After a late night on day 8, day 9 started off on the later side. Something I’ve learned while being out here is to only book one night at a time at a hostel. With solo traveling, you want the opportunity to leave without feeling obligated to stay since you’ve paid. Also, it’s fun to bounce around from hostel to hostel!

We woke up a little too late though and found out our beds had been booked. Luckily we were able to still extend our stay and get 2 other beds in another room for the same price! The next thing we had to do was extend our motor bike rental since we’d be needing it for the next adventure that day. And then we went and got brunch at a restaurant we had already ate at and I ended up getting a curry fried rice!

After brunch, our friends were waiting for us for our excursion for the day. We decided to go to a cave about an hour away and caravan bikes again!

Even with beautiful mountain top views, this red proved to be very difficult for all of us, especially Lola and I since we had two people on one semi-automatic bike. At one point on the drive we took a tight turn that went directly into a steep incline and our bike was not a fan and started to roll backwards. Luckily we were able to stop the bike and not fall… but it was very close. And we were also very lucky that a Thai local was driving past, saw us struggling, and was willing to help us!

Luckily the drive after that was hiccup free, however it was a bit stressful. We were going down so many steep inclines that we knew we’d have to eventually come back up, but we tried to stick to the present and worry about that for when we needed to head back.

After finally making it to the caves, we found out that due to flooding 2 out of the 3 caves were closed off and that the rafts they usually guide the tours on were not running. But even with this we decided to still do a little tour of the one cave open. It was cool… but in my opinion not worth the drive that we endured.

After the cave we ended up driving to find food. We stumbled onto this lovely restaurant that overlooked a beautiful gorge! I got garlic sterfried chicken with rice and had a lovely time eating while listening to rain patter against the building!

For the drive back we decided to switch passagers around to hopefully make the drive easier and less stressful. And luckily it worked out! I ended up hopping on the back of my friend Lucy’s bike and gave Lola a break from being my chauffeur. The ride back was 10x better than the ride there and a lot more fun since we could all enjoy the views rather than stress about whether we’d make it or not.

We made it back to our hostel safe and sound! The outing took us a lot longer than we had expected so by the time we made it back it was basically dinner time at the hostel! I actually remembered to take a picture of it this time, but it was some peanut noodle dish, which was very yummy!

After dinner, the hostel put on a quiz night for everyone and my friends Lola, Luke, and Lucy all decided to be on a team! We did really bad, but we crushed the music round at least 😂

After trivia, our crew went out to find a bar for a few beers. But before we did we found a few snacks! vegemite samosa, fresh mango, and a vegan muffin which were all insanely good! We then found a bar to have a few beers in and called it a night around 1am!

It definitely wasn’t my favorite day of the trip so far, but it still was a lot of fun even with the stress that ensued in the early afternoon.

I haven’t really decided what my next plans will be for the trip. I think I’ll spend a few more days in Pai before I say goodbye to my friends and head down to explore the south on my own!

– Elie