Northern Thailand is great!!!
Arrived into Chiang Mai by a 12 hour "super express" train from Bangkok, and as soon as I stepped off onto the platform the Northern atmosphere hit me. It is more relaxed up here, the air is so much cleaner and it is also a lot cooler up here - I have had to use a blanket for the first time in 4 months!!!
Chiang Mai was good. Mainly saw temples, and also went to the Night Bazaar. However, it is a big enough city and there are your fair share of tourists. The guest house we stayed at the first 2 nights was cheap as chips (160 Baht per night between the 2 of us), but at one stage Michelle and I were the only ones without dreadlocks so we kinda stood out a bit there.
After 2 nights in Chiang Mai we were pretty much ready to move onto a place one of the teachers suggested we go to - PAI!!! We only planned to stay one or two nights here, but ended up staying 4.
We took a bus from Chiang Mai to Pai which took 4 hours. The scenery was great, lots of bends in the road and I know they say a picture captures a thousand words and all that - BUT there is no way any of my pictures could capture the AMAZAINGLY beautiful scenery around Mae Hong Son Province. And it was just little things you would see on the way - people taking their clothes down to the river to wash, bamboo huts in the middle of green fields, Hill tribe women making their journey into the markets...
We did a day tour to Mae Hong Son with a really nice and funny English speaking tour guide. He blasted some Creedance Clearwater from the speakers, and then as we were coming back down from the mountain some Carpenters..."I'm on top of the world looking down on creation...do do do.." and as corny as it seems, it actually did feel as though we were on top of the world. He took us to Caves, temples and a mud spa (third best in the world after Romania and the Dead Sea. We also went to a Long neck Karen tribe that was 12kms near the Burma border.
If anyone reading this is planning to come to Thailand, I highly recommend a trip to Pai. Life is slower, sometimes the electricity in town goes out, and there are enough tourists here too. But you can rent a motorbike (don't recommend the bicycle) and cruise around the outskirts of Pai and see some great things. Northern Thailand Life, really smacks you in the face. It is a happy smack!
