The Loi Krathong festival and onwards to Laos

The Loi Krathong festival is a big celebration of floaty floats and flying lanterns. We were in Pai, but heard that the finest city for celebrating was back in Chiang Mai so decided, with two of our Tacomepai farmstay compadres, to make sure we were there. Easier decided than done, as all the guesthouses were long since booked by forward thinkers, but after over 20 phone calls we bagged a couple of rooms at "Jo's House", and so from Pai to Chiang Mai we embarked.

First we hitchhiked from the farm to Pai town. That was a new and surprisingly easy experience. Unlike in England, you wave your arm up and down (preferably while smiling) rather than our familiar thumbs up. Most people have pick up trucks, so us four bag-laden farangs fitted easily in the back. Then, rather than getting a deathspeed minibus we were convinced into waiting for the local bus by our German friend Markus. "It'll be an experience" he said. "Adventure" he said. Well, once aboard we had to stand for around 5 hours in the 4 square inches of aisle not taken by bags and legs while our heads bounced off of the "safety bars" throughout the mountain pass. Finally the bus, which had been groaning up the hills, broke down for a third and final time around 36km from Chiang Mai.

We hailed a taxi which, due to the language barrier, took us 3km off our destination - so as the celebrations were getting under way we struggled with directions from locals and a confused google maps until, with a breath of palpable relief, we found "Jo's House"... which had already rented our rooms out.

Overcoming our fury, we grappled with the probability of a night on a park bench, but decided to get a cornetto and enjoy what we could of the festival. Even weighed down with bags we had a great time and found our way towards the river where there was a very cheesy procession of youths looking awkward in loin cloths and pointy hats. The bridge over the river, and just about everywhere else, was a take off point for thousands of Chinese lanterns ("khom-loi" in Thai) - which filled the sky (and the odd tree) with light. Some were sneakily modified with high powered fireworks for a bit more of a thrill. Under the bridge, hundreds of "krathong", or "floaty things with candles", were released onto the river. Our camera was entirely incapable of capturing any of this.

Eventually we found a hotel room on the outskirts of town which all 4 of us piled into. The festivities on the next day were like a much bigger, less stressful version of the last.

As the festival wound down, so had our visas. We got a minibus to the border which stopped for curry and a white temple photo opportunity at Chiang Rai.

On the border of Thailand, with just the Mekhong river separating it from Laos is the town of Chiang Khong. There's not much there except a bike museum run by a Liverpudlian cycling enthusiast and some pool tables, so the next day we checked out of the country, paid 80 pence to cross the river and paid $35 for a month's worth of Laos visa. Most backpackers here were squeezing onto the slow boat headed to the town of Luang Prabang, but we were looking for an experience and an adventure. So we waited for the local bus.

- Jon

A Slice of Pai, Thailand

Pai is a small town in the northerny north bit of Thailand. It's full of bad pun restaurants like "Pai in the Sky". Because it's up in the hills you get baked during the day and shiver at night if you only packed t-shirts. We stayed for 2 weeks there - which means we're probably more like settlers than travelers.

The road to Pai...

...is 762 curves of woo! A savvy business called Aya in Chiang Mai lets you rent a little motorbike and drop it back at their office in Pai so that you can enjoy the hills. They even take your luggage in one of their breakneck speed minibuses which will be in Pai long before you get there.

The road is generally good with the odd yawning pothole and slow moving pig wagon. It's about 3 to 5 hours depending how often you stop to gape at mountain scenery.

Woo!

What kind of Pai?

Pai has a tasty filling of hippies and eco-warriors, garnished with riverside bamboo huts, herbal tea cafes and sleeping dogs. The pace of life is extremely leisurely.

This sums up Pai

The expat community is big enough to get home comforts like fig rolls and lasagne; and if it's your birthday, and you're so inclined, then you can buy a guitalele from Boy's music shop.

Pai by night. Pai by day.

What else is on the overstretched metaphorical plate next to the Pai?

Well, there's a big white Buddha on a hill over looking the town and there is Pai Canyon which is an astonishing geological oddity with an unsettling lack of fences.

