Beautiful P a i

16/10/07 - 19/10/07 Evergreen Guesthouse 200B

This is going to sound mad, but I've left spaces between the letters of the town we visited (said Pie), as I'm hoping it'll come up in less google searches... This place is so gorgeous that it doesn't need to be spoilt by hundreds of tourists, although there are already a lot there and we've by no means discovered the place... but until I got to Thailand I'd never even heard of it and even when we did it was only through word of mouth... not guidebooks.

As soon as we arrived we settled right in... we took the local bus from Chang Mai, which took around 4 hrs and we managed to grab the last 3 seats available... although any other locals jumping on along the way just took the floor. I was sat with a really lovely German lady called Andrea who has been visiting thailand for years, but never come to this town, so I drilled her for recommendations of where else to visit and she laughed at me for our English politeness and then told me about some hidden camera tv show where they move german peoples towels off sun-loungers and then watch the crazy reactions... weird...

Anyway... we arrived at the bus station and instead of the usual harrassment by tuk-tuk drivers and guesthouse touts instead we were handed a map of the town, which showed all of the guesthouses and then categorised them into price bands... fabulous! Took us no time at all to find the Evergreen Guesthouse and the friendly owner Kitti even let us all share a double room again to keep the stay nice and cheap. It's really small town where everyone knows one another and his brother... who Mel and Hazel immediately took a shine too (they saw him playing with the dog!) had a bamboo tattoo place across the road.

Always thinking of our belly's Mel and I had spotted a bargain place down the road so after settling in it was time for a 20B sweet and sour, acompanied by the usual Chang. The restuarant owner Charlie wasn't around when we went in , so some other lady got us sat down and said he wouldn't be long. After he took our orders he headed off to the market to get the ingredients (nothing like fresh food!) and cooked us some pretty wonderful food. Charlie was like our very own little buddha and he also brought his puppy Andia out to see us, which was gorgeous... the girls go clucky over babies... and I go clucky over puppies, must be something wrong here!!! We looked into taking Charlie's Thai cookery class, but it was prtty pricey so we had to give it a miss.

While we were in the restaurant we met a guy called Nelson (he came to speak to us over the fence!) and our nickname of Charlies Angels was born... although I have to admit I was very happy to be Drew... woohoo! Nelson ran the Wisdom Bar across the street so we finished up at Charlies cos it was time for him to go drum with a band at the Buffalo Exchange and headed across to Nelson's for some cheap rum and coke. Here we met Yan the barman along with ome french guys and gals who we played pool with.

Most of the bars close at midnight, then there are a couple that are open til 1 and then Don't Cry bar (and maybe another) just outside of town are open until 5am. As everyone was heading to don't cry we decided to tag along and jumped on the back of the nearest moto... safety first!!! This place had free food and fire shows by a guy called Deer.

This whole town seems to be constantly hungover, so when we didn't get ourselves out of bed til lunchtime the following day it still felt lik we were early birds... most shop hadn't even opened. Spent the afternoon on my own chilling out then met the girls at 4 to do flyering... a fiendish plan we had agreed to the night before... Nelson and Yan would put on a ladies night at Wisdom bar with free sangria for us girlies if we would do some flyering... deal!

As Nelson's hangover extended past 4pm we stopped by Charlie's to check out how his cookery class was going... apparently this was a wise move... he sat us down (intorducing us to the 2 guys taking the course as family) and then hurried over with a bucket of his "hangover cure"... which tasted suspiciously like jagermeister... mmmm! Which was closely followed by a 4 course meal courtesy of Charlie and the boys of pumpkin and coconut soup, pad thai, thai green curry with sticky rice and a plate of mixed fruit... I'm hungry just thinking about it! The smiley massage lady from across the way also brought us her "cat puppies" (kittens) to see us. They were only 8 days old and had just opened their eyes that morning.

By the time we'd stuffed ourselves Nelson had arrived so we took our food-filled bellies flyering. Spent the rest of the night drinking sangria and playing poor mans kerplunk (using a glass, tissue, coin and cigarette) in Wisdom then headed to don't cry... this time with 4 adults on one moto (that's a scooter to us back home)... wish I had a pic as it must have looked hilarious... Deer drove (in a very wobbly fashion) with Hazel, then me, then Nelson on the back... safety first as always!

The following day (when we finally got up!) we decided to hire motos of our own to explore the area as the roads are so quiet that we felt it would be safe. We wangled a cheap half day rate and the guys in the rental place drove us out to a pretty deserted road to practise. Mel managed to select a rather glamourous penelope pitstop helmet, Hazel's was straight out of an episode of dad's army and mine made me look like the cop from the village people... grrr!!! I was a bit gutted that I wasn't awesoe right away... but turns out that being a motorbike passenger before doesn't qualify you to drive a bike... who'd have thought! But I soon got the hand of it and we had a great afternoon!! We visited waterfalls, the canyon and the hot springs and then too a scenic route home while the sun set... loved it!

After dropping the motos off we sampled the local food stalls (a few of them... nom nom nom!) and headed back to the guesthouse for a beer with Kitti, who handed us marker pens and got us to write on his bar. Nelson came to meet us there then we headed down to Wisom as Yan was getting bored behind the bar and there was some sangria soaked fruit that needed eating! Closer to midnight the guys (nelson, Yan and Nina) lsked us ladies how we wanted to spend our last nigt and ended up taking us to Be-Bop where we bumped in Charlie and Jack "if it's got hair I'm there" Chivers. This place was pretty cool and had a thai band doing indie-rock covers and a good atmosphere. We also got chatting to a bunch of guys from Bangkok who were there on vacation as apparently it's a thai holiday destination too. We finished off at Don't Cry (where else!) where we stayed til closing, then sat out with all our new friends by the campfire. All sounds really cheesy, but we were so sad to leave as these guys had made us feel soooo welcome in just a few days... the curse of travelling eh!