Lee n Tan

Packed up, had brekkie then picked up the car at about 12.30pm and headed out of Chiang Mai. My map reading skills worked perfectly. Driving wasn’t too hard, Lee just had to try and keep an eye on the cars doing 140 clicks while we were all doing about 80!!! It was great to see a different part of the city and to get out in the countryside. Chiang Mai is huge you don’t see really any of it when you are here on a normal 3 night package but then again I suppose it is the 2nd largest city in Thailand. This time of year isn’t very good for seeing the mountains as a lot of the farmers are burning crops and there are also a lot of bush fires around, so there is a thick haze everywhere.

On the way we stopped off at a waterfall called Mok Fa. The locals use it as a picnic spot, they set themselves up on top of the rocks in the rapids where it is nice and cool. Next stop was a hot spring and geyser. Not quite as impressive as NZ but as Lee says there are not many countries in the world with geysers so its something to be proud of. After seeing the Geyser we took a walk down to the hot spring baths and paid our money to take a dip. Not many of the pools where open (they were being cleaned) and we were the only people in there……probably the wrong time of year!!!!! It was bloody hot.

We hit the road again, most of the drive was up then down the mountain, so it was a very windy road. Lee followed a ute around the corners so I ended up having to keep my head straight as I was starting to feel a bit car sick! We arrived into Pai (pronounced we think ‘bye’) around 4pm and took a little tiki tour around. We stopped out the other side of the town and read up on a few places to stay. We settled on Baan Pai Village it has very quaint little huts with mozzie nets hanging over the bed like a 4 poster, front doors that fold back and open out onto a little deck, our own proper bathroom (meaning an actual showered cubicle not everything in one) and hot water.

Once we settled in we went for a walk about 50m down the road and had lunch/dinner at a cute little cafe called Cafe d tist, the food was excellent. We came back to the room at about 7pm and the plan was to lay down for a bit before getting changed to check out the night life but we fell asleep. Lee got up around 11 and switched off the lights and that was that.