard of cooking here is amazing :-)

So we are staying in an adobe home vacated by its family as they are away in Europe. We eat  3 cooked meals a day communally in a eating hall central to the farm. One parent works from 9 till 12 in the morning and the other from 3 till 5 in the afternoon and after lunch the whole family relaxes somewhere shady and cool. There is even real coffee at the café.

Life is good.

Luke and Tara explore a snail inside then Mango time upstairs look out.

NB no railing?

Changmai to Earth home Thailand

But. Our train was delayed by 5 hours. The truck to take us to our home stay left at 12 and we arrived at 2pm. Thankfully Boyd had a friend Andrew Crighton who was staying in Changmai and sorted us out with accommodation and a Swimming pool !!!! We were so ready for that swimming pool. Luke had exploded into several tantrums and  Tara was sooo hot  and grumpy . Neither child would let us out of their sight. The swimming pool dissolved all the tears. It was lovely :-)

The next morning Andrew took us to a shop that sold croissants :-) and a Wat that had  a huge pool of HUGE cat fish that we happily fed fish food and watched fascinated as the boiling mass of massive fish slithered over each other to get the food detecting it with their sensitive whiskers.

Then another dash to a random ally in the bulk sales part of town with a random truck that said 'Pun Pun " only on the very inside of the truck. We crawled trough the ally ways loading  with 25kg sacks of rice and sugar and chilli's and orange drinks and then with the back of the truck  still open  we took off down the duel carriageway, the back of the truck still open...( there was no door).

After 2 and a half hours... I think the distance was 50 km but  we made a lot of stops to drop off produce....... We arrived.

When we put our bags in our room Tara said " Daddy are we fairies??" "This is like fairyland". Sure enough the property is beautiful. Adobe houses with water features made from sun and rain weathered logs, beautiful gardens ... It is a very special spot.  It is called Earth Home Thailand.