Right where shall we start!!

It's not that easy to right blogs but here we go again.

After five nights in Chiang Mai it was time to move on.Pai was the plan as we had heard so many good reports.

We got up early on the Friday to catch the bus.Not a good start as the 8 30am bus full up, so we had to wait for the 10 30 bus.Our bus number was 13 and being a Friday I knew something bad was destined to happen to us.Quite superstitious me.We boarded this tin can on wheels, utter death trap and headed off.It was packed full of locals, army boys and a monk who was sat directly behind me.It was rammed and starting to smell real bad.The expression "sardines in a tin can" springs to mind.Two hours in to our journey, so half way, this monk decides to throw up all over the floor.Rice everywhere, obviously his breakfast.Being a good, kind guy like I am I gave him a plastic bag.Unfortunately for him and everyone else, it had a huge hole in the bottom of it."Oops".By this time the damage was already done.Rice and fish sauce was rolling up and down this bus like a yoyo.Only two hours of this stench left.He obviously hadn't read the lonely planet part on Pai.Here's the quote."The road is so vaguely steep and snaking; grab a window seat and ride on an empty stomach if motion sickness is a problem".

Right we arrived in pai and after two hours of looking for a guesthouse we chose one in the centre of town called Mr. Jan's.200baht a night, hot shower, clean and two double beds.Sorted.

Pai is a small hippy town with many flashbacks to the 70's.All the locals look like jimmy Hendrix.There is such a happy go lucky, chilled vibe to this place.Many tourists plan to come here only for a couple of nights but get so drawn in through the general vibe, they end up finding there selves here many months later.

There's a saying in Pai "Go pai and do nothing" and it's so true.All everyone does is go to these few bars, listen to live music and chill out.Everyone chats to anyone, everything and anything goes.It's like one big happy family and a whole lot of love to give, in such a small random community.You'll be walking down the street the next day and everyone is like "hey man, I remember you from last night" and so on.

With not a lot to do in the day time, we hired some mo peds out for a couple of days and off we went in to the mountains to find some waterfalls and hot springs.We would be flying around these little villages trying to find these places.Every time we would get lost up some dirt track but always managed to find our destination.The more you rode these things the quicker you would go.There's me thinking I'm Carl foggarty, going along this road real quick and my helmet flies off.Just my luck!

After four nights off partying and a huge reggae party it was time to go.At this reggae party I was chatting to some aussie's and telling them about the monk being sick and the bag incident.They were like "bad karma dude".They were so right to as on our bus journey back to Chiang Mai it broke down in the mountains.We had to wait over an hour for another one to pick us up.This is the second time something like this has happened to me, as in Bangkok I found a digital camera on a taxi floor.It wasn't the taxi drivers so I took it.The same afternoon a cash machine ate my bank card.Justice was done I guess.

Mark is reading a book at the moment and this quote is quite appropriate. "The pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes.This means that correcting something's we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice".Perhaps the big man upstairs is trying to tell us something.Don't think I'm going to change one bit.There will always be many people in worst situations than me, having bad luck.I still have my health, looks?! And I'm on a trip of a lifetime.So I figure I'm fairly lucky really.

Right I'm off.Were in Laos now, so you can look forward to reading that blog.Hopefully it will have a bit more information in about the travels rather than drinking and luck

Hope everyone is well, take it easy

Dan