Brook View Guest house and Herbal House Pai

... group, and some friends and a fun night with Khem at the market where we shopped like there was no tomorrow (insane).........
Unfortunately Pai was jewelery heaven - I look like a christmas tree by now and the bag is getting heavier...but what can I do...I am addicted, it is not my fault really......

and then it was already time to leave........

Some of you know that I had planned to get to Tha Ton and then by boat to Chiang Rai. Well, as my ...

... we set off at 2.30 on a 4+ hour journey, but what a journey?! Going up through the picture perfect mountains, stopping to get a drink in a little hill tribe shack where they spoke no English other than the word 'Coffee'. However, by 6 the sun was setting, it began to get very dark, and our trip turned into a bit of mission riding round hair pins in the dark while having to dodge snakes and frogs in the road (dead & alive). When we ...

The night bus to Chiang Mai wasn't quite as luxurious as I might have hoped but was infinitely better than the local buses which seem to cater their leg room needs to Borrowers. Unfortunately, as the bus had travelled from Bangkok many of the seats were taken by the time it reached us in Ayutthaya and we had to sit apart although I managed to position myself behind Rob and perhaps more importantly, the whisky. In doing so, however, I managed to also find ...

... back to camp to rest for the approaching day of rapids.

Day 2 involved some huge rapids - level 4+ which basically means if you're not holding on to the boat with every bit of strength you've got, you're going to fall out. We had some great guides and so they could take us through all of it safely. (some less experienced guides made their crew carry the boat along the shore at the big rapids ...

... and hopefully I was blessed with some good karma.
Upon getting to the bus station (think dirt driveway) we got out and started looking for guesthouses. Along the way we saw our other friend who had just arrived and she joined us in the search for a place to stay. We ended up at Mr. Jans, off a little side street. It is very basic, two double beds and hot shower. After we were all settled in we took ...

I wanted Jackie to see Northern Thailand, but we had been saving it and planning it to where Jeremy and Dane could meet us after Jeremy's internship ends. So we finally got it all sorted out, and Jackie and I headed north.

Our plan was to hang out mostly in this small town in the mountains called Pai. I had been hearing wonderful things about for years but never been. It's quite far north and basically in the ...

... Mai who we now call Mark slasg Dave after an unfortunate and very embarrassing forgetting of names when we introduced him to a girld from our hostel who had joined us for dinner. More and more people from Chiang Mai popped up over the course of the evening which after dinner took up to a really cute little cocktail bar for Mai Thai's and guitar serenading. The guitarist payed us the Thai song that we had learned on our trek, the one line of which we ...

... by a chorus of chat, a jumble of personal tales, of excitement, fears and expectations for the following day. No sooner had our plates been cleared, a group of village children had entered the room and with the help of two guitars entertained us with a variety of indigenous songs. We were expected to join in and were hand picked, one at a time, to get up in front of the group and dance with the village choir. When the finger was pointed in my direction I ...

... tourist streets of Chiang Mai, we inhaled the fresh country air, dangled our feet in the COLD temperatures of Ma Paeng Waterfall, cris-crossed a river more than twenty times on our way to the Mae Yen Waterfall, bicycled in the searing daytime temperatures to the even hotter hot springs and to the awesome Pai Canyon, and feasted on the exotic richness of dragon fruit, mangosteens, pineapple, mandarins, and just plain old bananas ...