Huai Muang

The following day did not start well. We had pre-booked the 10:30am bus from Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son. The buses in Thailand are often just small minivans, so we were anticipating a rough ride. Firstly, we woke up late after a few too many drinks with friends the night before, and subsequently missed the bus! Tom also realised he'd lost his travel pillow and eye mask in the furore of trying to get to the station on time. Disaster. We booked a new ticket but this bus wasn't until 13:30 which meant we had 3 hours to kill at the bus station. Additionally, the only available seats were the back two which we'd read were the worst available and to avoid at all costs. Dejected, we trudged off to find Wi-Fi and hopefully some breakfast. Time passed relatively quickly and we boarded the bus. Our luggage was tentatively strapped to the roof of the minivan and we crossed our fingers for its safe passage. The journey seemed to start OK, but once we got out of the city we soon started on the 1864 hairpin bends and Amy in particular was feeling very ill! 7 hours later, after the roller-coaster ride, shaken, and exhausted, we arrived at our hostel which Amy had booked and was quite proud of it being super cheap; expectations were low. The owner was really cute and gave us a hand drawn map of the town and pointed out the main things to see. As we were feeling quite weary, we went straight to bed, not really up for exploring. The following day we had a walk around the town which was very quiet and laid back. We also took a detour to the bus station to ensure we knew exactly what we were doing the following day to get our bus back to Pai - we didn't want a repeat of the previous day. In the evening we hiked up to Wat Phra Phat where we saw lots of locals using the steep steps for their daily exercise. We spent some time on top of the hill admiring the Buddhist temples and taking in the views. We waited for sunset and headed back down town for the night market/walking street. The lakeside road had been completely closed off and was now full with street vendors. This could have been the best street food yet as there was so much variety and it was so cheap! Lots of locals were sat on the low tables next to the lake. We bought from a few different stalls including gyoza, stuffed chillis , pork and chicken skewers etc. It was all delicious.
Our final day we left Mae Hong Son to battle the hairpins to Pai - fortunately this was only half way back to Chiang Mai and therefore a lot fewer bends.Read more