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Published: February 17th 2011
Hi again,
Okay, so first off that title was just waiting to be written and I wish I could've seen my mother's reaction 😉. However, before I continue, I'd like to reassure any relatives that, no, I didn't get high and have a tattoo done, nor did I get arrested. I simply watched as the idiots I was with did :D. So, with that in mind, my next blog update....
To get to Pai, I ended up taking the minivan, and luckily I got a seat in the front as the road there turned out to wind up and down through the mountains. Apparently there's something like 300+ bends in the road, most of which seem to be hairpin turns. As if this didn't make the trip bad enough, the driver was a classic Thai, by which I mean a lunatic when it comes to driving. He stuck rigidly to the rule of "If I beep my horn before doing something dangerous, it's not my fault if it goes wrong", and on this principle overtook regularly whilst motorbikes were coming the other way, or whilst on a blind corner, drove roughly 1cm away from the back wheels of cars/bikes
ahead, seemed to view normal push-bikes as minor inconveniences that he shouldn't have to move to avoid (and therefore didn't), and on at least one occasion overtook a car that was in the process of overtaking a lorry, whilst a line of traffic was headed straight towards us. Once in Pai, I think we were all glad to be able to open our eyes again, and stand on firm ground. The only benefit I could see of the crazy journey is that I met a cool couple called Rolf and Angela from Adelboden, Switzerland, who I hung out with for the evening.
The next day one of the girls in my hostel persuaded me to go and do yoga class with her, with a woman who called herself 'Mama', and was completely crazy, if kindof cool. She spent the first 30 minutes of the class telling us about the ongoing battle with her neighbour about building some wall, and how if they didn't do it soon she would set her dog 'Cookie' on them, or go to the police. After that, she got us to meditate for half an hour, which ended up being 15 minutes as she got
bored, and then we started doing yoga. Between each set of moves, we would be told to relax in the dead pose, so she could go to the loo or have a cup of tea or something. We ended up doing the sun salutation quite a few times, and finished by doing headstands against the wall. By the end I was aching all over - at least the asanas that Dada does isn't painful after! Then we sat around in a circle eating apples, bananas and rice cakes, whilst her dogs jumped and barked and fell over all around us, and she told us how she didn't eat organic food any more as she had got parasite eggs in her blood from eating it, and had been in hospital for 9 months. Yummy.
Once we'd finally finished I headed back to the guesthouse to change and hire a motorbike. I ended up getting a 100cc, barbie pink moped, complete with hot pink flower stickers. So cool. I told the guy that, yes, I had driven a motorbike before, which was techinically true (remember the 2 minutes on Niel's bike in Chiang Mai), and yes I did want both a
helmet and insurance. Then he gave me control, and my rather feeble lie about being able to ride a bike fell through almost immediately when I tried to head off without turning the ignition on. This didn't seem to matter though, and soon I was wobbling alarmingly off down the street. I got the hang of it pretty quickly, though turning corners proved a bit tricky. First off I went up to the Pai Canyon, about 5k out of town. Through the town, there was a speed limit of about 50ks, but even out of town I rarely went above 40, and I don't think I went faster than 60ks the entire trip (A fact that I have been told not to boast about but still). Pai Canyon turned out to be pretty impressive, and was basically a viewpoint with a narrow path going off from it in a loop. The path was literally maybe 50cm wide, and each side the earth dropped away to nothing in a steep cliff. Scary stuff.
The next stop was the local hot springs. When we went past them in the minivan on the way to Pai, the road had seemed impossibly windy
and steep, so I was a bit nervous about riding up there, but going slowly the road turned out to be actually quite nice, if a little windy. The hot springs turned out to be a series of pools, starting at 80 degrees C, and gradually getting cooler as you got further down the stream. I started at the top, where you could boil eggs in the water. I got 4, of which I managed to cook 2 to a point where they were done enough to dip crisps in to eat (bought previously as I forsaw that I wouldn't have the patience to hardboil the eggs). Then I went down to the 30 degree pools where you could go swimming, and chilled with a couple from Germany for about half an hour. Eventually, I decided to get out as I didn't want to be riding back in the dark, and headed back to Duang's. That evening me and a couple of guys went around the night market, and then went to the Full Moon Party across the river, which was good fun until about midnight. Then the guys all started smoking "Ganja" which seems to be the Thai word
for weed, and 2 of them went and got tattoos (at a dodgy shop that did it with bamboo, and in my opinion should not be allowed to be open at 1am on the full moon party night). One guy got "Made In Italy" done on his back, and one got a picture of an upside down elephant on his thigh. They are so going to regret it but at the time they thought it was hilarious. At this point I headed back to the guesthouse to get a jacket as Pai is freezing at night, and when I got back they were involved in a heated discussion with 2 Thai policemen, so I decided to call it a night and went to bed.
