When we walked back up to our accommodation we enquired at another place about rooms. Our place is nice but the wifi is terrible and the toilets are really far away from our dorm room. We got a private room closer to the town centre, better wifi, our own toilet/shower and tea or coffee in the morning, all this for less than we were paying. The only down side is that we now don't have a pool. We will be doing things during the day from now on anyway and so probably wouldn't have time to laze at the pool anyway.
We watched the sun set behind the mountains and then showered and put our faces on so that we could go out for some dinner and drinks.
After our night out in Pai we checked out of Circus and into a hut further down the hill. This was a private hut with our own bathroom and supposed better wifi, and cheaper so, winning all round.
We had a super lazy day which consisted of naps followed by food followed by naps.
The next day we decided to rent bikes again and see some of the things on offer around Pai. First though, we had the obligatory police stop 5 minutes into our trip. Thankfully for me, they didn't know the difference between a provisional licence and a full UK divers licence and so, it wasn't long before we were on our way again, fine avoided.
Our first stop were some natural hot springs about 10km outside Pai. The pools were ridiculously hot, much hotter than I would even make a bath at home. This coupled with the scorching hot weather made the whole experience a bit uncomfortable. We did buy some eggs though, we were told we could cook them in the water. The lady in the shop told us, or we thought she told us, that you could cook them in any of the pools. We shoved our eggs and our legs back in the pool we had been in. About ten minutes later we tried to crack our first egg, this was a bit of a disaster and Kay ended up with egg all down her front. We decided then to take a walk further up the hill and around the springs. It was here that we found the pool that was 90 degrees, the one we should have been boiling our eggs in...oops. We left them in there while we applied some sunscreen, our first of the day, again, oops. We removed our eggs after a further 5 minutes or so and carried on with our walk around the hot springs. We found a cooler pool further down the hill which was much more bearable to have our legs in. Since we didn't want another egg-gate, Jess cracked them open near to a bin. Unfortunately they still hadn't fully cooked and so we didn't manage to have any eggs that we'd cooked at a hot spring.
Our next stop was a place called Pai Love's Strawberries where they were selling anything and everything strawberry related. From jam to smoothies to sweeties. We then stopped at another couple of view points on our way to a waterfall. We had been told that because this was dry season, the waterfalls in the area had no water. This one though, claimed all year round water, so we set off hoping to find somewhere nice to cool down and swim for a bit. We took a wrong turn and ended up in china town, from here we drove up a crazy steep hill which I wasn't entirely sure our bikes would manage up. We did make it to the top and were greeted by another view point. We paid the 20 Baht entrance fee and sat drinking our free green tea and admiring the view. The toilets here were infested with huge daddy long leg type spiders and so we all gave it a miss. Jess bought one of the lovely tea sets that they severed our green tea in, and while they were packaging it up for her, one of the monstrous spiders crawled out of the box and we all screamed like the girls that we are, much to the amusement of the Thais serving us.
Scary ride back down the steep hill was followed by us taking the correct turning for the waterfall. The waterfall was pretty useless and the pools full of rubbish and so we did an about turn and decided our last stop would be the canyon for sunset. We met a nice Japanese guy at the waterfall who had walked the 10 or more kilometres to the waterfalls and asked if we would be kind enough to give him a lift back. I told him that we were going to the canyon but that I could take him as far as the main road. I don't really like having people of the back of the bike and so I made him drive back down with me on the back.
We rode to the canyon and as we were quite early for sunset, walked around it. It was pretty spectacular even if I was a tad on the small side. Some of the walk around was pretty scary, especially when the path narrowed and was a steep cliff edge of either side. We had all brought sensible shoes with us but Kay, in her wisdom, decided her flip flops would be ok for the job. She was wrong, she did thankfully manage it but some of the clambering up parts would have been much easier for her in actual shoes i'm sure.
After sunset, we drove back to Pai and returned our bikes to the rental place. We tried to then book a bus to Bangkok for the following day but, unfortunately, it was already full and so we would have one more day in lovely Pai. A yummy burrito for dinner was followed by us all passing out early after our long day.
We had a long lie the next morning since we had no plans. We got cereal from the 7/11 and then spent the morning in the reception bit, using the wifi and meeting other people staying at the same place, this included the friendly Japanese man from the day before. The Japanese guy, Tacu, told us about some nice organic restaurants just outside the main village and so the four of us headed off to grab some lunch. We bumped into another guy from our hostel on the way, he was on his way back from the hospital because his shoulder had dislocated, ouchie! He joined the four of us for a wonderful lunch where the four of them had salads and I had fantastic home made granola with fruit and home made yogurt.
After lunch, Kay, Jess and I walked up to a huge Buddha statue on the hill. The million steps to the top was torture but the view from up there was thankfully worth it. On our way back to the village we stopped at a gorgeous wee cafe type place where I had some arabica drip coffee which honey. I've never thought to put honey in my coffee but it was actually lovely. We stayed there for hours, using their wifi and lounging on the pillows and hammocks.
About dinner time we walked back into the village and headed for dinner at a place that Tacu had recommended to us. Just as we were about to order, himself and the other guy from lunch both walked in having had the same thought. We all had some yummy pad Thai and the the three of us headed off as we were getting eaten alive by Mosquitos and wanted to get some dessert at a small bakery we'd read about on trip advisor. The boys were heading off to a party which their American friend had been invited to. We all decided that this was probably the same party we had been warned about that morning by other guests at our accommodation. Apparently there is a ladyboy who owns accommodation close to ours and she often invites unsuspecting male tourists to eat with her, plies them with alcohol and has her wicked way. Hopefully, they managed to save their friend before it was too late! Haha!
We ate a silly amount of cake at the bakery and fell into bed full and content.
The next 3 days were an absolute write-off. We all caught a sickness bug that floored us for a few days. We managed to get our bus changed for 3 days later and only had to pay for the cost of one ticket as they managed to sell 2 of our original ones for us.
Heading south to spend some time on the beach before heading to Malaysia.
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