Wanderlust: Expat Life & Style in Thailand Aug / Sept 2017: The Kids & Family Issue | Page 48

Travel
CHANGE OF PLANS
I find the girls playing in our villa’s
enormous bathtub, surrounded by a
kaleidoscopic perimeter of My Little
Pony figurines. I am back to reality.
Fortunately, the villa is large enough to
live in — all that is missing is a kitch-
en — and that gives us a sense of space
and privacy not found in typical ho-
tel rooms. I go to the desk upstairs to
write. Each of us relaxes in different cor-
ners of the villa until dinner at Le Grand
Lanna, Dhara Dhevi’s Thai restaurant.
Le Grand Lanna is housed in a
dark-wooded pavilion. In the eve-
nings, costumed performers dance
while musicians produce the mystical
sounds of traditional Thai melodies.
I don’t think the girls have ever seen
Thai dancers. I know Chloe will be en-
thralled by the beautiful outfits and
the female dancers’ long, curled fin-
ger decorations, which add drama to
graceful hand movements.
A feast of traditional Thai and
Lanna-style dishes arrives. There’s an
abundance of food: sticky rice, pork
skewers, a whole fish, plates of vege-
tables, and a particularly delicious tom
48 WANDERLUST
kha gai. The dancing starts. I glance
over to see Chloe’s reactions, but she’s
motionless — barely even blinking.
Her face is several shades paler than
usual, and she’s knitting her eyebrows.
“Martin,” I say to my husband, “I
think Chloe is going to be sick.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he says, ever
the optimist. I wish he was right, but
my intuition about these things is sel-
dom wrong. I ask the waitstaff for a
plastic bag.
Within twenty minutes, we are
on the way back to our villa because
poor Chloe has a stomach bug. Since
we were unable to make a dent in our
meal, the gracious staff offer to pack
up our food and bring it to our villa,
while Chloe rests.
Chloe’s sudden sickness means al-
tering our plans for the next day. But
our villa is comfortable. And the staff
call to check on us, see if we need a
doctor, and offer to do whatever it is
that would help.
We are in good hands.
PRETTY PATTERNS
When the sun comes up, Chloe is bet-
ter but still shaky. We decide to skip
the elephant park, saving it for a future
family trip to Chiang Mai. The girls will
stay at Dhara Dhevi to relax and play
with new friends they’ve met at the
breakfast buffet. Meanwhile, I head off
site to photograph some nature.
At the Bai Orchid and Butterfly
Farm, orchids hang in rows beneath
protective netting, and their roots
dangle out in the open. I walk up
and down the aisles, like I am shop-
ping for cereal, examining the va-
rieties of flowers and their wide
range of petals: buttery yellow,
shocking purple, pure white, vio-
let-and-cream-dappled. I give my
camera’s shutter a good workout try-
ing to capture the beauty of the or-
chids, but nothing compares to see-
ing them in person.
Bai’s butterflies fly freely amongst
vegetation, within a section guard-
ed by curtains made of red plas-
tic chains. Visitors crowd into this
“room,” keeping their eyes peeled for
the winged creatures, which are, I
think, the orchids of the insect world.
Like flower petals, they are paint-
ed in an array of patterns and colors.
Again, my camera is working hard:
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