7th - 9th June 2009

Arriving in Pai was like a breath of fresh air (despite the motion sickness from the curvy bus ride up). We quickly made some friends who showed us a great and cheap (200 baht) place to stay (Villa De Pai). Our bungalow included everything we needed plus cable internet so it was a great deal. We were very excited, especially Sammy, at the prospect of some dirt bike riding as it looked like a good opportunity to do it. After settling in we headed out for dinner with our new friends Matt and Sian, and Gav and Kat.

We had some western food, lasagna and pasta, and spent the rest of the night under a big covered area at the guesthouse talking about our travels, music and other things. One girl said she had a fear of frogs. Sam found this pretty amusing and teased her as we walked back through some long grass, saying there's one, there's one. She ended up balling her eyes out in her boyfriends arms. Sam felt so bad the next day he went straight out in the morning to get her a Mars bar and write a sorry note. It went well as she could hardly remember it anyway after the drinks. The next day Sam busted her in the nude but failed to get her another Mars Bar saying she should have drawn her curtains.

The next day we decided to go on a big scooter convoy with everyone plus a German couple and Shaun, a friend of the others from Chiang Mai, who was also from Australia. I (Nikki) got my own auto scooter for the first time and we headed out to a waterfall. The waterfall wasn't spectacular but still worth seeing especially after the boys realized they could half ride, half slip down the actual waterfall part. We then headed to a hot spring which was actually really nice and even though the one in Ranong was rated the best in Thailand we enjoyed the natural aspect of this one much more. Apparently you could boil an egg in the hottest ones (They smelt like rotten egg too!). It was raining that night so we had a quite night in and psyched up for dirt bike riding which we'd decided to do the next day.

We were able to hire two 250cc trail bikes for 600 baht each including insurance which is a really good deal. Sam and I went out around lunch time and had an absolute blast. I hadn't ridden a bike since I was about 12 but got the hang of it pretty quick and only managed to drop it a couple of times - no injuries or damage though. We had so much fun. Sammy also got to go riding on two other occasions with Gav and Shaun. Gav unfortunately took a spill and hurt himself, not too bad, but enough to need some minor hospital treatment. It's really not worth risking infection with the dirty water in Thailand especially when the hospital care is really good and cheap over here. Sam keeps banging on about going sideways on the dirt when riding with the boys. He loved it.

On our last night we did a bit of bar hoping which included stopping at one bar purely because it had a really cool fur ball dog sitting on the bar. We couldn't resist. So we played a game of pool in which Sam won, as usual, and then noticed the cocktail was full of dead ants so I got it for free. Then we met up with everyone else for a few more drinks. The next day we needed to head out to cross the border as our Visas were running out so we arranged for a mini bus and said goodbye to everyone and headed towards Lao.

Pai's definitely been a highlight of the trip and we'd easily recommend it as one of the top spots in Thailand.