11/12/17 Mon: It was 10am and we were all packed and ready to leave for Pai. The host prepared mango rice, and we had it before we paid a visit to the café opposite our Airbnb.
interesting menu display in the café. There was a working space just next to it as well. I had the less sweet iced-coffee but not to my liking. Our Song Taew to the Chiang Mai Arcade Bus Station came about 11 or 11.30am, which we got our Airbnb auntie to help book, and it was about a 20mins' journey there.
The "horrific" part of the journey should be when we hopped onto the minivan (S$15.94 for two people via online booking) to Pai, which took an estimated 3 hours and 762 curves up the mountains to reach!
We took the middle seats, and though I tried to put my focus on the road and minimise "head sway", I still felt uneasy during the drive. *Well, at least the sour plum we brought along did came in handy.* We were given a chance to take a break halfway for some bites, but that seemed to be only the beginning of the torturous journey up~ I think Potato did threw up a bit too.
When we reached, we had to drag our lugguages across that wooden bridge, and walk to Pai Bus Station where we were supposed to meet Mr Bao, our host from Jikko Harem. Alas! He has not reached from whatever reason, and with the headache I've got, I got pretty fed up.
Potato suggested we have lunch as our stomach were growling. He ordered phad Thai and omelette for us, but I didn't have much appetite cos the headache was bad, and partly because Mr Bao didn't arrive on time.
Mr Bao finally came with his scooter, and drove us to Jikko Harem, which was a short few minutes' away from the Bus Station. It's a mini hotel I reckon, and the main hall has an Arabic feel to it haha. Our room has bunk beds, and well it's not super clean, but I wouldn't complain for S$47.45 for two people for two nights. There is a common toilet and shower with other guests, which luckily had great heating system as it gets a bit cold at night.
We only knew that they offer packages to bring tourists to places in Pai, and so we signed up for their Lod Cave trip package above, which was only 500 baht per person for this one day trip. After that, we had fun playing "mini table tennis" in the hall while waiting for Mr Bao to be ready to drive us to Pai Walking street.
The weather was really cooling, and yes there were many foreigners and tourists in Pai. It's a night market from 6 to 10pm, filled with interesting cafes, food and shopping stuff.
We stopped by this BBQ shop, which also sold alcohol inside. The sticks we ordered were so spicy!
Then, we continued walking at night. Needed the toilet halfway, and there was a 5 baht entrance fees, but the toilets were clean to my surprise.
The avocado with honey was so good! Had cheap butter corn, and visited a second-hand bookstore.
We heard fireworks coming from an area, and saw it opposite a river. So, PotaTOHs decided to cross the bridge and we saw one uncle selling fireworks! One group of them playing with fireworks were Singaporeans, and we wanted to try too. Potato bought the small ones (60 baht each, five consecutive shot), and we turned into big kids instantly haha!
I was a bit scared to pull the trigger, so I only did video-recordings of Potato doing it keke. *We can't do this in Singapore, so might as well enjoy in Pai!* After that, we went to queue for a famous mee sua卡农晶米线for dinner.
Didn't take us too long to sink our teeth into that one bowl of mee sua we shared! It was nice for me, but Potato thought it's spicy for him. *I miss it now.*
We thought of walking back to Jikko Harem ourselves. It was pretty dark along the path back. We'd pass by some local's home, masseur salons and cafes.
The clock tower just outside Jikko Harem does look a bit eerie, don't it? Anyway, I remember two of us did have a drink with Mr Bao and his friends at their in-house bar one of the nights, and he told us the owner Jikko also owns one of the bar at Pai Walking street.
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