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Other entries in Pai

Motorbikes, elephants & rafts

After a long but spectacular bus ride through a series a mountains I arrived in Pai to find that it was a small town with apparently little to do but I was soon to discover that it was a great town with lots to keep you entertained.
I spent the first day just relaxing before deciding to hire a motorbike to take a look around the place. After a few minutes working out how to ride a motorbike I decided to have a wander around the area and discovered that we were in a beautiful valley and that whichever direction you went you came across spectacular vistas. After wondering around aimlessly for a while I headed to the hot springs to take a dip in the refreshing mineral waters only to find out that the hot springs were in fact just a trickle that would only allow you to bath your feet so I cheated and went to a hotel that had tubs full of the stuff to soak in.
Suitably refreshed I decided to try and get to Pai waterfalls on the motorbike and had gotten quite a way up the rutted and soaking dirt track before my motorbike started spluttering as it was running out of fuel so I turned around and just about managed to get back to the petrol station to fill her up (denied).
Next I decided to ride upto the Wat on the hill which had a spectacular, if somewhat restricted, view of the valley. Whilst walking around I noticed a tower that had to have a perfect view of the entire valley so I asked the 2 budhist monks stood at the top of it if I could join them. They gave me permission to climb up with a grin on their faces and I was rewarded with a perfect view of the whole area but within about 3 minutes of being on the tower one of the monks decided that it was time to start ringing the huge bell that was about 50 cm from my ears to show that it was 6pm. This seemed to involve him hitting it as hard as possible about 100 times or so it seemed so preferring to keep my hearing than see the view I hastily got down from the tower (now I know why he was smiling when he let me up).
The next morning I got up nice and early and headed off to the outskirts of the town to do an elephant safari. The first thing we had to do involved trying to climb onto the elephant from a huge stockade by stepping on its head. Once we were all safely seated in the saddles on the elephants we headed off for a trek through the jungle. This was pretty relaxed as the elephants seemed to be in no rush, in fact they proved quite difficult to keep moving as they would continually stop to eat anything at hand, but after about 1.5 hours we were coming close to the end of the trek. At this point the guide decided to speed up our elephant, which was a massive beast, by poking its behind with a hook. Not surprisingly the elephant took offense to this and stampeded down the road with its ears flared, trunk raised and trumpeting and then started to spin around glaring at the guides. All the while me and Paul were on its back holding on for dear life as the guides sensibly decided not to go anywhere near it for 5 minutes whilst it calmed down (which was not that reassuring when your on top of the huge animal). Once it had calmed down we carried onto the stockade and gratefully climbed off.
After lunch it was time to get back on the elephants. This time we were to ride them barebacked to the river and then bath with them. It was only when we were riding them bareback with just shorts on that you realise how hairy elephants are and how rough their skin is. We got to the river and soon discovered that bathing with elephants really means getting squirted by the elephants trunks or being thrown into the river by them lying on their side but it was an incredible experience even if it did prove hard to get back onto the elephants once you had been thrown off.
After spending a while playing around in the water we headed back to the camp and got into a truck to head to the next part of the adventure day which was a bamboo rafting trip down the river. The ride was great fun but we ended up with a pilot that didn't turn out to be so great at piloting as he kept on crashing into bushes, getting stuck on sandbanks, making us jump over logs whilst the raft was speeding down the river and at one point he even fell into the river but that probably made it even more enjoyable.

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