Pai Day 2 - bike in the countryside

The next morning we woke up early and rented bikes for 20baht a day! (that's around 68cents).  We did a big loop that included all the main sights around Pai.  We figured we biked close to or maybe over 40km!  It was a long day of biking, in scorching hot weather but wow I loved the workout! 

Our first destination was going to be a waterfall, we saw on the map around where it should be, made the turn and started on the search... there were no signs so we had no clue if we had made the right turn or not but we decided we may as well check it out... we started biking and then walking along any trail we could find in search of this waterfall... we were literally in the middle of no where.  We didnt see a single human being on our entire search for this waterfall!

Well it was a beautiful hike and bike in the jungle (as you can see by the pictures above), we truely felt isolated, but we did not find the waterfall... after finally deciding to turn around and head back to the road, we saw the turn off about 300m's further down the road!  Although we did not find the waterfall we loved the hike in the middle of no where so it was not at all a waste!

Next stop was Pai Canyon.   

Again great views but this time a good number of other tourists around...

Next was the Memorial Bridge.  The original structure was built by the Japanese POW's during WWII but was torn down after.  The village people had gotten used to the bridge so after it was torn down suddenly had major troubles crossing the river, the used boats but eventually rebuilt the bridge.  It is now there in memory of all the POW's who died in the construction of the original bridge. 

Then on to the hot springs... Pai Hot Springs is in a National Park with many pools flowing down into one another... The Thai's seemed to be loving the water! I felt it and there was no way I was going to get in the boiling hot water... and boiling I mean it literally!

At the end of those sticks are bags filled with eggs, literally BOILING in the water! It's one way to get your hard-boild eggs!

We were now starting to feel the heat and hadnt had food for breakfast so decided it was time to re-feul... after a little detour (it was confusing... we didnt know we had already made the turn... it seemed to be a straight road) we stopped at Pai Treehouse for lunch.  Very cute guesthouse with amazingly manicured gardens that go all the way down to the river!

Our final stop on the loop was a small watt with over 300 stairs to climb up to get to! Once again beautiful views and we started to see the sunset here... it was a long and tiring day but one I loved!

I am half wet from locals kindly splashing water on me as a sign of respect, still for Songkran.  The locals do it out of respect usually while most of the tourists do it solely to get people drenched.