Yet another exciting day for us all here in Thailand! We took a nice little road trip to Chae Son National Park located in the most beautiful, mountainous area. First, we walked through a tea and coffee harvesting village located atop one of the mountainsides, where we learned about the processes involved in planting, reaping, drying, and packaging the tea leaves and coffee beans. Next, we ate a quick lunch, and then we broke up into groups to explore the park. The Thais love to boil eggs in the hot springs (which makes the whole place smell slightly like sulfur and eggs), but the smell in no way detracted from the amazing scenery. Chae Son has many different trails that lead to different waterfalls, and most of us made the long trek up hundreds of stairs to be able to get some awesome pictures! The hike was accompanied by a much-needed Thai massage and a quick dip in the therapeutic hot springs. After a dinner of Western food at the Hangout Café, we visited Wat Prakaew Buddhist temple to watch the Visakha Bucha celebrations.
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| Learning how to make tea pillows. |
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| Middle-of-the-road group picture! |
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Nothing felt better than dipping into an ice cold river
After a long, hard hike! |
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| Yum! Western-style food! |
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| Letting go some birds for good luck scared Tracy a little bit! |
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| Watching the Buddhist holiday festival. |
Great pictures. What a neat day you all had. Loved the stream pics. I'm sure the cold made up for the heat and humidity.
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