Pai 25th/26th September

After only staying for on night at chiang mai in the morning of the 25th we took a bus to pai for 180 bath. we arrived there at about 10 or 11 am .

a street of Pai

On this first day we were walking through, the village and checked all the travel agencies for the different tours they offered. I think pai is a lovely small village, but on the other hand all people who live there work somehow for the tourism by either having a restaurant, a guesthouse or a travel agency. From this point of view pai is not a realistic thai village, its a village for the tourists. It's also sometimes funny to see how many people seem to have the same ideas like: "lets open a steakhouse here in asia" or "lets open a burgerhouse, everyone will love it and we are going to be rich." This leads to the fact that every 3rd restaurant is a burger or steakhouse. So we thought that perhaps in pai they would offer cheaper yours than in chiang mai, because pai is more in the country. But we were wrong. All the tours were way more expensive than in chiang mai. we finally decided to make a one day tour, because we didn't have that much time and didn't want to spend our whole money for a tour which you can have cheaper somewhere else. The tour we did was rafting tour on the pai river which was expensive (1500 bath) but a lot of fun.

26th pai river rafting - On the 26th of september we went on a one day rafting tour on the pai river. It was the first time that I ever went on a rafting tour like that. The distance we made on the river was about 40 km I think, but the whole tour was very relaxed. Because of the natural movement of the river water it didnt cost us much energy. Nevertheless there were many rapids, and it was fun to drive through them. The nature around the river was really beautiful, I made some fotos here although I dont think, that they look as good as the reality.

After our rafting we drove back in this van: you can look out of the back of this van which is why I took some pictures of the road.

 On our way back we stopped somewhere in the mountains at a very small village. A woman of these people sold different kinds of sweet roasted potatoe . She gave some of them to us for free. They were really delicious. I wonder why we cant buy such potatoes at home in germany. To cook with such potatoes would be a lot of fun I guess.

a woman selling sweet potatoes

sweet potatoes