We left Ben's Guesthouse and stumbled upon a tuk tuk driver by the side of the main road, "Hello where you go?", "The bus station... is your tuk tuk working?", "Yes yes, we go now", the driver replied whilst getting up from his knees, closing the engine cover and discarding the wires he had in his hand...
We arrived at the bus stop safely and got a local bus to Pai, taking in some very windy roads for 4 hours. We had two police searches on the way, looking for drugs, each time they only looked in one bag belonging to the guy in front of us, poor sod must have a complex, we didn't think he looked like a smuggler, but what do we know!
We treated ourselves to a beautiful bungalow with solid wood furniture and probably the nicest bathroom we've seen in a long while. We instantly fell in love with Pai (pronounced Bye), it's a really quirky town with funky little art shops and vegetarian cafes. They were selling souvenirs but they weren't tacky in the slightest... very odd.
We had lunch and cuddled a gorgeous cat, which was clean and well fed, very unusual after being in Laos/Cambodia/Vietnam. We did a spot of shopping before sundown and took in the colourful sights of the night market after dinner. There was an awesome coffee shop that we stopped at before strolling home. It was a pink VW campervan that had been converted into a portable coffee shop. The hatch was our table and there were stools placed out on the street. The owners had had the van for a while but had only recently started their new venture. We thought it'd make a killing in Cornwall/Devon around the surf beaches!
On the walk home we came across a family lighting huge lanterns and letting them float up into the sky, when we looked up there were already quite a lot floating in the distance, it was the end of some kind of festival in Thailand and this is how they mark it. Fun!
The next morning we got up early decided to hire bicycles for the day. After a yummy and filling breakfast we started our ride. It was hard work, very steep uphill and downhill, the latter being much more fun! We biked 8km to a hot pool resort which we had entirely to ourselves! It was trying to look fancy but wasn't, but it was very nice and semi-refreshing after sweating rivers on the bikes! There were three pools to choose from, varying in heat, the first was lovely, the second a bit too hot and the third unbearable! After getting dried off we biked back getting lovely and sweating again! At one point we had to overtake an elephant! He was being taken for a walk by his mahout and was just strolling along, he got a little scared by the bikes but we treated his as you would a horse in England. They didn't teach us what to do with elephants in the road on our cycling proficiency tests!
That evening we walked rather sorely into town and had a lovely dinner and bought some non-tacky bits! And of course, we stopped by at our favourite little coffee shop for a night-cap.
We loved Pai and although it was a big detour, it was worth every mile! Next stop Bangkok, via Chiang Mai... It's going to be a long trip.