The journey to Pai is only 130km from Chiang Mai, yet takes nearly 4hrs to get to due to the extreme bends in the mountain road.  Definitely not advisable to have a heavy night before taking the bus.  And to add to the already rough journey we had the pleasure of the road being tarmacked - basically the whole of the left side was closed and ALL traffic was on the right - great fun!!! 

But on to Pai, the chillout town of the north east, quite literally we found out.  People go to Pai and never seem to leave - after only a few minutes of being in the town we'd seen more dreads and long beards than at Glastonbury!!!   So we set off in search of Mr Jan's Guesthouse (from the trusty Lonely Planet) in the hope of a bamboo hut.  What we found was like something from a children's story book!  Tiny little bungalows, that resembled doll's houses, in a supposed herb garden.  We decided that this was good enough for a few nights and also too hot to lug our bags around in search of something else!  After a quick walk around the town we headed off to hire a moped for a day or 2 to explore further.  Unfortunately neither of us are exactly experienced with mopeds so we argued it out as to who would drive it away from the shop - apparently my 2wk holiday in Cyprus 7 years ago made me more qualified - very worrying indeed!  So off we wobbled.  Luckily if you're going to hire a bike anywhere, this is the place as it's so quiet traffic-wise that you can escape unharmed.  We did however abandon it for the evening as we figured we might just be pushing our luck in the dark, and under the influence of the ever strong Chang!  The following day we decided to make the most of our wheels and head off in search of the natural hot springs we'd heard about.  Our first stop was at a National Park to which we were told there were no springs and definitely no swimming.  One U-turn later and some iffy directions from the guards, and we ended up at a full on Spa retreat.  Wrong again.  Maybe we'll skip the springs!  A quick drink-stop and map consultation and we headed off once more only this time in search of the local waterfall.  This led us onto a hideously bumpy, narrow and most definitely "off-road" track.  We wobbled our way down for about 15mins and decided that we were once more pushing our luck with the bike and didn't fancy pulling it from the ever present river running alongside us.  Another U-turn.  This time on to the Ancient town.  Hmmm, nothing really to say about that.  Our final U-turn!!!  Disheartened we returned to town and returned the bike - thankful that both us and it were in one piece!  Our next tactic was to get our first massage, where better than this chilled out location.  All I can say is that a Thai massage is most definitely NOT relaxing, in fact the line between pleasure and pain was very slim!!!!  Boy am I glad I don't bruise easily!  We hobbled away out for the evening.  Our first port of call was a Bob Marley tribute type bar.  More dreads, and Jack Johnson playing in the background.  Our table was labelled with the sign "self service" - this is really of no suprise once you've been in Pai a while!  Our venue for dinner was Amido's Restaurant by the bridge into town - apparently serving the best pizza in Thailand.  The food was delicious, and I'm sure it probably is the best, however the best reason for visiting is the owner - Mr Amido.  Away with the fairies doesn't even begin to cover him!  He informed us that nothing was a problem to him, just his wife, who he had to translate our order to in order for her to cook!  His piece de resistance however was handing us the bill and telling us to check it over as he wasn't sure it was right!!!!!!  Priceless.

We headed back out of Pai the next day, glad we'd visited but grateful to leave.  It truly is the most laid back place I think I've ever visited - Glastonbury included!  One English resident informed us that she'd gone there for a holiday and basically never left.  We asked her what she did with her days.  "er..... feed the dogs...... laundry...... use the internet - I'm not really sure to be honest" was her reply!  Maybe it has more to do with the "natural herbs" up here!!!!!!!! 

And so back to Chiang Mai.......