It’s already almost been a week! What’s crazy though is it’s felt like I’ve been here for wayyy longer than that 😅!

Today started on the later side… as I said in yesterdays post we had a fun late night booping around the bars of Chiang Mai. Around 10am I got up to do a quick workout and get ready for the day.

Time was of the essence though because I had to check out of the hostel by noon and Lola and I needed to return the moped rental by noon as well. However, as we were packing up it appeared we had misplaced the moped key… and after tearing apart both of our bags we couldn’t find it still.

Our last ditch effort to find it was to go to the laundry lady that Lola dropped her laundry at the day before. And luckily enough we show up and the lovely Thai lady knew exactly why we were there! Getting the key back was a huge stress relief and we headed to drop off the bike!

After dropping off the bike Lola and I were both VERY hungry. So we stopped into a nearby 7-11 for a classic Thai treat, a cheese toasty!

While we walked and snacked, Lola was on the hunt for beans on toast and also wanted to introduce me to an English breakfast (which I’ve never had before)! So for the first time so far on this trip, I had a meal that wasn’t something from Thailand!

We ended up sitting at this restaurant and just chatted for a few hours. Mainly because of the rain, but we were also both fairly hungover too 😅 It’s so crazy how easy it is to connect with new people and be able to talk about literally everything. As most of you know I’m a big optimist and a firm believer that the vast majority of the world is good and meeting new people is vital. And this trip so far has been a testament to just that!

Finally the rain let up and we started walking back to the hostel and to get Lola’s laundry (which wasn’t ready when we first went there). On our walk back we ran across a sign that we’ve been joking about for the past few days. It’s a blue circle with a red no through it, so we’ve been saying that it means “no blue.” And of course Lola was wearing blue when we passed it.

We then just hung out in the pool area of the hostel we checked out of and chatted with the group of friends we’d made from Bangkok. I also worked on my blog post for the day before. It’s really nice reflecting on the day since they’ve started to blur together so quickly!

Eventually we got hungry so our crew took a stroll to the night market nearby! The market was just setting up, but the food area was already open! I’ve really enjoyed Thai basil dishes with rice, so I went a little bold and got it with squid! It was insanely good and only 80 Baht!

After dinner, Lola and I were cutting it close with our timing. Our van to Pai was leaving at 5:30pm and we had a few minute walk home, needed to call a Bolt (Uber) to the bus station which was 15 min away… and when we finished dinner it was almost 5pm.

We both ended up ordering a ride from both grab and bolt and luckily one was close enough to get us to the bus station in time (we cancelled the other). We got to the bus station at 5:25pm and left shortly after! We were very lucky that we didn’t miss the van, but if we had we would’ve figured something out!

We’re currently on the van ride which has been packed with winding turns and since we are going up into the mountains on a cloudy drizzly night, it made for some breathtaking views! It’s also so windy that the van driver is taking some blind turns on the right side of the road since the turn radius isn’t great. Also on the ride we found a hostel to stay at… we really had no plan going into this and booked the bus tickets while we were at the bar the night before 😅 But we got a bungalow for the night and morning which will be a really cool experience!

From what I’ve heard, Pai is a beautiful small town in the mountains! I’m so freaking excited to see what it’s all about!

But tomorrow I’ll update on how the bungalow and the rest of the night was! It’ll be dark when we arrive but I’m sure it’s going to be very beautiful!

– Elie