Road to Pai

Day 33
I arrived 07:30, got picked up by a friend and was driven to "Aya Service" We got a few bikes in the 110 cc range and met up with max again to leave Chiang mai. While having breakfast we did some research on the route and I remembered that I do not have my international drivers license... Since this is Thailand, we decided to not care and drive anyway :)

We took of at about 08:30. On the highway out of Chiang mai the traffic was heavy but bikes dominate in Thailand. We weaved through traffic while on the road and on all the red lights, we cut through between lanes and ended up being first away from there. A quick flick of the wrist and we are back to 90 km/h while our four-wheeled friends are stuck in a sluggish traffic jam. Just before the legendary 762 curve route 1095, we ran past some traffic police. The best thing in to do in this situation is to not look and drive like hell. It worked. We stopped at a small patch of grass and laughed about how we avoided the so called "police bribery fund" and looked into the

different sightseeing spots while on the road.

The road here is amazing, it twists and turns all the time and you can go really fast downhill. Even a scooter of 110 cc feels like a sports bike just because of how much faster than the cars we are. At around 10:45 we found a waterfall that I can't remember the name of right now. It was very beautiful though and located in a dense bamboo forest. Even the local monks where taking selfies!

We spent about 30 minutes here before we kept going towards Pai. The last part of the road got even better and better, I am now convinced that the best way to experience any warm country is by renting bikes to go through the country roads. We only had one more stop before arriving in Pai, and as soon as we got there we met up with another girl who took the mini van instead of going by bike.

All back together from meeting in Bangkok, we headed out to see the sunset from the Pai big Buddha location. This was a very common idea as we found ourselves among about 100 tourists. I found a bunch of really cool ants, they where highly aggressive and charged as soon as you put your finger down, the Buddha was impressive too. As soon as the sun set, it got very dark in the valley, we went down to town to get dinner and party at a place called Backpackers Paradise the rest of the evening!

Day 34

Today we got into the proper Pai spirit. We went out for breakfast at 10, walked to the city for some new clothes and spent the rest of the day in a hammock. We ran into a girl that Max met one one of the islands a few weeks ago, the three of us decided to go see the canyon at sunset.

The place known as the Pai canyon is about 25 minutes outside of Pai. It's surrounded by beautiful hills and forest. Upon arriving we quickly realized that this was going to be harder than expected, It required some climbing to get across the most narrow areas. I loved it but many others freaked out a bit. There are no fences and at some points its a 20 meter drop to the ground. We arrived at around 17:00 and the sun set at about 18:00. In the evening we met a Russian called Natalia and the four of us had dinner at a Jazz club.

Day 35

It finally happened, I knew it was going to eventually but I still thought that maybe my stomach had adjusted without any problems. For breakfast me and Max had some fried rice and by lunch I did not feel confident being more than 10 meters from the toilet. The same thing happened to him so we had to cancel our plans to go to the land split today. Tomorrow will be a much better day to go exploring but we will avoid eating breakfast at the hostel for sure.

Day 36
I was lucky. My food poisoning only lasted for one day and we where able to do a lot this afternoon. Me and Max went by bike to a place called the land split. It is an area where the locals who are farming offer you free food and drinks and tell you about the crops they grow, what benefits some of the flowers they use in food has and things like this. A few years ago the ground split due to an earthquake and now this place attracts a lot of tourists. Upon arrival we where given a glass of roselle juice. It was made from wild flowers growing near the land split, it turns out that the guy who runs the farms had learned french after seeing so many tourists and he and Max exchanged a few words before we walked in a loop around the land split. When we got back they had prepared an organic farmers lunch for us, and they didn't even ask us to pay anything. It consisted of

Bananas, Sweet potatoes, Tamarinds, banana chips, roselle jam, and tiger peanuts. It all tasted very good, and we had a long conversation with the guy who gave us the food. After having lunch we donated a little bit of money for them to be able to keep doing this and headed back to Pai.

The evening was spent eating tea leaf salad and listening to live music at the hostel. Tomorrow it's time to head to a cave about one hour away by motorbike.