The road to Pai (ponounced Bye) is route 1095 (or so Si's t-shirt tells us) and is quite famous up here. The road runs from Chiang Mai to Pai through the mountains, in itself it's quite a feat as it winds round and up and down for about 2 hours and its a sheer drop down at most points!
When we got there we found a small guest house and settled in for the night after (in true backpacker style) hiking round for an hour! When we got settled Si went out to scope the area and I stayed in and got comfy. Si retuned an hour later having to climb over the wall as the gate was locked, we then passed out as it was a lonnnng day and i still wasn't feeling too good.
Next day was our official one year anniversary! So we decided to get somewhere nice to celebrate, we found a little place just outside the town with a swimming pool and an amazing shower and the most comfortable beds we've had yet, and at less than a fiver a night we didn't argue, in fact we stayed for over a week!
Went out for a nice meal to a recommended local Italian and had wine (nice wine too) which was rather nice although the lasagne was wierd, made with cream and ham...hmmmm?
The following few days we didn't do much except look at a few indigenous handicraft shops, went to a reggae/american diner bar, went on the internet and proper chilled out.
Then disaster struck and Si was poorly with a stomach bug and we had to stay in for a few days whilst he got better so we just sat around the pool. We found the locals...ummm....nice stange woman that wondered round at all times in indigenous clothing, with a bike helmet on (not that she was riding one!) and a bamboo machete slung over her back!
The we got a moped and decided to see a few of the sights and went to a small waterfall, where disaster struck again! I slipped on some rocks and went crashing down almost falling to my death...maybe a slight exaggeration but nearly fell into a huge pool hower I was holding Si's pride and joy, his camera and in my efforts to keep it dry whilst I was getting soaked it smashed on a rock :( (needless to say he was not too happy and there was no way to fix it out here and the only cure was to buy a new one, which we now have done, and its a better one so all is healed and peaceful again!)
After this we had had enough of Pai and decided it was time to leave so we booked to leave the next day back to Chiang Mai. That eveing we went to see a film (the Wedding Crashers...vey very funny) and i started to feel a bit dodgy (again) so we had an early night for our early start except just to put the icing cake i was sick, painfully sick and the only way out was the windy route 1095! oh joy! When the pain was getting worse instead of better we went to boots the pharmacist and she said its probably an ulcer and to go to the hospital! By this point i was hurting alot so we went and found a surpisingly good hospital, clean and way more efficient than at home, i had a blood test for malaria (which thankfully was ruled out) and was told i'd pobably got acute gastroenteritus, or possibly an ulcer, just to be safe he was going to treat both. I spent the next 3 days in hell feeling worse than i ever thought possible with Si bless him running around looking after me. Thankfully now I'm well on the mend and we're finally heading off again tomorrow, although we're going to be about a week late into Laos but no real time lost. Well until the next time folks...