We finally came to leave Pai. We got a lift into town to get our bus tickets. The person in front of us at the station (who shoved his way in) got the last tickets for the Chiang Mai bus that day..... so we stayed another night! We headed across a rickety old bamboo bridge, with holes in it from where people had fallen through, over the river to the little wooden cabin huts! We found one for £10 and checked in for the night. The place was so cute. It stood on a piece of field land, facing the mountains. It was mounted on stilts and was walled with woven bamboo leaves. The bed was comfortable and the bathroom was clean so for us it was perfect!
Next morning we went for our bus tickets and sat in a bar chatting, drinking Italian sodas. We've spent a lot of time so far on this trip just chatting, which is nice. Before we came away we would spend a lot of time apart from each other due to work commitments and usually only communicated by text message, it just isn't the same.
The time came to get on the bus, it was a little cramped but cool and relatively comfortable, so off we went. The ride back was not as settled as the ride there had been, by the time we reached the stop off point we both felt sick. But we made it, back to Chiang Mai and off to another guest house to check in for a few nights!
As we had visited Chiang Mai already there were only a few things we were interested in doing while we were here again, but unfortunately we weren't going to get the chance to do much... Sickness had struck!
We did manage to get out on a few occasions to try and eat and explore. We went to the cinema to see the new Beauty and the Beast.... I couldn't resist, and when the hubby said we could go there was no way I was looking that gift horse in the mouth!!
We also met an old friend of the husbands who has lived in Thailand for the past 9 years and was visiting friends in Chiang Mai. We had a lovely night but I'm convinced it was the western food we ate that night that may of made me sick.
With no warning and no clue it was coming, I woke up in the middle of the night sweating, with awful stomach cramps. That night was not a good one. Needless to say, the next day I was like a zombie, feeling sick and very little sleep I didn't want to do anything. Being sick on a trip like this is inevitable at some point but it's so frustrating when it actually happens! Such a waste of time.
Chiang Mai had been a stop off on our route to Laos. The bus system from Pai only really travels through Chiang Mai to get anywhere else. We checked out of our guest house and headed to the bus station. We had discovered an app called 'Grab' which is a version of Uber. Last time we were at the bus station we had bartered with a red pick up bus driver to get us into Chiang Mai for 50 Baht each. For this price we had to wait for them to round up more customers so it was worth their time. They originally wanted 150 Baht each. The taxi that arrived via the Grab app was a private car and cost us 60 Baht direct. That's about £1.40. It's amazing!
At the busy station we booked a ticket on a night bus to Nong Khai. This is at the border of Thailand and Laos and is where we had plan to cross the Friendship bridge border crossing. The tickets cost us £19 per person, for an air conditioned bus that will take us the 12 hours from Chiang Mai to Nong Khai.
