Although I could easily spend the rest of our trip in chiang mai, we knew it was time to move on and see more of the north of Thailand, before heading to the islands in the south. So we hopped on a 3 hour bus ride to Pai, a very small quiet town in the mountains north of Chiang Mai.
Pai is well known for a bit of a bit of a hippy retreat, quiet and relaxed(during the day... then pretty wild jungle parties at night. But that ain't thing). I visited here back in 2020 and really enjoyed the opportunity to slow down, and relax for a bit. Something Chris and I were both after after a busy few weeks.
We checked into a hostel about 1 mile outside the town centre. We had a very very affordable private bungalow and well.... yeah it was interesting ahah. But, it had a really nice social area, with a pool table and nice hangout spaces. Which is why we chose this hostel, and it was a definite highlight of the hostel. Many games of pool were played!
After a couple days walking around the town and catching up on some readings, we rented a scooter to zip around the top sights to see around the province. We hiked up some steep hills to some impressive view points, walked up 320 steps I the midday heat to see the giant Buddha that looks over Pai, wandered along the bamboo bridges at one of the two sites in Pai, and finally watched sunset at the very popular "Pai canyon". It was really nice revisiting some of these sights 4 years on, and seeing them still thriving. Some have become massively more touristy, for example the bamboo bridge spot was fullll of photo op set ups; like love heart seats made of bamboo, swings over the rice paddies etc. not necessarily a bad thing, just interesting to see how things change.
Heading south
After a really peaceful, and active 5 days in Pai, it was time to begin the mammoth journey south...
a 3 hour mini bus to Chiang Mai. Sounds fine, except this journey is well known for being awfu for travel sickness. I'm the 3 hour journey, there is 732 turns in the road. Add in the fact our driver was clearly late for dinner or something, and sped the whole way. I got off the bus feeling very sick.
We then had a 5 hour 2 wait at chiang mai bus station, ready for our overnight bus.
At 9pm we got on our overnight bus to Bangkok.
10 hours after we arrived in Bangkok at 7am... and had a 6 hour wait until our flight to Phuket. So we paid to store out bags and went for a very sleepy walk for coffee.
At 3;30pm we started our hour flight to Phuket.
And finallyyyyy we caught a 1 hour bus from the airport to our hostel which thankfully was a really nice hostel!
Meh visit to Phuket
We were apprehensive about whether we'd enjoy Phuket, so just booked two night stay. One to recover from our long travel, and enough time for one day in Phuket to explore. The old town is so beautiful, full of Portuguese architecture(seen in the photos below). But we then made the mistake of catching a bus to Patong - the most popular backpacker area of Phuket. It was NOT our thing... full of really sleazy nightclubs and hostess bars, the beachfront was full of McDonald's, kfcs, pizza companies, vape shops etc. just nothing about this area felt nice or appealing to us. (Unsurprisingly not photographed..)
We caught the local bus to Patong, and knew we could get it back. In theory... it said on time they come once an hour, but have no designated stops so just need flagging down. But, we couldn't find the route it took back to old town, and waited two hours in he hat was probably the wrong place. The weather took a turn, and torrential rain started, it got dark and we started to worry we wouldn't actually be able to get back to our hostel! We also made the first rooky travel mistake... both our phones died and we had no portable chargers so we couldn't order a taxi online, and didnt have much Thai Baht on us so weren't even sure we could afford a taxi. It was pretty stressful... but eventual haggled a taxi down to something we could actually pay for and got a very expensive taxi back.
We finally got home at 9pm, having not eaten since breakfast so ordered food from the restaurant we really enjoyed the night before. Ate food and hit the hay ready for our travel to Phi Phi Don the next day. Except, during the night, the nurorious travellers bug hit me hard. A great way to end a pretty crappy day in a Phuket ahah.
Thankfully, the places we visit next gets loads better, I unfortunately don't... But more of that in my next post hah
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