Pai

12 hours of blissful sleep after our arrival in Pai, we awoke to sunny skies and our first full day in one of the many hippie epicenters in Thailand. Culturally downtown Pai doesn't have a whole lot on offer but within 20k of town there's a bounty of natural attractions. 20k on bikes sounded like a tall order after the marathon ride the day before...instead we opted to rent mopeds to checkout the local waterfalls. After close to 3 months in SE Asia this was our first adventure via the ubiquitous tourist moped rental. As far as towns to learn to ride a moped in Pai was ideal, minimal traffic and a low-key atmosphere with very few people zipping around town creating unwanted hazards.

Our first excursion took us up to Mo Paeng waterfall about 13k out of town up into the lower slopes of the mountains. Being the dry season, not a whole lot of water was falling down the mountainside, but there was just enough to grease up the rocks for a couple of nice natural waterslides for the local kids to take advantage of. We sat and watched the slew of kids piling down the slide into one another before Paris couldn't resist and jumped in line for her turn. She wasn't all that graceful, but she was successful at negotiating the rock slide. Even better, below the first slide was a longer, steeper slide into a lower pool. Paris carefully negotiated her way to the launching point for the upper slide and I prepared to photo document the impending spectacle. As it turned out, the rock was pretty slick and Paris was on her ass and in the water before I could actually pull the camera out.

After viewing her exceptional grace in tackling the slide I felt that it was necessary to put on a proper show of how to blunder down a slippery rock surface. The first slide was a little anti-climatic since I only made it about halfway down before friction slowed me to a stop, I was too big for the ride. Ah, but the speed I managed on the second slide adequately compensated for my poor showing on the first. I gave myself a little push which sent me sliding down to a little bench in the slide, which promptly sent me airborne and positioned me for a graceful sideways entrance into the small pool at the base of the slide. As fun as the slides were, the overall lack of recent precipitation left the pools a little stagnant and thus not the most appealing location to spend the afternoon.

From Mo Paeng we went in search of the other waterfalls in the area and spent the day wandering various paved and dirt roads in search of other water related adventures. Nothing substantial materialized from the later excursions, but it cruising on the mopeds was a nice way to kill the afternoon and rest our wear legs. And of course in order to celebrate our arrival in Pai we headed out on the town and hit up the local bars. As always I made a sweaty ass of myself storming the dance floor with my awkward 6'5" frame. Ignorance is bliss.