The REAL mountains of Thailand

We've relocated up a series of narrow, twisty, steep roads and into a valley near the Burma border in a little quiet town called Pai.

This town is awesome and has totally made the trip for us. Chaing Mai is cool and all but its still a city, complete with city noise and polution.

Pai is only about 3000 people and surrounded by jungle covered mountains. The town has a kind of Thai hippie element with lots of bars and live music. We're staying outside the town in this cool little resort with our own little thatched hut with a deck on top that we can sit and watch the sunset descend on the valley. Freak'n great.

We rented a little motorbike to get around and have been riding all over the countryside with it, riding up the mountains to get better veiws, going to the hot springs, waterfalls, and got an elephant ride (bit overrated).

Spending Christmas in a mountain paradise with short sleeves while listening to a Thai band cover REM ain't bad . Hope everyone else out there is having a Merry Christmas!

Jamie and Lee

The mountains of Thailand

We've made our way up to 700 year old city of Chaing Mai in the mountains of Thailand were the beer is cheap, the silk is cheaper, and the motels are $20/night (and that's a nice one!). We're staying at a guest house Bo recommended and we walked around the city yesterday to check out all the temples and then ended up at the weekly chaotic but amazing street market. Half the entertainment is watching the people and the other half was the shopping.

Today Jamie and I went mountain biking! We took a tour group that runs moutnain bike rides off the highest mountain in Thailand. Jamie, being a little more sane, opted for the leisurely ride down the mountian on gradual decending dirt roads and single track.

I opted for the less sane route. 3500 ft down some of the steepest, most erroded and washed out trail I've ever seen on a downhill bike. I've never been on a real downhill bike before and besides being heavily, they are really stable at speed and corner better than I thought. However, the trail was so rutted, loose and steep that you couldn't really get in a groove and spent a lot of the time staying on the brakes. The smell of burt calipers lingered at each break and the guide's rear rotor ended up blue by the end of it. It was crazy, took a lot less leg muscles and a lot more upper body muscle than I realized. I've down some downhill courses before on my cross country bike and I've seen some steep, rocky stuff but nothing like this for that long. It took about 2 hours to get down. Oh, and yes, me, the guide (owner of the outfit) and the other guy ate it several times.

Alright, we're off to nurse our sore muscles with some Thai beer (not great but at 75 cents a pint, just right).

Lee

Sawasdee - Greetings from Thailand

After arriving in Thailand a week ago, we haven't done much more than sleep. We flew into Bangkok, stayed a night with Lee's cousin, Bo, and flew down to Phunket - the beach. We've been spending our days lounging by the pool under umbrellas, letting our bodies heal as Bo would say. We did venture off the "compound" a few times; once to sleep under umbrellas at a different beach, on a sunset bike ride around the village near our hotel, Lee rode up an 18% grade PAVED road one morning, and today...today we took a tour in sea kayaks through some caves in Phang Nga Bay. That involved sailing by "James Bond Island" were they filmed "The man with the golden gun"

Tomorrow we're off to the mountains and Chang Mai.