We caught a local bus from the border to Chaing Rai. It was really cool, altho it looked like it was going to fall apart! It took 3 hours to get to Chaing Rai because it went all through the villages but the landscape was amazing & it was cool to see the smaller villages. We decided to stop in Chaing Rai for a night as we had travelled so much on buses & wanted a break, there wasn't a whole lot going on there so the next day we went on to Pai, although instead of going straight across we had to go 3 hours down to Chaing Mai & then 3 hours back up to Pai on a different bus?!?!