"Fences, please" - Jon

There's also Piranha Fishing Park which has a lake of genuine imported teethy fish (or so we're told) among others. Us first time fishers found the supposedly relaxing pastime quite intense as Jon caught two huge (non-teethy) fishes in two hours - both of which required me to net the fish, take the hook out their mouths with pliars and release back to be caught again. Amusingly one of them managed to slime Jon's new trousers on the way down.

We used human toes exclusively for bait

Other attractions like waterfalls and hot springs were not visited due to 4 days of rest necessary after our experience at Tip Off-Road Motorcycling where, after an adrenaline fuelled morning on Honda 250cc enduro bikes in the countryside, Jon messed up a corner which in turn messed up his knee for a little bit. He's ok now though!

It's worse than it looks

In the evening there is usually something-a-happening in Pai. The Bebop Bar (a new contender for worst pool table ever) has a massive open mic night on Wednesday which, on our visit, featured gypsy jazz, computer game themes and rock flute solos. At Edible Jazz Bar, Nai Noi, the Thai double acoustic guitar tapping maestro, entertained all, and Jon was able to turn some of his injury-frustration into sound on drums at Mr Nong's practice room. Mr Nong being the hooded stickman in Giant Bar's Hendrix worshipping house band.

Musicians of varying ability

Tacomepai

No that's not an obscure pun (as far as we know), it's the name of a permaculture farm stay on the outskirts of Pai. In our 4 nights there we got stuck into some rice paddy harvesting, coffee bean peeling and roasting, mushroom watering, fruit and vegetable foraging and lots of cooking. And washing up.

Simple Living

Work is more or less optional, but whether you join in or not everyone eats together which really makes you feel part of community (despite our short time there). We had a surprisingly successful attempt at making pizza (sans cheese) and garlic bread in the clay oven which pleased even Sandot, the farm owner (not known for his love of foreign food).

Back to basics. Farming and Pizza.

The farm employed some interesting systems, such as using ash instead of Fairy liquid, bamboo for everything from plates to hut construction, and the 'food forest' in which plants provide shade, protection from erosion, habitat for pollinating insects and nitrogen-fixing for the soil as well as food. On the other hand for an organisation so keen on minimising waste they certainly get through a lot of wood cooking on open fires! However, if you were thinking of growing some food in a sustainable way you could probably get a lot out of the courses they run.

Which machete to buy?

It was a fun to stay somewhere a bit different, and even our spider web riddled shell of a hut we slept in had some amusing surprises such as a frog on top of the mosquito net (how?) and a midnight puppy visit. The latter actually became a puppy stay and we missed the early morning getup because you can't sleep through 5 hours of puppy crying unless you're made of stone. The next night we actually had 2 puppy visitors but we'd tracked down the owner by then who gave the puppies to a rather exhausted looking mum dog!

Cutest. Puppies. Ever.

...and that was Pai.

- Kath

Milling about in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Recently, we stayed for 2 rather wholesome weeks in the northern Thailand town of Chiang Mai. Specifically we stayed in the Old City which is a 1.5km square in the centre of the town surrounded by crumbling walls and beyond that a full-fledged moat. The moat no longer prevents intruders, but it does seem to ease traffic flow which means the Old City is the quiet eye of the bustling Chiang Mai storm.

The town is lovely, especially as it's flanked by jagged forested mountains to the east and west, but it's not really the cultural hotspot it's often referred to as - there are treks to visit hilltribe villages and suchlike, but in the south of the city these are advertised in every third shop, and every second shop is a coffee shop. This does make it very easy to find things to do and drink coffee but not really see any proper culture. Whatever that is.

So apart from sip Americanos we took a Thai cooking class, did the Samoeng Loop twice (covered in the previous epic sprawling blog post), went downhill mountain biking and watched the 2013 CDC (Chiang Mai Downhill Challenge).

We didn't fancy visiting the elephant parks, snake farm, tiger kingdom, monkey centre or other such ethically dubious attractions - but here are a few of our favourite Chiang Mai things...


