Pai Pai baby

Aaaaaaaah. We arrived in Pai a few days ago, a once sleepy village/hippy retreat which now has high street filled with market stalls, neon lights and as many gimmicky bars (stools made out of scales, walls made out of old bottles of booze, you know the thing) as you can shake a sleeping dog at.

We stayed a couple of kilometres out of town in a sweet little place called Aqua Resort complete with bright yellow, live frog in the toilet. Very peaceful it was, giving me time to reflect on my life’s achievements to date.

A couple of minutes later I was bored and out of material so we decided it was time to hit the road. Rumour had it that there were elephants and hot springs to be found a couple of miles away, but in the searing heat and with bicycles being out of the question after Polly’s incident, how would we get there?

The answer was obvious. Have thousands of Brits not blazed this trail already, drunk and without qualification? Yes my friend that’s right, we got ourselves a motorscooter. I once drove my friend Nigel’s motorbike in a field and nearly broke my leg after getting confused between the throttle and the break, and Polly isn’t going near anything so much as a handlebar moustache for a while, so we were both a little apprehensive.

After a couple of laps of the town I decided if we fell off going REALLY slowly it wouldn’t be so bad, so we paid motorbike woman a couple of quid and off we went.

First stop, to see the elephants. Massive they are. Massive, saggy and with skin like those brooms you use to sweep mud and leaves out of your back garden. We went for a ride on one, which must have been the most uncomfortable two hours of our lives. It turns out there’s a bone right between your legs, the ‘undercarriage’ if you will, that if beaten by an elephant’s spine for more than five minutes bruises up and leaves you unable to walk very nicely indeed. We thought it must be normal for elephants to take ten steps forward before rearing up, spinning around and trying to run off a cliff. Turns out it isn't, but our elephant didn't like going out on her own and had a new driver she'd never played with before. Naturally, the owners didn't mention this till we got back.

To recover we went to the mountain spa, natural pools of water that are so hot you can cook eggs in them. Sadly we only worked this out by the time we got to the top and saw everyone else doing it so didn’t get to cook any ourselves.

I did take a picture of Polly next to an egg sign though.

So much for Pai, time and tubing wait for no man. We’re off for a couple of days’ bus travel to get right to the north of Laos where it’s all mud, rice and whisky. Then on to Luang Prabang, where I expect it’s all going to go off.

PUPPY!