Yesterday Beth and I left Pai in Thailand to travel across to Luang Prabang in Laos. We left at 2 in the afternoon and got a 3 hour windy bus jouney back down to Chiang Mai. From there we got onto another minivan for 5 hours which then dropped us off at a very smelly hostel for the night!! This morning we were up at 7 to make it in time to cross the Thailand Laos border, where we payed $35 for our visa. We now have to wait until 5 this eveing to get onto our sleeper bus for 14 hours...so then we should (fingers crossed) arrive in Luang Prabang (North Laos) at around 8 am in the morning! So I'm currently sat in a cafe writing up about the wonders of Pai! Beautiful Pai!
Pai, pronounced 'bye' is by far the most amazing place I have ever visited! I've been trying to come up with the reasons as to why I've enjoyed it so much but I really cant explain it. There's just something that makes you feel so relaxed there...the people, the amazing scenery, the activities, the bars and the shops!
On one of the days Beth and I rented out motorbikes to go and see the hot springs and the canyons. Renting the bikes could have been made into a comedy sketch...Firstly we jumped on the bikes and couldnt even start the things!! After being shown breifly by some Belgium girls we felt 'confident' enough to go! Within the first 5 minutes I drove into a restaurant and Beth was too busy looking at me and her bike fell ontop of her. Must have been nerves because after that we were fine! We drove 17km to the Hot Springs which were fascinating, there were about 6 different pools which you could bathe in, one of them bubbling up to 80degrees!! After the Hot Springs we made our way to the canyon HOWEVER whilst driving up a steep hill my bike ran out of gas, in the mean time Beth had driven off into the distance not realising I was stuck on this hill!! I thought any minute that she would turn around and come back, she didnt! Turns out her bike had also run out of petrol and she was stuck somewhere over the top of the hill! I finally made it to beth after pushing my bike for a while and we found a spa resort where we explained to two very helpfull thai ladies that we had run out of petrol! They kindly went and bought us some petrol using whisky bottles as the carrier! Now we had petrol we were ready to go and had a lovely afternoon looking at the beautiful views!

Even though the whole day sounds like a nightmare it has been our favouirte day so far! In the evening we went to a bar with come Belgiums we had met on our trek in Chaing Mai.
Looking back we wished we had stayed in Pai a little longer, but always best to leave on a high note I guess!