Happy Easter everyone!
I hope you are all having a lovely Easter, with lots of chocolate treats (not jealous at all). Adam and I have spent the last few weeks in Northern Thailand, most recently in Pai.
Pai is a small town up in the North close to the border with Burma, apparently a new strain of malaria has been found there that is pretty much incurable, but we won’t get into that now! We arrived after a speedy and at times, life threatening, car journey up and around a mountain with some sheer drops, into Pai, which is one of the nicest Thai towns we’ve encountered on our travels. There is a hippy kind of theme with lots of dreadlocked hair and much to my annoyance, people thinking it’s OK to wander around with no shoes on, something that has come to bother me quite a bit. I mean, on a beach or whatever fair enough but all the time? You can’t be THAT at one with the earth, I almost want them to stand on some glass just to prove my point. Rant over. The chilled out vibe in Pai was amazing. Little stalls selling amazing hand crafted gifts to street stalls selling good food. We stayed in a really nice bungalow in a garden setting, just 5 minutes walk from the main street.
We heard there were lots of waterfalls etc to be seen, so the next day we set off on bicycle to see some natural hot springs, approximately 7KMS away. Now, you may not think 7km's is alot, i didn't particulary either as i decided to bike it. However, the 7km's was spread out over some pretty steep sloping roads, i will get to the contraindications of this shortly...On our way to the hot springs, we came across a fellow cyclist trying to locate them also, a lovely girl called Meg from Somerset. We joined forces and 10 minutes later, sweating profusely, we tried to lower ourselves into 40degrees water....uncomfortable. The springs were awesome and very relaxing, the natural minerals and heat does the skin the world of good, especially our feet which after 6 months of flip flop action it certainly helped :) There were some areas of the springs where the water rose up to 80degrees, the locals often try to boil their eggs in there, much to the annoyance of the nature reserve people (see pics). So after frolicking for a while we decided to head back to the pool near our bungalow to cool off, it was now around 1pm and 40degrees, on reflection not the best time to bike.......After a few hills, i withered into a pile on the roadside. Even though i had drunk copious amounts of water, the heat and exertion and the hot spring action had taken its toll. At one point i felt delirious, there were flashing white lights and i felt very sick, "Go on without me, leave me here" it was all quite dramatic and although Adam tried to explain that i wasn't going to indeed die, i do remember Meg waiting patiently and if not a little uncomfortably close by. She decided to go and see how far we had left, she came back 5 minutes later and claimed it was all "down hill from here" quite apt. So i managed to get back on the saddle and soldier on home. Fifteen minutes later, 2 cokes down, at the poolside I was right as rain again.
We had an excellent time in Pai, we visited a cool waterfall the next day, Adams flip flop went off the edge and he managed to retrieve it by leaning over the edge of the waterfall with a long bamboo stick, i couldn't watch and i tired to explain to Adam and Meg that if you've grown up watching 999 with Michael Burke on a friday night then you would have had reason to be nervous. The last few days in Pai we were both unfortunately ill with a bug which was pretty rubbish, but we got over that and managed to just bear the car journey back to Chiang Mai (the old woman behind us didn't bear up quite so well and was heaving into a sandwich bag for most of it).
So now we are back in our nice guesthouse and waiting for Alex Parnell to get here tomorrow! We can't wait, meeting him at the airport and getting ready to show him the Muay Thai time of his life!
Take care, amy xx
