We got another local bus to Mae Hong Song and arrived surprisingly quickly. It's a small town and was our last stop on the Mae Hong Son loop. It's a fair sized town overlooked by stupas and temples on the hills. We were surprised how quiet it was, there really weren't many people around. We found a small guest house by the lake and headed to the best restaurant we could find on trip advisor, there weren't many but this one had great bacon and real cheese so we decided this would be our regular.

The first afternoon we explored by foot, we were surprised by how hot it was here as it's still in the north and surrounded by mountains. We soon worked up a sweat and headed back for a shower before going back to Salween River restaurant for some Burmese food which was yummy, but we have since been told that this is not a true representation of Burmese food as its usually very very oily.

The following morning we rented a motorbike as we wanted to go and explore the villages towards Myanmar (Burma). We set out early and drove towards the mountains, the roads quickly became steep with sharp hair pin curves every couple of hundred metres. It was a beautiful ride up through the hills and we were pleased we had a geared bike as we had to keep dropping down to first gear to get up the hills. We saw very few cars as we wound our way up and down and after 80 kilometres we arrived at a small Chinese village. We grabbed some Chinese food and tea and had a wander around the lake before jumping back on and exploring a bit more. The village was beautiful, set around a lake. The scenery all around us was beautiful. We had passed signs for a palace so on the way back we went on a search for it. We drove through beautiful gardens, it didn't seem to be somewhere that was open to the public but people waved at us as we drove through so we carried on. We searched for the palace, driving through a very remote area and we came across what we thought was a big resort, it was empty other than a few gardeners, they directed us onward and we drove through the pristine grounds but failed to find a palace. We then headed back before dark and visited the temple and white Stupa's on the hill in the town, it was another steep ride up but the view of the town was amazing. We headed back down and went to our favourite little restaurant for dinner.