The next day followed a fairly similar format, with yoga in the morning, and biking out to a waterfall in the afternoon. The waterfall was pretty cool, with lots of little pools to chill in, and I met a cool guy called Gul from Israel, and Matthew from Austria. After that, me and Gul went up to the Chinese Village, which was just a few chinese style houses and shops, with a massive rock in
the centre, with something written on it in big, gold Chinese lettering. Deciding this was fairly dull, we continued up the road a few more Ks, until we came to an incredibly steep part, with 2 concrete strips going up it, presumably designed for cars. Thinking it didn't look too hard, we set off riding up it at about 2ks per hour. After about 5m, this turned out to be harder than it looked, and I came off the edge of one of the strips, and fell over sideways, so slowly I knew it was going to happen, but couldn't do anything about it, into a barbed wire fence. I ended up with a few cuts on my hand and a very bruised knee, but was otherwise okay. After that, I pushed my rather scratched bike back to the bottom, and we walked the rest of the way to the viewpoint. The view turned out to be pretty cool, and there was noone in sight apart from one Thai farmer, whose hat Gul stole for photographs. Then we headed back into Pai. Once there, I ran into the guys from the night before, who looked like they had just got
out of bed. In turned out, the night before they had been taken up to the police station, tested positive for marijuana, and had been parted with 15000B each in bribes before they'd managed to buy their way out. Idiots.
That night I was in bed pretty early as I was feeling ill, and didn't get much sleep, as I got pretty sick during the night. The next few days consisted of a minivan to Chiang Mai, where I went round the market and was convinced to get my second, and last, Thai massage. The woman who gave it to me, started by doing it gently, and then I made the mistake of saying that no, it didn't hurt, it was nice, at which point she increased the pressure, and launched into a 40minute session of "massage" that made my mother's Osteopathy seem mild and pleasant. She even managed to click my neck at one point (which my mum will know requires a lot of tricky and force), following which she tried to click all the rest of my body and failed. After this she resorted to simply finding the most painful spots, and jumping on them. Needless to
say, this didn't make me any better, and I was still feeling ill the next day when I headed up to Chiang Rai.
I had 3 nights in Chiang Rai, and was planning on doing all sorts of things. Instead, I ended up checking into a really nice hostel which cost a lot of money (for me), but had a nice soft bed and ensuite bathroom, and spent my time lying in bed feeling ill, or reading in one of the hammocks in the garden. The highlights pretty much consisted of sleeping, reading The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo, and the final day, when I was finally feeling a better and was able to eat some plain pasta with tomato sauce (seriously big deal out here in the land of rice and oil). Then I was on an overnight bus to Bangkok, and had a day to waste in Suvarnabhumi airport - nearly as fun as Chiang Rai - where at least I found an old copy of The Dark Tower book 7, so I was finally able to finish the series of books - and then on to Malaysia.
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GDM
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mikew.williams@virgin.net
Stunning photos, amazing adventures -- better than any 'outward bound' school! Sorry to hear you got sick - hope it wasn't the 'parasite eggs' - recommend my patent stomach settler: tonic water (quinine) and angostura bitters (wormwood) - one teaspoon of pink bitters in a glass of tonic. Hope Malaysia proves as exciting as Thailand - Britain is going to seem dull by comparison I suspect. I'm off skiing with your family in Reideralp next week and then to NZ from mid-March to early May so we'll miss each other I'm afraid - shall look forward to seeing you in September xx GDM