Pai - 22/05-24/05

---

The bus journey was sick, 762 bends in the jungle road got Char feeling a bit dodgy at one point. Luckily we had loads of lovely people in our bus to chat to, people from LA, South Africa, Hong Kong, Poland and Germany. On arrival we immediately noticed the huge difference in size of this place compared with Chiangmai, we knew it would be small but it was basically a village. It had a really laid back and chilled vibe and we made our way to our bamboo bungalow at Paizen River Jam.

After getting some unbelievable banana fruit shakes and walking round very hot in the sun we went to the local pool and after 10 minutes the sun went in. Must be the curse of the Brits!Everyone started to leave and the only people left were 2 lads Ricky and Alex, and a girl, Nina, so we decided to make friends with them. Lucky we did, they'd all been in pai for over a week and knew all the best places to go. One of them was staying in our place, lives in Bristol and DJs jungle nights so he will be our first contact for moving there! We rented mopeds and went with these 3 up the mountains to some of the hill tribes for food. Whilst we were waiting for our food one of the ladies was running round catching flying beetles and putting them in a cup to deep fry and eat later with beers - Thai peanuts!! We think for a joke they all put one in our meal because we were joking about it with her. Unfortunately neither of us found ours so we may well have scoffed it down before the others all noticed!

That night was one to remember. We started at Yellow sun and drank their Thai rum and coke, about 50/50 quantities and chatted to other people from our hostel. We also met a very drunk local called Tibet who tried to convince us that he was the chief of the local police, he had a tattoo to "prove this". Didn't look like the kinda guy who would be but we made a mental note of his name just in case we needed to call in a favour at any point! We headed to don't cry bar once yellow sun closed and danced the night away and chilling back at the bungalow and soaking in the atmosphere we knocked out in bed!

The next morning we had a slow start (standard) and headed out to the village to sample the allegedly best burger in town. However after our experience we're fairly sure this couldn't have been the best one. Another banana shake later we were back at the pool chilling, reading, playing cards and whilst we were there we clocked the nachos that were being made. We immediately thought, as it was our last night in Thailand, to treat ourselves to a sit down Mexican meal that night. We were not disappointed and the cherry on top of the cake was bumping into Tibet again whilst we were there! My gosh we were full with sooooooo much food.

Unfortunately this was all the time we could have in Pai as our visas were running out and had to cross the boarder to Laos. So back to Sarah's guesthouse via bus the following morning.....

---