Thankfully I've never had motion sickness in my life, so I didn't have much trouble on the bus. I even managed to read quite a bit of the utterly shit Max Frei book that I have now thankfully finished! Piece of utter crap!
Jumped off the book and started walking to the hostel, but unfortunately the bamboo bridge/short cut had fallen away in the last year or so, meaning I had to take the long way around. In the end, this turned out to be a positive thing. I walked straight int the two German girls, Anna and Josefin.
This ended up being very fortuitous since they ended up giving me a lift on their scooters back to the hostel. Anna took my bag and Josefin took me, and what a manly figure I must have cut, being carted around by a dainty girl on a scooter. Yeah, I'm totally awesome!
We went tubing for two hours later that afternoon, facilited by our hostelier Peter the German and God did that ever suck. There was me and the girls and another German dude called Andre. A Dutch fella named Steff elected, quite wisely, not to come. The first hour was fun enough, but an hour of getting hit by trees and rocks in freezing water as the sky gets steadily darker really was enough. The second hour was just cold and long!
When we got back, it was a race to the showers to try and get warm!
That night we went out for dinner, the five of us, and then brought beers back to the hostel and sat out on the veranda and drank. It was a late night, but also quite fun.
Here's the gang . . .
Andre, Steff, Josefin, Anna, some crazy English guy and his "girlfriend"/landlord person thing . . .
The following day, we all got our own scooters, which didn't go so well at the start. First turn gave it too much gas and spilled, cutting up my knee. Five days later my right leg is still bruised to fuck in three places from hitting the ground and then the bike landing on my.
Funnily enough, drove around for the next three days and didn't even come close to falling again (except one time that doesn't really count). Anyway, Anna accidently drove into a fence and smashed it to pieces, so at least I didn't break anything. Though I think I did scar the bike, but they didn't notice when I brought it back.
The first day we drove out to a waterfall, had some lunch and then drove out to a hot spring, but it was absurdly expensive, so we didn't get in. We headed back and then headed into town to drop off the girls, who were about to embark on a three day trip into Laos, to Laung Prabang, which I will be doing tomorrow . . . eugh . . .
The day after, me, Steff and Andre went on a bit of an adventure, which basically resulted in us driving up and down dirt hills to get to a free hit spring and then to a local and authentic village, where people openly had things like TVs and phones, but also carried on traditional dress customs and rituals and were basically just a farming community. Rather than the more "set up" authentic village we saw at the end of the rafting, these were people just going on about their business, not people trying to put on a show for our benefit.
It was a really tough drive though, and I had a few near misses when the rain started. The roads just turned to sludge. The lads reckon I deserve a medal for not dying since it was only my second day on a bike. Personnally, I'd quite like a medal. :-)
It wasn't really scary or anything, just hard, driving a 100cc engine two wheel scooter up a ridiculously tall, angled slope, in the rain, especially since the slope was basically broken stone and mud.
I survived though, and managed not to snot myself, so I was fairly pleased.
An English couple turned up in the hostel that night so we went out for dinner with them that night and then met people they'd met on the bus and had some drinks (well I didn't, I was not drinking and trying to drive the damn scooter, corners still give me a shudder!). But they were cool people and one of the English boys was delighted when I said "deadly" since he hadn't heard it in ages! The things that amuse the English huh . . .
I headed home about an hour after the couple and an hour before Steff and Andre, to get some sleep before the journey back to Chiang Mai - 762 curves - but I ended up still being awake when they got back.
Next morning I didn't wake up on time, and missed the half-11 bus so I grabbed the half-12 bus, which didn't get into Chiang Mai til about 4 and to the hostel til after 5 because of the insane rain. Streets were literally flooded, things (including scooters) floating away! It'd have been funny if we weren't all shitting it that we were going to get flooded out of our hostels and/or be stuck here for a week until we were rescued.
Next day it was all gone though, so really, there was no need to be worried!
Met more people in the hostel that night, and headed out to the buffet barbecue again and then the Muai Thai fights! Which deserves it's own post and will soon follow!
Shane, over and out!!!
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