Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hello again,
Wow, just when we were thinking that nothing could come close to our trip up to Mae Sariang, we were very clearly proven wrong!! The journey to Pai, via Mae Hong Son, was absolutely stunning, so amazing to see how the scenery changes as you gradually move up the country... and I'm not sure there is a better way to see the beauty of Thailand, and get off 'the beaten track'!
As we climbed higher and higher the views just got more amazing. You literally could see nothing but the tops of hundreds of mountains all around you. Felt like you were in a land of mountains and clouds, it was quite bizzare! I (nina) actually almost got a bit emotional at one point. Couldn't quite believe we were really there, seeing all of that. It's a shame because the camera doesn't quite capture what you can actually see, and was very hard to get a decent photo as we were being thrown around corners lol.
When we eventually got to Pai we were quite shocked at how traveller-ish it was. There were only a few streets but they were absolutely packed with travellers of all kinds. So many bars and cafe's and guesthouses and hundreds of stalls and shops selling alladin trousers and hand made jewellery etc. At first I thought....shopping!!!.....but soon realised that the prices were double what they were everywhere else, I guess because we were hundreds of km's from any other decent sized towns. It wasn't what we were expecting I have to say, we thought it would be a tiny quiet town, with a few bars etc, as our travel book said 'The hippie vibe is still strong in Pai'. We were not prepared at all! lol
It was actually really nice once you got used to it, such a large selection of food, we even had falafel and pitta bread and humous mmmm lol. We were staying in a beautiful guesthouse by the river in a wooden chalet, even had a four poster bed with a mozzy net all round it and fish ponds everywhere. On our second day we decided to get a motor-bike out!!! It was so cheap and everything we wanted to see was just outide Pai. Ben drove and did very well once he got the hang of it. Was so nice to drive ourselves round and take things at our own pace. We actually spent most of the time just driving and looking for good views!!
We went to quite a few waterfalls and even had a swim in the pools at the bottom of one. It was super super cold but really refreshing, swimming round almost in a cave in the jungle! We went to one waterfall and almost had an accident. We were going along a little dirt track and came across a really steep hill which our 100cc bike couldn't manage. As we started to roll backwards I (nina) fell off the back and landed on my bum hahaha! Wasn't hurt though, just a scrape and bruise, quite funny though. When we eventually made it up the hill we went up to this little shack on the side of the hill to ask for directions to the waterfall and were told it was a 3 hour trek away! We sat and chatted to the people who lived there, which was nice.. and they made us some Thai coffee.. boiling a kettle over a fire and grinding the coffee beans themselves! They were quite hippy, and had set up the farm they were living on about a year ago. They had a few horses, grew their own coffee and rice and had lots of cats! Amazing how simply they lived, didnt even have walls or doors on the shack, I don't think I could sleep like that lol.. considering they were on the edge of the rainforest, and told us that snakes, scorpions and other lovely creepy crawlies were frequent visitors!
We also went to see Pai canyon, it really was like a proper canyon and very bizzare to look at whilst sitting at the top of it. Really orange dirt pathways sticking up so high out of the forest, with only just enough space to walk along... it was really wierd when you walked along them, as your periferal vision went very strange and tried to focus on as much as possible around you! Very odd, as it was rather high, and there was nothing else like it for miles around!
On our last day, we went for a drive up mountain roads in the evening. It was so so cool and great fun. The roads were so windy, and steep so quite hard work at the same time... considering we had a 100cc scooter trying to make it around tight u-turn bends whilst climbing a steep hill... well a mountain really! We got about 30km's up before our fuel started to run out, and we reached a hill that we really didn't fancy trying to get up (especially as Nina had fallen off whilst attemping a similar feat the day before lol)! The view were great, and we were actually in the clouds, as it was quite a overcast day. We headed back down after stopping for a while, and thought we would check out a restuarant out of town that we wanted to go to!..... It turned out it was a pretty posh resort, and we decided to head back into town. Petrol was really low at this stage, and it was starting to get really dark. Stupidly we took the long route back by accident, and all of a sudden it started to absolutly pour it down.. and we were still about 10km's from our guesthouse, Ahhhh! It took us about 45 mins to drive back as we did not have visors on our helmets and could't go more than 20km an hour or we wouldn't be able to see! We started to think we were lost and were very wet and cold and had stinging eyes from the rain. Just when we thought our petrol was about to run out (we had been driving on empty for about 10km's) we started to recognise our surroundings and eventually came into Pai, and a petrol station... WAHOOO! It was a brilliant few days though and that actually was quite a good experience lol.
Time for dinner now so will update again soon, will be leaving for Laos soon hehe!! All very exciting...YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Big hugs and love to everyone xxxxxxxxxxxx
- comments