Pai is probably the coolest place i've been to so far.
i actually was really disappointed when we first arrived. it looked boring and shitty. that and i felt terrible because i saw some guy drinking a coke on the ride from chiang mai and thought it might be a good idea to have one too, you know... a picker-upper. it made me feel like donkey feces. that's what i get for drinking coke after not touching the stuff for a few months. doesn't that shit polish copper? it certainly destroys enamel. enough of the teeth lecture....
we looked at a couple places listed in the lonely planet guide and they were playing second fiddle to this other place we found called "breeze of pai". the first place we ate was at mama falafel's. this is amazing because you don't see falafels or hummus in thailand, it's mega rare. i loved it, and the menu had mama falafels face on it. kind of like aunt jemima. later that night we went out to this bar called ting tong. they have mirrors all over town that say "are you ting tong?" so you can look yourself in the eye and ask yourself the question. when we got there all the thai guys who worked there had shirts that said '100% ting tong' and i felt left out. they played match-maker and grouped us with other canadians. we met this timid girl from guelph, ontario who seemed nice. then one of the ting tong dudes ushered another canadian to our table who ended up being one of our better friends on this trip. we bar hopped a little and then went home.
the next few days saw us checkin' out waterfalls in the country side, (after renting a motorbike) doing an elephant trek, celebrating a strangers birthday and going to an awesome secluded hotsprings.
the waterfall we chose(3 to choose from) turned out to be a bit of a bust. it was a slope more than a total drop-off. there were a shitload of thai kids, unattended by adults just sliding down the rockface into the pool below. the half assed waterfall made the rock face slippery enough for this to be. i was chickening out on entering the water initially... it was really frickin' cold. landon went in waist deep but got out when she saw a wad of phlem floating about. we just chilled and watched the kids slip'n'slide until i built up the courage to try it myself. it was fun! if not a little dangerous... but if these kids could, i could dammit! after the first slide in i climbed out and went higher up the slope for a longewr slide. i was dry almost immediately... then i slid in again and that was enough for me. we biked back and watched some awesome country side while we were at it.
the elephant trek was a bit of a bust too. i've been on elephants before but the other times they had seats strapped to them. this time was bare back. i thought it would be the most amazing thing but it actually was just like torture. i was counting my blessings i didn't arrange the 3 hour trek like i wanted to. our elephants' spine protruded significantly and made for some seriously sore asses. it was almost like being violated... and i was surprised at how coarse the elephant hair is, like a rough scrub brush steadily going back and forth on your legs. i feel bad because despite all this it is amazing and elephants are so powerful yet so gentle. eventually the tour had us going through the river where the elephant rocked us off her body and into the water. what a wake up call... it was really fun. the elephants bathed themselves, spraying water from their trunk onto their back with us there. we got on and were thrown off a few times. the last time i was thrown off, however, the elephant went down and on it's way back up to it's feet it lumbered towards me and unintentionally stepped on my foot. lucky for me my foot was in the river and the muddy river bottom cushioned the impact and all i got was the elephants toenail scraping down my foot. it hurt like it was stepped on all the same for a few hours after and bled too.
that marked the end of the elephants and we then got to relax in some hot tubs where the water was derived straight from some hot springs. i guess the minerals would do my wound some good.
later that night landon was sleepy so i went out with our friend we made the other night to celebrate some girls birthday and i ate cake. it was terribly random.
we also visited a neat little place called fluid where you pay 60 baht entry fee and get the whole day to use their massive swimming pool and utilize their excercise machines and lift weights etc. the poool was fun but swimming with my fresh wound was a pain, literally. and flies were drawn to my exposed flesh... it was nasty. later on we went to the hotsprings close to the elelphant camps outside of town with birthday girl and her irish boyfriend and our friend from ting tong with his girlfriend. it was nice and secluded which was a relief. it's always nice to have things like that to yourselves. the night ended drunkenly, i went out solo to ting tong and ran into a toronto couple i met earlier and we had some great conversation before i stumbled home and went to bed knowing the next day would be the day we ride to Mae Hong Son...
