On Sunday night we took to the streets again for the Sunday night market in Chiang Mai. Last week it rained during our shopping adventure so we purposely stayed in Chiang Mai an entire week so we could go to it again. It was incredible and more impressive than any type of street fair I've ever been to. It stretched so many city blocks, you couldn't even count. We spent 4 hours walking it and didn't even get to half of it. Among the mix of cheaply made Asian fare, we came upon some amazing original art and a lot of handi crafts. As the market started to wind down, I walked over to the Taepae gate to take some pictures. The gate is about 2 or 3 stories high and has brick stairs with no railing of course. My heart sank for a second but there was no way I wasn't going to walk up them. I really had to restrain myself from looking down at the ground as I walked up. Surprisingly it was much easier to walk down than up. There were numerous beer bottles and trash strewn about at the top and also a few local Thai teenagers taking glamour shots of each other. The views from up there were pretty impressive. I wish I could post pictures but the cafe we're at won't let me install the drivers for the camera. We bought a card reader for the camera a couple weeks ago in Trang but the slot where my card is bent. So I've been having to install the stupid drivers each time I post pictures. Oh well...we only have a few days left. When we get back we'll put all of them on Flickr.
Two days ago we took a mini van ride from Chiang Mai north to Pai. The drive itself was about 3 hours but with picking up passengers along the way it came out to 4. I heard some horror stories of the drive being extremely windy and didn't want to chance getting sick so I took Dramamine. I'm glad I did because it was hairpin turn after hairpin turn. There's a funny sign here in Pai actually listing the exact amount of turns on that drive and it's over 700! Someones got a sick sense of humor to actually count the turns. :)
When we got to Pai I instantly fell in love. It's quaint and small but still vibrant with tourists who are going a bit off the beaten path. We even rented motor bikes which has been a lot of fun. There's so little traffic and most of it is motor bikes so it makes the windy scenic roads very pleasant to drive on.
The first two nights we stayed in a resort overlooking the river and mountains. The view from the room was phenomenal. Unfortunately they were putting in a pool and doing renovations while we were there so at about 8 AM - 7 PM we'd hear sawing and pounding. Today we moved guesthouses to a place called PAIridise hehe...We even decided to get a fan room instead of AC and saved money. The weather here has been much nicer than the rest of the country. It's not as humid and at night it gets chilly.
While we were in Chiang Mai at our cooking class we met a lovely Irish guy, John. He's from Dublin and works in IT. We had drinks with him the last two nights in Chiang Mai and it just so happened he was coming up to Pai the same time we were. Last night we had a drink with him at one of the coolest bars the most notorious incidents of people who got thrown out of the bar. Then there's another chalkboard with the names of people who've drank the most, complete with the countries they reside in. There was only one woman who made it to above 18 shots, her name was Michelle and she was from the United States. She won a t-shirt. I'm sure she's very proud. :)
At the bar we met quite a few people from all over, Ireland, Australia, UK, Israel, and San Francisco. At midnight that bar shuts down so we motorbiked it to the next bar just down the road, all 8 of us or so in tow. That bar closed at 1, so we motorbiked it to yet another bar until about 2 AM. The bar was mostly outdoors and playing incredible music- a lot of old hip hop and then techno and psy trance. It was pretty neat to see people from all over the world dancing to psy trance. It reminded me so much of Moontribe and brought back great memories. The whole town is a huge hippy fest. We love it so much that we've decided to stay for the rest of our trip and not go North to take a romantic river boat cruise. We're just having too much fun here to leave.
Tonight there's apparently a huge football...errr soccer...match at 2 AM that our crazy Irish friends are staying up for at a local bar. I think we'll have to pass on that. ha
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