Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

The only way to keep cool was to rent a motorbike and cruise around all day, wind blowing in our faces.  We hired just one - a little scooter type bike, and helmets that were more like a helmut you'd give a child to wear on their "hot wheels," versus real strong protective gear.  Darrin took it out for a test drive around town to build his skill and confidence to then cart me around on the back without crashing.  We spent the day winding our way through the lush green hills of Pai outskirts, checking out local villages, Buddhist temples, waterfalls and canyons. The surrounding countryside is beautiful, lush, green and full of local village color.  In the morning, thick clouds hang throughout the mountain peaks, and create mystical looking vistas.  Black thunder clouds in the distance and lightening reverberate across the land, and rain storms in the distance produce rainbows.  

What still strikes us, though, is the lack of response we continue to get from people when we call out "sa wat dii," and while sometimes it elicits a reaction, most times not.  More likely, the canned response we get from children is, "sweets?, pens?, chocolate? money?"  Very disheartening how the influx of tourism has changed the interactions with locals, and has turned children into beggars.  That's why low impact tourism, and appropriate etiquette when interacting with villagers is so important... especially not cruising into villages and handing out gifts and sweets to children which of course is so tempting wanting to give to them.  Seeing this makes me now determined to change our interactions and be sure to channel donations directly through the head of a village.  We opted to save our hilltribe trekking experiences for Laos and beyond, hoping to find more remote areas where villagers haven't been so exposed to tourists.