around the world one continent at a time: Pai Thai

Hello all!

I've moved on to a new place since my last update in Chiang Mai, i'm now in Pai and getting ready to head south to go island hopping!!

My last day/night in Chiang Mai was probably the most fun i had in Chiang Mai, even though i didn't do much at all during the day, i managed to find a used book store and found a book to read and just did that all day, and got frustrated with my Where's Waldo book that i gave up after the first page ha. When the night came we all went out for a walk and ended up at a park that was filled w/ locals. They were playing volleyball with their feet and others were playing this weird game, with the same ball, where you had to get it into a hoop that was about 25ft high and you had to use your feet or head, seeing some of the stuff these guys did was nuts! Specially when they'd go to spike it in volleyball, the guys were doing these 360 degree back flips and were managing to spike the ball and still land on there feet, it was awesome and we just hung around and watched them play for about 45min. After that we went back a different way which ended up working out as we found a night market and a bunch of street food, which has been some of the best i've had in Thailand for the least amount of money ($0.75.) After dinner we went back to Julie's and met the rest of the crowd and then started to drink, after a couple of hours and just BS'n we finally managed to make the move to a raggae bar that played live music and preceded to get even more drunk. The next day we were on the move to Pai.

this little kid was running around hustling, he got me twice :-(

After barely making check out, would have payed for another night if not, we got a mini bus to Pai which is a laid back hippy esque village close to the Myanmar border and about 3 hours from Chiang Mai. The ride up was good, the roads were very twisty through some very beautiful scenery. Once we got to Pai we walked around until finding some bungalows for 100 baht per night ($3.30.) It was nice having my own room and the bathroom facilities were ok as well. We dropped off our bags and headed into the small town, which we managed to cover most of it on that first walk around. There really isn't much to do in Pai other then just chill out and relax so that's exactly what i did. It would rain everyday in the evening like it were clockwork so we did most of the walking around during the day then would head back to the bungalow and chill out on the hammock and fall asleep to the sound of rain =) The first night out we made it to a nice little raggae bar that had a pool table so we lounged there with the intentions to make a move to a much larger bar but never really made it as we ordered 3 Samsong bottles (cheap Thai rum) and some coke and that's all she sang! The next day, Sunday, was a half moon party in the jungle so what Christian, Tal and I did was rent scooters for 24hrs and it ended up being a great move. It was more expensive to fill up the tank then it was for the scooter rental (110b for gas 100b for 24hrs.) We managed to check out some of the local attractions which consisted of a couple of waterfalls, a land crack, and the freedom bridge that the Japanese built back in WW2. On the way to the last waterfall Christian miscalculated his turn and accidentally ended up laying the scooter down and getting some minor scratches. After heading back and letting Christian calm down a bit we got ready to go out for the night. We started things at Yellow Sun, which is the raggae bar and after that closed at midnight we made our way up to the half moon party (jungle party) and that was intense. There was a free taxi out there and back but by the time we left around 4am the taxi was not running, so we had to walk back into town which took about 45 minutes. The next day was shitty because i was hung over on very little sleep and we had to check out at 11am. I woke up drunk still and had to check out as well as return the scooter. Although Pai is very cool and has a laid back feel to it it was time to move on. We had planned to leave that day but the buses were full so we decided to stay another night and booked the trip down to the south of Thailand the next day. Until next time. Enjoy!!