dom's not home...: day 192, Pai

Had a big day planned and woke up early to crack on with it. Drove to the train station in order to see if the motorbike place had a bike for me to take up to Pai, they did! Drove back to the first bike rental place to return yesterday’s bike, walked back to the hostel for Galen to take me back to the train station and pick up my bike, back to the hostel and pack up my bag and drive it back to the train station for them to take my bag to Pai on the minivan, then back to the hostel to meet Galen, what a palava! We started on the drive all wrapped up as it was going to get cold and set off to cover the 190odd km ride. It was really fun, I clocked my bike at 105kmh and we were stopping off at places to take pictures and chill out. We stopped off half way along at a waterfall which was pretty impressive, then carried on our way up the winding mountain roads. Getting higher and higher it got bloody cold and started raining so we stopped off for some lunch at a roadside café before continuing. Really enjoyed the ride, bloody spectacular views and 5 hours later arrived in Pai just as the sun was emerging. It reminded me of Yangshuo and is lovely, we drove through the town and out about a km away down a little path was Spicy Pai hostel, and it is insane. It reminds me of my favourite grand designs, the one with Ben and he burns charcoal and builds this sick house with the massive a-frame wood workshop, and it’s exactly like that. The common room is one big A-frame with no walls either end, and there’s hammocks and cushions and just chilling out, the dorm rooms look like wooden spaceship similar to the ones off Independence Day and has beds at different levels which is so fucking cool. There were a lot of people from Chiang mai here, so spent the afternoon just chilling out and chatting, walked into town to pick up my luggage, had some awesome soup, got some beers and went back to the hostel to sit round a bonfire while Pong the hostel owner gave us a history talk about Thailand which was cool, before more chatting and hanging out, called the family and went to bed.