Pai, Thailand

Hellooooo,

Sorry I haven't been posting as frequently as I wanted. Here's the update for what I was up to after Chiang Mai!

We got off the bus to Pai around 9:00pm and we got some food right off of the walking street. Then we made our way to our hostel, Pai Circus, which was having a fire show when we arrived which for some reason was super overwhelming. I think it was because Harrison and I had woken up super early to have our big day with the elephants, and then had our bus ride so the people cheering, yelling, and playing drinking games was just a bit much.

We got to our small deluxe dorm and there were SO MANY BUGS in our room. I can't even tell you what kind they were but they were like tiny beetles and they were on the covers, pillows, floors it was horrifying. A girl was setting up a mosquito net and basically trying to suffocate everyone within a 10 mile radius by spraying bug repellant at each individual bug. BTW spraying bugs with bugs spray doesn't kill them... It just poisons yourself and your bunk mates. Harry and I flicked/killed all the bugs on our beds, we looked at each other for the longest time contemplating if we should leave the hostel or not because it was so gross. It was already 10ish and we decided let’s kill the bugs, be big kids, sleep, and wake up early to check out. We almost debated leaving in the middle of the night we were so stressed out.

May 9th:

When we woke up, and didn't have the exhaustion from playing with elephants and traveling clouding our judgement, we just agreed it actually wasn’t that bad, the beds were comfy, and we could probably do it again. I think it was our first set of real backpacking scaries and looking back it's not so bad but that night I almost cried trying to go to sleep... Anyway they had complementary breakfast every morning; fried rice, sunny side up eggs, scramble, waffles, fruit, Thai tea, juice, and a toast station, so that was a nice way to start our day after the stressful night before. For our first day in Pai we decided to rent scooters to go up to a waterfall we looked up online. We thought that the waterfall was going to be like the ones that we went to in Chiang Mai; where you basically drive up to the waterfall and involved no hiking. It took 2.5 hours, ~7ks, crossing the stream 30+ times, up a effing mountain, AND I was wearing flip flops. Earlier that day when we were leaving the hostel room I said to Harrison "Opps, I don’t have my Chacos on” then he was like "do you want to go back and get them?", I said nah and that I’d be fine... I was not fine... My feet were bruised in the weirdest places, we didn’t pack lunch or extra water because we didn't know it was going to be such a mission, and to top it off; I wiped out on my scooter on the way back to the hostel on gravel and took a hefty chuck of skin off my foot. (Let me know if you wanna see pics, it's knarly). That whole experience was a textbook example of type 2 fun.

Mae Yen Waterfall

After I cleaned my wounds we decided to go for a swim in the hostel’s infinity pool. Had some buckets, made friends in the pool with some really cool Canadian girls (if being cool AND from Canada is a thing?), Laura and Lindsey. And spent the rest of the night hanging with them, playing beer pong, and the walked around town a bit.

Laura, Me, Lindsey, & Harry

May 10th:

The next day we rented two scooters and Harrison drove Laura and I drove Lindsey to Om Garden which was recommended by Talia and Kenzie. If you're sick of Thai food, and want actually decent Western/healthy food this is the place to go. We were planning on doing some sight seeing with the scooters but when we realized it was like 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36 Celsius) we instead decided to nurse our adult headaches in the pool with more buckets.

May 11th:

For 500 baht (~15USD) we organized a tour with the girls through reception at the Circus. After 5 minutes in the back of the truck I began to regret my choice of buckets from the night before. Thai people drive like maniacs and our tour included places up the mountains so the roads were extremely windy. I sat in the cab with the driver and held down a motion sickness/ hangover induced vomit for the entire morning. Our tour included the white Buddha a viewpoint, caves, lunch, hot springs, a waterfall, and Pai Canyon.

Wat Phra That Mae Yen

Pai Canyon

For our last night in Pai we hung out with the gang at the Circus playing Picolo and chilling out cause Harrison and I had a huge travel day the next few days.

May 12th & 13th:

We took the bus back to Chiang Mai then a overnight train to Bangkok then waited 6 hours in the airport to get a flight to Vientiane.

Like many before us, Harrison and I got stuck in the 'Pai hole' I think we had only anticipated to stay a couple nights but then we ended up staying twice as long because of the people we met. Unfortunately, I felt like we didn't explore the cute little town as much as I wanted to, but it was a sort of hard since Pai Circus is further out of town than most other hostels . They also had such a nice 'summer camp' feel that we never felt the need to leave our little bubble. Pai was also the first location where Harrison was finally not feeling traveller's tummy anymore and I think Pai is where we finally got our socializing wings back. Onto Laos!