From the North back to Bangkok

On our way we merrily went, to Lampang a little town south of Chiang Mai. The Thai pronunciation caused Julian to start singing Lampang Lampang in different tones after about ten minutes of him doing it on his own we started humming it together repeatedly after Julian set the tone, for the next thirty minutes; interrupted by the last hotel we stayed at saying we had forgotten our ipad.
We thus decided to carry on to Lampang and go back to Chiang Mai for the night.
We had a great day though Val had it on the wrong end all day. She checked the room to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything and after sushi suggested a hopeless horse and cart trip of the city followed by a visit to a temple (Wat Pratat Lampang Luang, Djudj says it beautifully) at four fifty, not knowing the temple closes at five.
The next day we took the same road and saw a sign saying elephant hospital, after reading up on it and getting nothing but praise compared to the usual elephant places in Thailand in we went.
Now this place had a few special things of which one in particular. We stopped in the local onsite restaurant for our first taste and no more, Thai food, it was disgusting. Val went to talk to a monk and asked about what a monks life is like. A quick description of this monk is needed and though I am adding a picture try to add my description to your mental image of this character.
This man is slightly overweight has three tooth plaited together as one on the bottom. he is speaking over-loudly with a Thai accent where nearly every other consonance is lost.
After explaining to us that monks shave there heads every full moon, get up every day at four am to repeat there mantras before setting out at six to wander for offerings and food given by the people;  they cannot touch women are thus bound to celibacy and are living of charity of people, he greeted Val and came down to the table me and the boys were sitting at screaming at Matt:"Wa is yur name"Matt said Matthew, " Ow ol ar yuu" Mattew answered in Thai "pet pee" eight year old same went for Julian.
The monk then proceeded to Matt "Yuu Thai name is 'Chompuu'" and to Djudj "en yuu 'Mattmuang'".
Thus both my sons have been renamed to Thai as 'pink apple' and 'mango', and if that weren't enough as we continued to see the attraction in the park this is what happened.
We first went to visit the hospital section where we saw an elephant operated at the foot with a huge bandage, on we went to hand feed bananas to mum who had her young baby sleeping by her feet.
Then approximately ten tame elephants were ridden to the lake to take a bath, just before they arrived we were sitting in some kind of tribune we heard a loud voice shout "Chompuuuuu, Matmuang" repeatedly until the kids turned around and as they did the monk laughed "cho cho chooo".
This followed us throughout the elephant visit.

I took some pictures painted by the elephants and even though they were guided the result is still amazing.
We carried on to the temple we missed out on the day before to find that it's originality lays more in the belief then the beauty. One thing that struck out was in one little room preceded by some high stairs was a supposed imprint of Buddha's foot and as the door of this little room was closed it unveiled a camera obscura effect reflecting the whole temple on the wall like an upside down color picture, amazingly sharp.
We carried on to the sad little city of Phrae nothing worth to say here appart from meeting a Belgian couple that hated India would never go to China and told us a horrible story about being in Laos arrested by the army and witnessing a rape.
On to Sukhothai the next day.
The place we stayed at was everything our guide book predicted. The place itself was amazing and though the collection of caged birds was stunning we all fell we would sneak them out by opening the cages. The beds were extremely hard and the Italian host having a love or hate relationship with his customers turned out to be the kind of person i greatly appreciate. The real Italian, his Thai even sounded like Italian, direct proud well dressed Thai style but moccasins shoes and white shirt for Italian class and a I know it attitude. He did know, everything he told us about the area turned out to be better then we expected and the 'incrediibile' breakfast was amazing. Sukhothai had a calming effect on us the seven hundred year old ruins lit on the Saturday night the bicycle tour the good food on the stalls at night and the guest house made us long for a less travelly mode so on the way to the Errawan waterfalls as we saw the crossing Errawan right Bangkok left we chose for the latter one.
A quick visit to the capital and of to the beach we go.
The children are although demanding at times and as loud as ever being darlings the last few days.
My wife is getting to her moon cycle and claims I am impossible so all is turning as usual and life goes on it's merry way.
I am sitting in this 'chiquy' hotel room writing my blog with a bit of nostalgia to be more settled yet a hunger to discover. I am still blessed and arriving in Bangkok with little traffic we noticed it was Sunday and our decision to get here today was not really ours but was led by.....   . We are taken care of I know that and Val felt it to and I am grateful.