The most challenging road during the South East Asia trip in 2009 was the one from Chiang Mai to Pai. We left Chiang Mai at 12pm and even though Pai is only 160km from Chiang Mai, it took our minibus 3 hours to reach there. How we survived is beyond me; the bus driver never stopped and every time there was a turn (and there were many…) he would throw the minibus into it nearly throwing us off the cliffs. Every bend we were praying there wouldn’t be a car or motorcycle coming from the opposite side.

Pai: Motorbike

Pai was exactly what I expected Chiang Mai to be; a tranquil little village in the mountains. The tranquility is deceptive because at night the tourists come out to party, but during the day it’s quiet. Our minibus dropped us off at a motorbike shop where we could rent a motorbike for free for an hour to look for hostels. There is no other means of transportation in Pai. It goes without saying that I loved the freedom of riding around town so we rented it for our whole stay in Pai.

Dogs 1 – Dominique 0

Pai would be the location of incident number 3, the one that left me most rattled.

I figured it would be a good idea to get a midnight snack at a gas station (because the bar didn’t have anything to eat), so I walked by myself to the gas station past a few houses. Suddenly a group of dogs started barking and running towards me. When I say dogs, I don’t mean street dogs, I mean Shih Tzu-style dogs; small, cuddly and yappy dogs. At night, by myself, in a dark street I couldn’t think clearly so I started running which resulted in angry dogs following me. One of the dogs then bit me in my heel. Let me be clear, when I say bit I mean his tooth scraped the surface of my skin. It didn’t even bleed, but I was in full panic mode.

My mosquito bites in the below pictures look worse than “the bite”.

When I arrived at the gas station I begged a local to take me back to the bar in his car. At first he didn’t want to, but because I was crying my eyes out I managed to convince him. Of course, I convinced my friends to come with me to the hospital so in the middle of the night we went to Thai Hospital Number 2; equally good as Thai Hospital Number 1 in Ayutthaya. When the doctor saw the scratch on my heel he started laughing; no rabies, no need for injections. I was not convinced but I left. The next morning one of my friends found out she had lost her camera, so we went back to the hospital to check. The nurse asked why we were there last night and when I explained it to her so told me that another doctor should check my heel. So after waiting a few hours the other doctor came and told me that chances were 0% I could’ve caught rabies, so I left again. My friend did not find her camera.

It was a terrible start to this little town.

Pai Region & Lod Cave

Thankfully, our luck turned. The next day one friend of mine and I decided to take the motorbikes to explore the region. For hours we explored the area and watched the beautiful hills roll by with the wind in our hair on the abandoned roads. (Note: If you would like to do the same always bring a poncho, because the weather might seem sunny in the morning it is still incredibly unpredictable).

After a few hours we randomly found a cave called Lod Cave. It was one of those things we didn’t plan but which ended up being amazing. First we had to ride our motorbikes to the cave itself which meant we had to traverse a very broken road for quite a while. Then we took a little bamboo boat to the insides of the limestone cave and inside we walked around and the guide told us stories about the cave and showed us the different kinds of rocks (for example, one in the shape of an elephant and one in the shape of a tooth); and because there is no artificial light in the cave everything was shown by the lantern our guide was holding.

Motorbike from Pai to Chiang Mai

The experience of driving through the region was so good that we decided to ride the motorcycles back to Chiang Mai (this was also to avoid taking that hellish bus trip back). Aya the motorbike company we rented our bikes with took our bags to Chiang Mai, which we could pick up from their offices there.

The first part of the ride was gorgeous, just like the day before. We saw beautiful scenery and insane hairpin roads. However, when we reached the outskirts of Chiang Mai we were in for a surprise. Traffic was crazy! We were suddenly surrounded by motorcycles, bicycles and cars, passing us by left and right. It was incredibly difficult to find the motorbike company in the busy streets of Chiang Mai, but after a total of 5 hours on the road we managed. And the last part should not be a reason to not do the trip.

That same day we would leave Chiang Mai again to travel to Chiang Khong from where we would take the slow boat to Laos. This will be described in the next post.