Well after lengthy consultations we decided to skip the hill tribe treks in favour of heading to Laos as soon as we could seeming as we have already been in Thailand for 3 weeks! Unfortunately the bus only leaves Pai in the direction of Chiang Kong at 9 pm so we missed it last night. So we had a day spare here today and decided to rent out a scooter to explore the local area.

Northern Thailand is very hilly and mountainous - I expressed my concerns about a scooter (being automatic making it even more difficult) being able to even get up the hills to the bloke hiring it and he assured me that it was a 125cc and would make it easily. Half convinced we set off in search of hill-tribes and a viewpoint and maybe even a cave depending on the bike and road. It started off really well, the main roads are all really good and very quiet - no problems getting to grips with it, then after about 5km we started to climb pretty steeply for the next 15 km until we reached the Kiw Lom Viewpoint, the bike struggled a little bit around some of the hairpins but was better than we both had expected. The Kiw Lom Viewpoint would have been really spectacular if it wasn't so hazy due to all the slash and burn they are doing here at the moment, which was a shame - it was still a pretty decent view though.

At this point we decided to go down the other side of the mountain and try to find Lod Cave some 33 km away, on the way there we passed through many little hill-tribe (minority) villages including Nam Rin and Ban Tham - unfortunately neither of these places were home to the long necked people, maybe a bit of a blessing in disquise for us, they freak me out a little bit in the photo's I have seen!

Anyway, after another 30 km or so we arrived at Lod Cave, we decided against a tour and had a quick look ourselves - when we got to the mouth of the cave the amount of swifts was incredible, the noise they made was unbelievable too. We had a quick mosey around looked at the rock formations then left heading back to explore a waterfall closer to Pai. On the way back we stopped at the Kiw Lom Viewpoint again and saw some hill-tribe people selling things at a little market, Sarah was suckered into buying a couple of things! On the way back I got more confident on the scooter and we were feeling more comfortable sat on it (still being sensible though - mums!!) so I managed to get our little scooter to 100 km/hr, it seemed incredibly fast in just shorts and a t-shirt!!

We stopped off in Pai for a big drink, we were gasping at this point and pretty baked by the sun! We then headed off to Mo Paeng waterfall and passing through Santichon a Chinese village. The waterfall was nice, it would've been better if we had our swimming stuff though! We were pretty tired at this point, 5 hours and over 150kms on a scooter the day after elephant riding takes its toll, especially on our backsides!!! We decided to head back to Pai and call it a day.

During the day we saw lots of local people working in the fields, lots of them gathering garlic and putting it in big bunches ready to either be dried or go to market, they were all really friendly and we got loads of waves! We also saw quite a few old style haystacks and were also offered opium to smoke from many small farms as we passed - we politely declined. The scenery around here is beautiful, hills everywhere, lots of little streams and many happy smiley local people. We have had a really good day today despite the fact we are now both really tired, although a good thing seeming as we have an overnight journey tonight to Chiang Kong in a minibus!!

We have really enjoyed Thailand, the past 3 weeeks have flown by. We are heading into Laos and down to Luang Prabang on a slow boat for the next couple of days after the overnight bus to the border. We are quite excited about the prospects of yet another country, lets see what it brings.

Lots of Love

Andrew and Sarah xxx