Rafting in Pai

My past few weeks have been a blur of activity. Last weekend I was in Pai, this weekend I'm headed a couple of hours South to go hiking and hopefully mountain biking at a national park near Hua Hin. I've been extremely pleased with how much I have been able to see and do since I've arrived in Thailand. It has really made this semester a wonderful one full of lots of traveling, new experiences, and a wide variety of activities.

Pai, in Northern Thailand, is known for being a hippie town with a lot of expats. Eight of us arrived to Pai on an overnight bus that we spent Halloween night on. We rented motorbikes to explore the town on the first day. We rode our bikes to a waterfall and Pai Canyon. I drove a motorbike for the first time, ate delicious food over the course of the weekend, and set off a lantern to celebrate Loy Krathong a couple of weeks early. The restaurants, street food, and shopping on Pai's Walking Street was phenomenal.

The following two days were spent white water rafting and camping in the jungle. I fell off the raft 3 and a half times. The half was a good save from my friend who grabbed my arm and pulled me back onto the raft as I was falling out.

Our night in the jungle was at a campsite with no electricity, open bamboo huts with thin mats and mosquito nets, and gigantic mysterious bugs. Some kind of bug ate through my hair gel and put numerous holes in my friend's neck pillow. We sat around the campfire chatting and played cards and mind games that our Thai guides created by candle light in the evening. I learned that I struggle with thinking outside of the box because the mind games were off course not straightforward in the least. They frustrated and intrigued me though. I'd love to spend in a day with someone's brain that thinks differently than me.

We made pit-stops on our rafting journey to exfoliate with mud from a hot-spring, cliff dive, and slide off of rocks. I wimped out and didn't do the cliff diving though. Our Thai guide spoke a bit of English and enjoyed speaking to us in Thai. We understood very little but would try to guess what he was saying until he'd finally translate into English. We each took turns being captain of the raft in the back. It usually meant we ran into a lot of branches, got stuck, and hit rocks, but it was fun.