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It took just 3 hours from Chiang Mai to Pai. The only problem there is, this mountainous road has 762 curves and the Thai drivers aren't exactly the slowest or most cautious, so by the time we arrived we were a little green.
That soon settled though when we looked around and absorbed the beauty of the place we had just arrived in. The search for accommodation begins and this time it took a little longer than just walking around the corner. We ended up in the weirdest set up room but it was fine for one night and we moved the next day.
The intention whilst we were here was to do some trekking, survival style trekking where you take all your food, build your own home for the night etc but nothing really suited the criteria so we opted to rent a motorbike and discover Pai for ourselves.
We had two days so we planned out our route to include waterfalls, scenic roads, temples, the hot springs and elephants.
There's not much to say about the waterfalls, temples and scenic roads, i'm sure you can all picture what they all look like for yourselves but the hot springs, well they require a mention.
We paid 200thb/person to go in (only 40thb if you could pass as a thai, but not possible i'm afraid). It was worth the money though, just for the boiling eggs in the boiling (supposedly) water. However, we were competely unsuccessful with this. It takes 5 minutes in a boiling pan of water to have a soft boiled egg right? Well we left ours in the 80 degree water for 8ish minutes but the first one we opened was still extremely runny, so the other two went back in for at least the same amount of time again and yet still ate no cooked eggs at the end of it. Major fail!!!
That was the end of that day, really excited for the next when we have booked to have an elephant ride!!!!!!
Pai town turned into streets of market stalls selling all sorts of different foods, souvenirs, clothing etc etc, brilliant. Dave wasn't so keen, especially after we had walked round about 3 times, lol.
Up and raring to go, we headed back off to ride the elephants at Karens elephant camp. The trip was fantastic! One hour riding up and down hills in the middle of the jungle on a (very hungry) elephant that tried to stop every couple steps to grab a few more branches shoved in her mouth (but wasn't allowed!!!) and then an hour sat on a blanket, literally on the elephants back and playing in the river. Amazing!!!! Loved it.
Sadly we had to leave Pai after this but will teasure the place through the rest of our travels and beyond.
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