Pai and the Road Back

Well, I'm a bit behind for reasons that will be revealed in the next post, so I'll start from where I left off in Pai. Pai is a nice town. Small, quaint, buried in a small valley amongst forested mountains in the very north west of Thailand. And it's full of tourists (and by tourists, I mean dirty hippies), which means countless guest houses, restaurants, internet cafes, and other amenities desirable to us transients. There are about 4 main blocks forming a square at the center of town that comprise the main area of town with aforementioned food vendors, etc. It reminds me of Berkeley actually (the hippies help). I'm glad we went, though I wish we'd spent a bit longer there, as we weren't able to really do much (not that we do much anyway...).

We rented scooters (110 cc Honda Click - booya!) and scooted around town and around the countryside. After realizing that I'm a bit of a spaz on the scooter, I acted like a good girlfriend and let Kane tote me around on the back of his scooter - he's far more confident of a scooter rider. I even got pretty good at taking pictures from the back of the scooter, we'll see how those turned out. Anyway, a nice 2 nights and we're on our way back.

I had been dreading the return trip, which you are probably aware of if you read my post describing the drive up. There were 2 other girls on the bus on the way back who had puked the whole way up, so at least we were all in this together. This time, there were a few factors that I think contributed to a significantly more pleasant drive on the way back: 1) The nice Aussie girl gave Kane and I some Dramamine before we left. Never again will I be without this drug - quite a godsend; 2) We were prepared for what was in store and tried to eat and drink accordingly. We at a light breakfast and some ginger tea before we left to calm the stomach. I hate ginger tea, by the way, and hope I never have to drink it again. It's making me nauseous just to think about it; 3) The minibus this time was significantly older and crappier. This made it impossible to drive up the rather steep hills as the first guy did. This driver drove mercifully normally and Kane and I (along with the rest of the riders) managed to have an almost pleasant trip back.

So, now we're up to Thursday night when we arrived back in Chiang Mai, all food in it's proper place (namely still in my stomach, rather than in the supply of baggies that we brought). Then, for other reasons, those little baggies decided to become very useful.