Life of Pai

Pai (pronouced 'bye') is a small town nestled in the hills, a somewhat hippy enclave, close to local hill tribes and about 120km north-west of Chiang Mai. There are numerous long-stay farangs here, many have married locals and set up businesses. It's pretty inexpensive and offers a variety of food and entertainment for the passing masses. Fortunately, the masses have mostly gone as it is hot, hot hot!

The time had to come when we would succumb to the alluring freedom of motorbikes. And Pai is it. With empty well laid roads winding about the villages, waterfalls, canyons and hot springs, we happily explore the area - the children singing their hearts out on the back. They have wanted to do this for so long, after getting lifts on Enfields in India, the seed was sewn. We found out the other day that 1/4 million people die on India's roads annually so we're kinda glad we waited until now.

One of the highlights of our whole trip and to celebrate our six months of travelling anniversary, we went swimming with elephants. Now old hands with sharks, we thought we might try something bigger ;-) We rode 'mahout' style down to the river where the elephants proceeded to try and drown us (all in good humour of course). The elephants submerged their bodies and heads and sway about trying to dislodge their charges into the river - everyone laughed so hard we're not sure which muscle pain is worse, the thighs from hanging on for dear life or the sides from laughing so much. On our return to camp, we fed them copious amounts of bananas, bamboo and pumpkins. Pineapples are their favourite but tend to give them tummy jip.

The next day, we took our sore bodies up to the roman baths at Tai Pai Spa Camping for some much needed rest - however the water, fed by the local hot springs, was so excruciatingly hot, we found it quite difficult to relax whilst being boiled alive. On our way out, we met a very strange little bird who puffs himself up, fluffs up his mohawk and squarks 'sawadee ka - sawadee ka'.

There's a bit of a music scene in Pai. Obviously we don't get out that much since we are completely devoid of any childcare options but we try not to let that stop us completely. Lee enjoyed a reggae mini-festival, the headline band doing superb covers from Look Back in Anger to Buffalo Soldier. Last night we all went to a techno-tastic party at Misty View - Lee and I tried out the 'bucket' - containing a bottle of Sang Som, Red Bull concentrate and a bottle of Coke. Holy macaroni - it certainly enabled our dancing skills for whirling the children round between bonfires and fire jugglers. Exhausted and dusty we were home before pumpkin time and now have the joy of sweating off our hangovers in a good 38 degrees!

Happy St Patrick's Day to y'all!