1. Sunday Walking Street

Every Sunday from around 4pm, Ratchadamnoen Road and adjoining lanes are closed to vehicles and market stalls are set up in any available space. As the sun sets the Walking Street starts to get so busy that the foot traffic becomes two slow-moving trains, down one side of the street and up the other. These trains weave in and out of Temple courtyards and across junctions in all directions.

So what can a mile or two of market sell? Well, apart from the obvious souvenirs (anything you like in elephant form) there are more unusual things like traditional musical instruments, miniature furniture and wooden postcards. You can buy glass jewellery that is blown to shape in front of you, or a freshly constructed leaf hat (better than it sounds).

The atmosphere is really quaint. There is very little in the way of loud disco music and musicians give the street a beat. There are no hard sells and no litter anywhere - and best of all it's full of Thai people rather than just pandering to the armies of tourists. You can find trays and mats sold at the market in cafes across Chiang Mai, which is strangely nice.

Maybe buy a sueng. Maybe have a fish spa.

Really, though, it's all about the food. Unsurpringly there is an abundance of snacks like mango and sticky rice or banana spring rolls. We tried fried quails eggs, Takoyaki (Japanese style octopus in a batter ball), blocks of fried seaweed (also better than it sounds), Luk Chup (little fruit shaped sweets made from mung bean flour), tiny sweet pastries, and some Thai spicy egg salad.

To wash this down there are refreshing beverages such as Matcha green tea, Bael fruit tea and fresh coffee - all of which can be tried hot or iced and with condensed milk.

Needless to say after all that food Monday was a bit more like waddle street.


2. Funky Monkey Cafe

Awesome family run cafe with low key decor and low key prices. You can get fantastic "farang" food like French toast or muesli with fruit salad (includes dragon fruit!) and the Thai food is of the finest quality too.

We found ourselves here quite regularly drinking their specialist coffee and banana "Funky Monkey Shake" (possibly but unlikely to be trademarked). Smoothies are the best in Thailand (no hyperbole) and homemade banana loaf is available at a steal.

3. Museum of World Insects and Natural Wonders

Found through TripAdvisor we visited here because of combinations of words such as "surreal" and "informative". It is both of those things. The museum mainly documents Dr Rampa Rattanrithikul's decades of research on mosquitoes and the diseases they carry, but also features cabinets full of painstakingly preserved other creatures, rocks in the shape of dogs and bizarre paintings.

We were lucky enough to meet the doctor, who is still wonderfully enthusiastic about her strange collections - and told us how she had identified several new species of mosquitoes, gave us some details about "biological control" of disease carrying mosquitoes using friendly giant mosquitoes(!) and how she'd helped narrow down the malaria-vector species of mosquitoes to just 3 out of over 400.

It only takes a couple of hours to look around, but it's funny and interesting and surreal and informative.


4. Brown Rice Restaurant

More food! A vegetarian restaurant which blew our minds a little bit with some amazingly tasty meals full of fresh herbs and vegetables, to the extent you didn't notice the lack of meat (and we're carnivores). We also had some bright and refreshing herbal beverages including a 'Tom Yum' drink - lemongrass, lime and chilli. And brown rice too of course.

We bought homemade cereal bars here intending to take them on our cycle round the Samoeng Loop, but only one made it that far...


5. North Gate Jazz Co-op

We went to this small bar for its Tuesday jam night, which we found to be so popular that the crowd spread out into the street. As well as some sweet jazz we also got a free balloon magic show (why not?) and some spicy peanuts. Not bad!

- Us

Looping The Samoeng Loop

It'd been an easy first month in Thailand so by the time we arrived in Chiang Mai we needed a bit of a challenge. Preferably a physical one as the constant intake of cheap, delicious food was beginning to take its toll...

We hit on the Samoeng Loop, a 100km ring around the Doi Suthep mountain which conveniently begins and ends in Chiang Mai, with the tiny town of Samoeng a little off the halfway point. Our sources told us it was quiet, hilly and very scenic - ideal!

Map was thus bought and we hired some Trek 3900 bikes from well-regarded Cacti Bikes, a little pricy (by Thai standards) at £8 each per day but well maintained and including helmets and a pump. Mr Sak, the lovely owner of the shop, clearly takes great care of his stock.

