Chiang Mai to Pai, Thailand

After leaving Laos, we headed to Chiang Mai, a bustling and friendly city in northern Thailand. Here Steff took a cooking course and learned to make several tasty Thai dishes from a man who was part chef/part comedian, so she laughed a lot despite being bombarded with too many chillis in the cooking. We also took in a few matches of Thai Boxing with our Irish friends from the Gibbon experience. We explored the cities very large and well known night market area, sadly the vendors in Chiang Mai are not very interested in bargaining, a sport we quite enjoy (especially Justin) while in Asia.

From Chiang Mai we decided to hire a proper motorbike and drive further north to an arty town of Pai, close to the Chinese border. The road to get there is very well known as an excellent road for motorcycling; it is relentlessly fun in its bends, twists and turns and we had the luck of it being freshly paved!! We absolutely loved riding the bike along the scenic, smooth and twisty road. To get to Pai, we had to ride over a mountain pass, where the weather became a bit cooler and at the highest point there was even a mixed vegetation of pine-trees and banana trees in the same area! A bit of an odd sight to see.

Pai itself is a lovely, laid back, arty town located in a lush green valley alongside a river. Normally there are bamboo foot-bridges that connect the town of Pai to the other side of the river, but those have all been washed away because of high river water, and well, no one has really got around to rebuilding them in the last two years!!!

The next day we headed back to Chiang Mai and had that great motorbike ride again in reverse. That evening we took an overnight sleeper train back to Bangkok for a few days, before flying to Singapore.

New Photos for this post are located in the Thailand gallery for photos for you to enjoy.