So I hit a low point on my trip last night...I woke up this morning with a terrible hangover and a giant tattoo across my back. The worst part is, it's in Thai so I can't even read it.....Just kidding, mom.
The last two days in Pai have been as relaxing as the first. The only difference is that it has been hot, hot, hot, and now that Songkran is finally over..man, what I would do for a little thai kid to douse me in an ice cold bucket of water. The high today is 38 degrees Celsius, or about 100 Fahrenheit, and yesterday was definitely hotter than today.
The day before yesterday, I wondered around Pai solo looking for a good place to eat and stumbled on a cool looking veggie place (no, I'm not a veggie) with a white guy working the counter (rare). I decided to check it out, and it turned out to be really, really good (I'll be having lunch there after this post), and the guy that ran it was really interesting. He was from London, packed his bags and decided to start traveling 6 years ago, and about a year ago stumbled upon Pai and loved it so much that he opened this restaurant and decided to stay a while. He had great stories to tell, and some detailed advice for the rest of this trip...cool dude for sure. While eating there, I ran into to Julie, one of the girls from the Poly Thai study program, and ended up wandering the town for a bit before we wound up back at the riverside bar/chill area that we were at the night before. I had a Leo (I've graduated from chang...it's a bit like the moment when you decide you'll no longer drink keystone light), and we met two [very different] guys from London--one a hippie probably in his late 30's that had been traveling for 6 years, the other an ex-car salesman in his late 20s who is "in between careers" and is traveling for a few months...both were super interesting and were definitely more well-traveled than I, so we hung out for a few hours and listened to their stories. When the sun went down, I decided it was time to go find emily and the rest of the group...which turned out to be as easy as walking back towards our guesthouse and running into two guys from the thai study program (it's amazing how easy it is to find people in Pai...everywhere you go you see people that you met on the bus, at the bar or restaurant the day before, people in thai study, etc...you can literally say, "let's hang out later, i'll find you in town"...and chances are you'll have no problem meeting up). We went back to the rest of the group, had a beer at this huge Rasta bar with a bonfire and a ton of outdoor seating, hung out for a while, and called it a night at a reasonable hour.
Yesterday, I woke up with a runny nose/sore throat, which put a damper on the day (feeling better now)...I was originally planning to go check out some waterfalls, but opted to lay by the pool all day, and walk the town for a couple hours in the afternoon. I finally got some [random] pictures of the town since Songkran is over, so I'll post a few below. The day before we had met a cool lady in her late 30s from Munich staying at our guesthouse, and I ended up grabbing some thai food with her last night. She'd been traveling for 6months, and was a market research analyst back in germany, so we had plenty to chat about considering she was sort of old (haha, sorry to everyone over 40 reading this). Unfortunately, I had taken benadryl an hour before, and was literally falling asleep at dinner. When I got back to the guesthouse around 830, I laid in the hammock planning to take a short nap and then go find emily in town....and then I woke up at 1am. Called it a night.
Today I'm feeling better, and am excited for our next adventure. We've opted to take the slow boat down the Mekong River into Luang Prabang, Lao. It's a 2day,2night trip, which is longer than just taking the bus but it's the same cost and I think it'll be really cool (google image: laos slow boat). We leave at 8pm tonight on a bus to the thai/laos border, hop on a boat tomorrow morning, and unless our boat sinks, we'll arrive in Luang Prabang on the evening of the 19th.
That's all for now. Unfortunately I just realized I left my sdcard-->USB converter back at the guesthouse, so pictures will have to wait...Hopefully later today.
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