Monday, February 17, 2003

Pai...beautiful.

Court said I looked like a monk last night, with my shaved head, and my blanket, which is the exact same colour as the robes the monks wear. She got a kick out of it.

AFter getting up, we walked down the street, and booked a cheap 3-day/2-night trek for 1200 baht for Feb. 20-22, and also booked a mini-bus to Laos for the 23rd.

Walked to an internet place, back to the guest house and waited for our bus to Pai.

On the bus, we met Kirk and Donna from LA, and Mark and Neena from Nottingham, I believe it was.

The drive to Pai is only about 130 km, but it takes more than 4 hours because the road is super twisty and up and down, lots of hairpin corners all the way. Halfway to Pai, we stopped at a little store, and switched busses. Seems we're always switching busses, but we always get to where we wanna go. It seems to unorganized sometimes, but I guess they know what they are doing.

Pai is a small town, population about 3000. We arrived about 6:00. The mini-bus driver took us to the Sun Hut, recomended by Let's Go, but they were full, so we tried to get the driver to take us to another one, the Blue Mountain, but he couldn't understand us, and took us to one called Riverside 2. We unloaded our stuff, and the bus took off, and while Court waited on the road, I went and checked out the place. I went to the reception area and the guy introduced himself as Johnny (yes, he was a Thai guy). He had one hut left, for 120 baht, and I checked it out. Very basic, real bamboo hut, on stilts, soft bamboo floors that fell like they'll break under your weight, with just a flimsy matress on the floor, and two blankets. I loved it!!!! I went back to the road, and explained to Courtney. I didn't think she'd like it, but she just said, let's take it, so in we go with our stuff, and we run into Johnny again, and Johnny introduces himself to Court, and he calls himself Johnny Possible...because "anything is possible", he says to us. He they says to us, "You stay on night, if you like, you stay two or three months or one year, ok?" We started laughing. This guy is funny!!! We dropped our stuff in the hut, then Johnny took us to the washrooms. Outdoor toilets and showers, with bamboo and leaf walls, and a small roof covering the toilets. And these toilets are real flushing toilets, stuck right into the ground. This is great!! He has one big shower and a couple of smaller showers. He tells us the smaller showers are for one person, but if you like to shower with 2 or 3 or 4 people you use the big shower. It's designed for that, then laughs. He points to the river, and says we can build a campfire bu the river is we want.

It's getting cool by this time, we put on a sweater, Court puts on some long pants too, and we go for supper. Total cost of supper and a shake: 30 baht...$1. Woohoo!! Things are getting cheaper as we go along.

We walk downtown and run into Mark and Neena from the minibus, and we go to a reataurant and have dessert.

By the way, Court has a new favorite...Banana and Coconut shakes.

After dessert and visitting, we walk back to the guest house and Johnny tells us they have a campfire down by the river, we go down there. Court and I walk down there, and there are 6 or 7 people around a campfire, some drunk. Johnny joins us a little later, and he is soooo funny. He absolutely loves visiting tourists.

He told us a story. When he was a kid, he was very poor, and would look at a map or atlas and would wish he could have a friend in another country, but he knew that he never would. Now, running the guest house, he has friends in many countries, and he is so happy. He is soo funny too, always joking around in his broken english. "Same, same, but different" is another popular saying from him. The landowner can't speak any english, so they pay Johnny to take care of the resort and keep tourists in line.

We went back to the hut about 11:00. Very cool this evening, I remember I could see my breath when we were standing by the campfire.

When we were in the restaurant with Mark and Neena, we had to write down our own order! The waiter dropped off menus and a pad of paper and a pen. We thought he would come back and get our order, but didn't, so we wrote it down, then he came and got the piece of paper. Weird.

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