Pai, pronounced Bye, is a small town quite close to the border with Burma. Rob had read up on it and heard it was becoming a pretty cool place to visit so we sorted out a 3 hour bus. The bus journey there was very enjoyable. It's something like 726 curves from Chiang Mai to Pai and some of them were proper grab onto your seat and pray for the best! Now then, December 5th back home isn't a particularly special day, but here it is the King's birthday. This means that the whole of Thailand goes mental, loads of people are on holiday and there's 3 days of celebration. We hadn't really accounted for this and so spent over 2 hours lugging around all our backpacks being told there was no rooms available.Just when we thought all hope had been lost, we stumbled across a smart little wooden resort ran by a friendly man with the EXACT voice of Team America's Kim Jong Il. The only drawback here was that whilst he had room for us, he didn't actually have any hotel rooms. So we ended up in this absolute love shack....
Staying in the hotel lobby in a tent for the equivalent of 6 pounds something each wasn't the most ideal but we made it pretty fun, when we got our old friend whisky involved. Not knowing much about where we were we had a little explore and found a lot of quaint shope, stalls and the familiar street food vendors. After another drink or two we (this was actually entirely Rob's idea) decided to get the single most ugly item of clothing the world has ever seen. Pai, compared to Bangkok and Chiang Mai is actually pretty cold and so at least these monstrosities helped in that resepect..
I'm not sure whether people actually thought we were being serious but they absolutely loved it. We even saw 2 European girls who had gone for the same look. In truth though, I think there is more chance of me wanting to be friends with Ashley Cole. IT AINT HAPPENING. So, off trudged the three amigos back to their cramped tent in a hotel foyer. Living the dream some might say. Due to our new friendship with the Kim Hong Il sounding hotel manager he agreed to move us into a room the next day, for a higher price naturally. Once that was sorted our plan was to sort out mopeds for the day but this went absolutely tits up as they were all being used. We spent the rest of the day acclimatising ourselves with the place, eating, internetting and looking at some of the characters that lived there. These included: grey face man- a man with the greyest, illest looking face you have ever seen, he seemed to ride on his bike from place to place just drinking an iced tea. Intense eyes Afro man- always dressed in a white t shirt and joggers with a huge afro, these chap had the most frightening, piercing eyes I have ever seen. Literally like looking at a snake. Also living in Pai are a lot of Americans who seem like they still believe the Vietnam War is going on, a lot of Europeans who have more than the touch of hippy about them, and loads of Thai's that seem to be living the rastafarian lifestyle. This made it a very interesting place.
Our final day in Pai was by far the best day I've had so far. It was literally epic. We got up nice and early to pick up our washing, finalised details of the flight we have added from Bangkok to Phuket (trust me you will hear more about this later!) and picked up our bikes. Like everything in Thailand this wasn't very official. Only one of us gave over our driving licence, we all said we had been on mopeds before, which was a lie for 2 of us and then picked up the little 125cc rippers. After filling up with petrol, Pai was literally our oyster. Over the course of the day we saw allsorts, a massive canyon, a World War 2 bridge, hot springs, elephant camps, a waterfall and even a dog still alive with its intestines hanging out. The best thing about the day was that we found it all ourselves just by looking at a map and having the curiosity to check out places. It's a day that will stick with me for a while, and I was particularly suprised that none of us crashed the bikes. I managed to take a few pics and videos from the bike (once I'd figured out how to hold the camera and ride)
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