Had to leave Pai eventually which was poo but must
move on. Had such a good time there and met a few
really cool people, got to spend much more time with a
dutch girl called Mirijam that we met on the trek, she
is a great bird and very sad to say goodbye to her and
a coupls of others, including a Belgian woman in her
fifties (I'm not ageist at all you see hanging out
with people my parents age, though she didn't seem it
when she got drunk and mischeivous!) and the most
georgeous spanish guy all v.chilled.
Pai has some of the best food so far,the best banoffi pie ever (spelt pai cos you're in pai he he)and a great curry served in a fresh
coconut with the flesh in the curry and the juice as a
drink, twas damn good.
It was a festival called Loi kratong on Saturday
before we went rafting. it's a budist festival that
involves people floating little offereings of candles
and incense in banana leaf boats on the river, we did
some too which was fun and there were lots of
festivities going on at the local wat (temple) with
food and a traditional dancing competition, quite a
chilled affair.
Went on the rafting trip next where I surprised myself by both kacing it and enjoying it too wvwn with the all day paddling maybe I'm more hard core than I thought! Our trip was with loads of thais who were friendly enough but all went to bed at about 7.30 leaving the few farang to entertain themselves. The guides helped though by doing an array of tricks with sticks, cards and string, amazing what you can do with no electricity, drink or common language.
The rafting was good fun though we could have done with a few more rapids, we were expertly guided by our captain called popcorn because he made
great popcorn. This did meant that we didn't have to do much except paddle when he told us so it wasn't very technical. Still it's hard not to have fun when you're going backwards down a rapid towards some rocks! Managed to get the hughest bruise though that was from tripping over in the camp so my knee is an array of beautiful colours at the moment.
After we came back from the trip we just chilled in pai, did some shopping, read our books, chatted to people and even had a spa.
It was lovely we had facials, body scrubs, saunas, the works and came out
feeling serene and beautiful, good fun to do something that you could barely afford back in England. Shame we had to ruin all that good work by getting on a juddery bus back to Chiang mai.
So finally we said goodbye to pai and came back to the big city. Not good. Only stayed one night though, just managed to meet up with Ulrikke our favourite danish lady who's still boxing though we told her she has to go up to Pai. Got a craving for farang food so went to the unofficial hard rock cafe and had a burger, very bad, but soo good (though a rip off compared to all the good thai food we'd been eating).
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