Thapai Spa Camping

... range. With a few hours remaining on our rental contract, we decide there is time remaining to travel north of the canyon to Mo Paeng Waterfall. Quite a distance of the main road, we pass workers in the rice fields, idyllic homes probably belonging to wealthy Thailanders, and plenty of farangs seeking the same destination. A beautiful waterfall awaits us at the end of the road. Visited by many local boys sliding from the rocks into the pools of water below ...

... br>
Pad Thai
Green Curry
Red Curry
Spring Rolls
Banana in coconut milk
...

These are some of the dishes our chef Dao thaugh us to cook
And we ate them all afterwards... We are full now !

... to meet some friends and go for a swim. It was perfect. Ice cold water on a hot day. Now, I'm packing up my bag and getting ready for a night bus to the Laos border. I am going to have dinner with a group of people before I head out and get some e-mail addresses.
All in all, my time in Pai has been unbelieveable. The small, sleepy village set among towering hills and rice paddies is just great. Next stop, Luang Prabang, Laos.

... of nowhere. But the surrounding countryside is unbelievably beautiful, and the town has a great relaxed, hippie, bohemian nature about it. Over the years, a little international community has formed here, and Pai is growing more popular with tourists. I have a friend, Pip, who has been living in Pai for several months and always gushing about it, so I decided Jac and I should go visit her.

We flew to Chiang ...

... town further north called Pai, which Mum and Dad have made sme "hilarious" jokes about do to with 3.1415 and gravy etc...Pai is, as previously mentioned the place to "chill" so we soon set about doing that after finding some accomodations in cute little bamboo huts. We spent that first day getting our bearings (not hard, there are pretty much only 4 roads in Pai), eating amazing sandwiches and smoothies and reading and relaxing at our guest house. I ...

... by this point that I would like to get a tattoo here in Pai. It was always my intention to get one on the trip at some point and I got chatting to this guy (Poh, pronounced Bo, as in bo-ttle) who has a good reputation around here and he also told me he wants to be a famous tattoo artist some day so I was sold. After looking through his photo's and pointing out some I liked he promised to sketch up a couple of original designs for me to have a look at in a couple of days.
Pai, Thailand garyjampot

... the real trek to begin.
Within a matter of an hour all signs of the village disappeared and as we headed further and deeper into the wild I was gripped by a real sense of isolation, of real sense of detachment from humanity, anyone, anything. It was hot, but we were lucky that the sun was partially hidden by the clouds. We picked and pulled our way up and down hills, across streams and small rivers and through dense pockets of jungle. This was the trekking I'd ...

... going to do, now we were Racheless, and by the time we left we were asking Na if she did either cookery or language courses. Alas, she’s so busy she hasn’t time to do anything except prep and cook great food…

The next day we checked in to our other usual pitstop, The Witching Well, a fabulous little café that does gourmet Western food at twice the price of Na’s. James had checked out the ...

... in the middle of the stream, I was soaked, but it
was lots of fun! After 30 mins or so we reached a small chamber about 8
feet high and 10 feet across and at the one end the stream just fell
away.......we were standing at the top of a 30 metre high
waterfall! After spending a few minutes looking down into the darkness
and pondering what lay down at the bottom, we headed back. Saw some
more spiders and some white leech thingys on ...

... But upon arriving at the bus station and being pointed in the direction of my mini-van, I realized I had been misguided. This van was pretty rickety looking- the seats were very worn and misshapen, and definitely no AC. Another Western couple with a baby were also signed up for the same van and looking at it very skeptically-- clearly a car seat for a baby is unheard of over here. I had 40 minutes to kill before departing and decided not to stress about, but in ...