The Black hole of Chaing Mai
Not a lot has happened since our last blog; we stayed in Pai for a few more days, moving between Ed’s burger house, the two cinemas and Re-tox bar. Ed is an old American war vet who set up shop in Pai 3 years ago and still does the best food with good old fashioned American service. He imports all his meat from Australia, makes everything himself… even the BBQ sauce and doesn’t serve anything that could vaguely be considered healthy! Over our 6 days in Pai we ate our way through his menu.
The cinemas or ‘Private viewing Rooms’ are just places that have a huge selection of DVD’s and you just rent one and watch it on one of their big screens.
Re-tox is an awesome bar run by a 20 something bloke from ‘not so Great Yarmouth’. His main aim in life is to make sure everyone is as drunk as him, so when you order a drink, any drink, you get a free shot, and if over the course of your stay you have five drinks of something you get one free, and if he thinks things are quiet or slow, he comes round and dishes out more free shots! A 600ml bottle of beer is just under 1 pound, but with all the freebies its always a good night out!
There were also a few other bars which played live music, so after Retox closed at 12 we would all jump in the back of a pick up truck and head down the road to BeBop, slightly more expensive but there were a few bands that cover the greats, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Beatles. When BeBop closed at 1 it was all back in the pick up and up the hill to FUBAR, which just so happened to be the pick up drivers bar (what a coincidence) and stayed open till 6 in the morning! The first time we went up there, 12 or so of us had clambered into the pick up and were admiring the comfort and design of the most widely used vehicle in the world, when the back tail gate flew open and the three girls were thrown from the pick up and landed on there bums . There was a moments silence, and when it was discovered that they were very much alive there were roars of laughter… We all decided it best to walk the last 200 metres up the hill!
The weather did deteriorate slightly while we were there; we just caught the edge of the cyclone that hit Burma, so over the last few days in Pai it was constantly raining! Bit of a bummer but if it hadn’t being raining we may have stayed there indefinitely. So after 6 days of eating, drinking and watching movies we got back on a mini bus heading to Chaing Mai, with the aim of doing some washing and heading straight up to Chaing Rai, around 4 hours north……………. 3 days later we are still in Chaing Mai.
We were going to head out yesterday, but we went out to watch the football, then realised we had wifi in our room so I stayed up till 3 using MSN on Cat’s iPod touch, so we slightly overslept, thought we would stay another day and head out this morning.
So we got up checked out and made our way to the bus station, we arrived there at midday to be told buses were booked till 15:30. So we jumped back in a tuk tuk and checked back in to our accomadation, the lady looked very confused. Our excursion to the bus station wasnt entirely wasted though, we have booked a bus for 11:00 tommorrow morning, so provided we get up in time we should be out of here by then.
Our plans have slightly changed again; The gibbon experience took so long to get back to us and weren’t answering our calls, that we ran out of time, they are fully booked until the 12th, which wouldnt have given us enough time to get through Laos and into Malaysia, where I want to do a dive course. So we are heading up to Chaing Rai, then down to Bangkok, then overland into Malaysia, where we will see a few places and make our way to ther Perinthian Islands. Two islands that are quiet and idyllic and meant to be an amazing place to learn to dive. So thats the plan so far.
Peace x
Tags: Travel
Cat and James
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