SPITZWELL a year in Thailand

Finn: I don’t like the person who started money. Because now there are people who have money and people who don’t. And the people who don’t have money can’t do anything. You should start out with a billion bucks and then everyone would get money, not just the people in these rich countries. Me: What […]

Kunming was our first stop in China – a cheap direct 1.5 hour flight from Chiang Mai. It’s a fairly large city and a place where you can see the old and the new in stark contrast. Our home stay host Eric told us old is best identified by grass growing on the rooftoops. Incidentally, he […]

  Dali was the second stop on our trip, straight after a few days in Kunming. It was my favorite of the three cities we visited (Kunming, Dali and Lijiang) because it felt a little rural and remote but it also had some old town charm. We also stayed at a gorgeous little guest house […]

Lijiang was the third stop in our journey. We travelled there from Dali by bus.  It has a beautiful old town section but it is so heavily tourist oriented that it gets tired pretty quickly.  It was harder to find good inexpensive food than it was in Kunming. And there were scores of Chinese tourists and street […]

At the end of our 10 day China trip we had an amazing albeit grueling two day hike over 27 kilometers of the Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunaan Province of China adjacent to Shangrila. Here we are looking rested and energetic at the start of the hike with our friends Lu Wei and Joshua who […]

I was unable to do a lot of things on the Internet in China due to a little something called censorship. We just returned to Chiang Mai and I hope to upload some photos and stories tomorrow!

The kids finished school last week and we had a big end of school/going away party for them with all their friends that was lots of fun. It has been so great to see them so well integrated and loving their friends and school.  I can only hope middle school in the US will be […]

By the way, we had a pretty epic jungle hike over the weekend in the shadow of Chiang Dao north of here. There is a great little trail that takes you up into the mountain and down again but we got a little off route and wound up in a muddy tangle of brambles.  The […]

Good times with Uncle Dan and Aunt Jill – exploring markets, buying fabric for new suits and dresses, trying new Thai dishes, a trip to Chiang Dao for another overnight at the nest, an epic jungle trek that involved some off trail adventures and a sweaty, muddy crew. On Monday, Dan and Lou were off […]

I have been scheming a mega surprise for some months with Louis’ brother Dan and sister-in-law Jill to have them come to visit us for 10 days without anyone in my family knowing and yesterday my plan came off without a hitch! They arrived at the Chiang Mai airport just a few hours before Tess […]