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Published: December 16th 2010
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Hello People,
We decided to save money and not fork out for any trekking or other activities in Chiang Mai, instead we jumped on the bus up a very long winding road to Pai, a fantastically named place. In the book, it says that Pai has a population of 3000 and 'is on the hippy trail'. Being Thailand, that doesn't really exist in the same way as India, there are hundreds of guesthouses surrounding the River Pai and plenty of bars about the place. It's like a little Chiang Mai except the balance of travellers and tourists is a lot closer, which for me is awesome! Means slightly less wasted English people who think it's their country, and errr more travellers who appreciate that it's not their country, but enjoy drinking anyway...
On arriving we wandered to the riverside and did some highly adventurous paddling (oh yes) and eventually we went for some grub. Having a nice Chang in the restaurant, I felt something odd in my mouth and spat it out, was a stinking fly. Poor little guy though, was absolutely slaughtered and proceeded to drunkenly roll around on the table for the duration. Eventually I picked up the
little guy on a bit of paper and he managed to start walking a little bit before drunkenly falling over again. Good guy, shame he didn't ask for a share of my beer before stealing it though.
After we set off on a bar hunt; amazingly, for the second day running we managed to go the wrong way and ended up down a superhighway (day before in Chiang Mai we hired bikes and cycled about 5km down a super highway after a lousy wrong turning by myself, good times...) After much wandering we stopped at a service restaurant to 'refuel' with a beer to make it seem like the walk was worthwhile; the Thai waitresses pretty much looked like we were the only white folk to have ended up there and were pretty bemused in general. Eventually we made it back to the guesthouse and played cards excessively for a couple of hours before decided we might as well head out to find the rugby at 12.30am on advice from a Dutch guy.
The bar we found was really not quite what we expected, 'Jungle Trance' was playing and half the people dancing around the bar we clearly so high that, well, they were so high that they were dancing to jungle trance. Sounds like some sort of cross between electric, trance, speed and bongo drums. Spent the night sitting around a log fire at the bar talking endless traveller gibberish to mainly Dutch and English people (avoiding the Irish, stupid score). Managed to find some English girls who'd actually HEARD of Hereford - honestly, no shit, it's true! Eventually lazily made the way back at about 5 for bed.
4 months on the road today, I figure I'll treat last night as my celebration and attempt sleeping tonight for a change so that we can hire mopeds tomorrow and go find the canyon and some waterfalls for a swim! Luckily and convincing me that I should brave hiring a moped again (after the fateful Pokhara incident) is the fact that these bikes aren't already falling apart, but best of all they have insurance! God bless modern countries..
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