"Please remember you must only ride on road."

We assured him we would - no sneaky singletrack.

"Please don't put the bikes on the roof of a bus."

We assured him that we did intend to ride the bikes the whole way... but even so he seemed a little anxious as we rode away.

This actually almost didn't happen as (and most people who don't like horror might like to skip this paragraph) a laxative taken the night before, without reading the instructions, worked as designed "suddenly and fairly quickly" while in Mr Sak's shop so I made a good 15 minutes use of his well maintained toilet then worried about relapses for the rest of the morning. This detail is only provided to give an honest and full picture of the travel experience, but still I apologise as it's horrible.

Anyway, we rode South with a flat warmup of around 20k which turned from busy triple carriageway into a forest road. It got a little hilly so after a whole hour of riding we stopped for snacks. This is actually a very Thai thing to do. Thai people like snacks. We had cokes but didn't feel it necessary to take more than 2 bottles of water with us due to the incredible abundance of rustic coffee shops lining the road.

No one had told us about the No Beverage Zone. It started just after snacks and continued. Unfortunately the gradient also continued - upwards. For a long time we climbed through humid jungle, sweat refusing to evaporate. When we got to the top we felt like heroes. As a reward we got a fantastic descent - a section known as "the seven switchbacks" which ingenious Thai engineers have created on a near vertical slope. As we rounded the final corner - having overtaken a moped, and with the wind in our hair - we felt amazing. That is until we gazed at the next hill looming above us...

After another 10k of mostly incline we had consumed all of our water and moved onto a curious energy drink, bought for its neon yellow colour and sporty if incomprehensible Thai graphics. Soon after we came to a junction with a police box at approximately the half way point of the loop. One road continued the loop upwards, and the other dropped down to Samoeng. We didn't want to go down as then we'd have to ride back up again!

I went to the police box and asked where the nearest water was. The policeman pointed towards Samoeng and said "One kilometer". I gestured towards the other road with a hopeful look - perhaps a cafe just around the corner? But he frowned and pointed down towards Samoeng. Oh well.

A grab bag of crisps, some tinned ice coffee and a whole lot of water later we left the petrol station we were using as a cafe, and went back up the hill. This was all very scenic and fun, but quite gruelling especially as, because we weren't sure exactly how steep 1500m of elevation change would actually feel, we had a heavy backpack with stuff to stop overnight if necessary. This however meant that whoever had the bag felt completely out of energy, which almost meant that the bag was the cause of the situation we had prepared for by taking the bag...

Our salvation came around 5k on. Luckily for us the road became 30k of sweeping downhill, past gorgeous farmland and coffee plantations! Couldn't believe it. We stopped for lunch mid-descent and as the sun set we went in single file with our one torch flashing red to alert our presence to faster traffic (everyone else). The forest road turned back into busy triple carriageway and 16k later we were back at the guesthouse! It took, including stops, around 9 and a half hours and we felt awesome (and totally dead).

We celebrated with the traditional Thai dish of Pizza, and returned the unscratched bikes to a relieved Mr Sak the next day.

As we loved the route so much we decided to go again 2 days later but on motors. We hired a couple of semi-automatic 110cc Honda Dreams, which both frequently backfired in the manner of a popping crisp bag, and a couple of Daft Punk/Star Wars chic helmets. The ride was amazing - and completely different - so we just took in the scenery and enjoyed the endless corners.

The last section of the loop is littered with Elephant Camps, Snake Farms, a Monkey Center and loads of other attractions so we popped in to see Mae Sa Waterfall on the way past. It was nice to see all that water falling down the cliff, but we were keen to get back on the bikes.

At first we were disappointed when we we hit the triple carriageway at rush hour, but it quickly became one of the most visceral cultural experiences yet. Motorbikes are encouraged, nay expected, to filter through traffic whenever possible to keep things moving. This led to an almost race-like feel at traffic lights and as road and pavement merged, there were wandering dogs and street stalls in the mix as well.

Those were our two very different, and very fun trips around the Samoeng Loop from Chiang Mai. Highly recommended!

- Jon