Pai

Been in Pai for...2 and 1/2 days and it's been awesome! It is a little hippie town in the mountains. We met a British guy and two Austrians in the bus we took here, and ended up staying in the same guest house and have been hanging out, so it's fun! We found this amazing guest house on the river (we had to cross a very rickety bamboo bridge to get there!),

with gorgeous bamboo cottages for 200 B/night ($7!!). We have a king sized bed with a canopy/mosquito net, there's loung chairs in the covered patio outside that we've been relaxing in, and there's even a separate shower area and a TV! We're pretty certain this is the best deal we'll ever encounter.

Fortunately it's low season here, so we can get great deals and don't have to worry about not being able to find a place to stay! (Pai is very popular with travelers.)

Pai is very cute, lots of little restaurants and hippie bars and little shops. We rented a scooter and have been exploring around Pai with it and wow is it fun to drive! Remind me when we get back and I'll tell you a funny story about Mike driving the scooter... Yesterday Mike, Nick (British friend) and I drove up to a waterfall, which was like a big water slide

you could slide down! It was so cool! It actually didn't scrape your bumb up like those normally do. It was very refreshing in the 40 degree weather. Just as we were leaving it started to POUR rain and got very windy. This was the hardest pouring rain I have ever seen. It hurt. We biked in it for a while and then took refuge in a cafe. Fortunately it was finished by the time we left.

Today we drove up North to Lod Caves. The drive up wound through the mountains, passing some hill tribe houses and farmer's fields. It was beautiful! We weren't sure if our little scooter was going to make it up some of the steeper parts though haha! We hired a guide with a lantern and got to explore 3 massive caves. The formations in them were incredible...all sorts of stalactites and stalagmites

and columbs. The cave at times must have been 80 m high, and some of the stalactites were several metres long. For the third cave we got to take a bamboo boat down a river into a chamber full of bats. There was bat poo everywhere, including Mike's shoulder :). There were also little newborn bat bodies scattered around on the ground (most dead). That was kind of sad. The water in the rivers was FULL of fish.

There must have been over 50 decent sized fish surrounding our boat, waiting to be fed. And when you threw food at them they would nearly jump out of the water! The third cave had remnants of old tombs and paintings on the wall, so that was cool to see.

Afterwards we went for lunch at a little cafe in the little town nearby called Pang Ma Pha, and wow was that cheap/sketchy (under $1!). There were all sorts of weird parts of cow/chicken floating in our curry, and we only ended up eating about half of it. So far our stomachs are holding up ok, but we'll see how long that lasts!


In this pic I was on a swing out in front of our guest house, and a cow nearby walked right up to me and stared at me. At first she let me pet her, but I think she started to get territorial after a while.