We also saw some fauna, but I was never fast enough with the camera to share them with you... I don't know all the names of these flowers, but still...

There were trees covered with these blossoms that were constantly dropping them to the ground in a sweet smelling gentle rain... the whole place was full of it's gentle perfume! Somehow, this didn't clash with the other smells from flowers.

The pathways were lined with bushes of these flowers. Pink, yellow, orange, red... beautiful! Curiously, instead of folding up like we usually think of flowers, these ones wrap their petals spirally and you can almost watch them unfold!

purple tubas?

here you can see one open and one wrapped up... not so clear, but can you see the spiral wrapping?

Spiders?

Banana flowers

Parrot beaks?

Frangapani - very delicate beautiful perfume, these. They grow on low trees shaped sort of like umbrellas. The flowers are constantly dropping to the ground...

fun leaves

fire flowers?

A Week in Chiang Mai

Michael had a leadership course to attend, and the girls and I went along or a little "holiday." It was at a beautiful hotel/resort place just outside the city; lots of green, very quiet,etc. For the first part of the week our group was the only one there, so it was very quiet indeed - especially while everyone was in sessions! Grace, Jasmin, and I got to go swimming, play on the small playground, explore the grounds, nap, etc. to our hearts' content.

It was rather difficult to keep up with Grace, keep Jasmin content, and take photos for everyone, but here are a few from the week:

The playground consisted of a merry-go-round (! such a LONG time since I've seen one!) and a small set of arching monkey bars with assorted types of swings. Grace enjoyed it all. She even climbed on the monkey bars herself - I'd have taken a picture if I weren't rushing to catch her from falling :oP


Swimming happened twice a day when it didn't rain in the afternoon. Even though she could hardly touch bottom even in the kiddie pool, Grace still had tons of fun. I was very glad she decided she liked floating around in the baby boat - without that, she wouldn't have had so much water time as Jasmin didn't often come swimming. But when she did, she also liked floating around in a "boat"...
When she didn't swim with us, she took her morning nap....



Other activities included exploring the badminton gym, finding fish in the fountains, wandering around the pathways, trying out grass-walking - Grace's first time to walk/play on grass! - joining daddy at break times... and photographing all the different flowers we saw: check out the next blog to see some of them.

Two pictures from the last week...

Grace, feeling tired and jealous, threw all her teddies into Jasmin's hammok and climbed in after them...

Grace is learning to dress herself... despite the fact that this is actually the bottom half of a too big bathing suit, she didn't do that bad of a job, eh?

A delightful article explaining why we don't drive ourselves in Cambodia can be found here:
http://www.talesofasia.com/rs-147-driving.html

Such is life in Cambodia!