pai, hot springs and elephant trek

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sawasdee (hello) hope everyone is ready for xmas i know i am! looking forward to xmas with a difference being on a tropical party island paridise, untill then i am doing some sight seeing in bangkok. anyway a brief discription of my time in north thailand in pai, we arrived in chang mai and decided to leave for pai because everything we wanted to do was in pai and we wanted to meet our friends we met in vietnam their. pai is fantastic place for just getting a motorbike annd a map and going of on your own to explore, we did this with our friends from Newzeeland and had a great time exploring pai.

The first place we went to where the hot springs which was great as it was the first time i had been to one, it was so strange just seeing a normal looking river in the forest but going into it and relaxing in hot water, their was one spring that was too hot to enter but you could boil an egg we decided to by some eggs and have a go. boiling the eggs was a success although we could of done with a bit of pepper, the exploring also took us to a canyon, waterfall, and some temples also passing through local villages on the way. It's a really cool feeling to just get on a bike an go where you want, our accomidation was really cheap about 2 pound each a night, we stayed in a bamboo shack across the river and it was brilliant their was a bar also and veryone just went their in the evnings to chill out with a chang beer great place to stay for socialising met lot's of people.

their was so much to do in pai but we had to choose what we wanted to do because we couldnt afford to do everything, our friends from New zeeland talked us into doing a elephant trek which i was very glad they did because it was brilliant, we spent the day on the elephant walking through the forest and then went to a river where we washed them and then we road back it was a great experince riding this amazing animal.

I really enjoyed the food in pai you could get good quality street food morning, day, and night for a very good price and that's where we eat most of the time. we also eat at a place called the curry shack where i tried a northen thai curry called khao soy i think! which was one of my favourite dishes so far on my travels i hope i can get that when i get home. i actually ponderd the idea of doing a thai cookery class but it was out of my budget, luckily my kiwi friends did a cookery class and got the recipe for khao soy so i might have a go at making that one day.

going to go do some sight seeing in bangkok now, looking to go to a muay thai kick boxing fight tonight. just about to step outside and barter with a tuk tuk driver to take me to the staduim i will update you all after my time in bangkok.

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Photos

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me and friends at the hot springs

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hot spring where we boiled an egg

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bamboo brdige to are bamboo hut

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my bamboo hut

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wild snake outside our bamboo hut