Early is cool
We planned on seeing the Pai canyon today, as we didn’t have enough time to book a tour for today. The pair of us woke up sort of early, so we could get to the canyon before the blistering heat. We had a free breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, guacamole, and papaya. It’s a first come first served kind of breakfast deal. After we had a nice and fulfilling breakfast, we donned our gear, and headed into town.
There are several bike rental shops, so we just picked a popular looking one. However, before you leave on it, make sure it can do basic functions. These include, but are not limited to, turning off and on (in case they use a trick to get it to start), does the seat open and lock, do the helmets fit correctly, and can you change gears. We had a problem with our first bike, so was able to get a second instead. It’s important, and obvious, to note that a lot of these bikes are either rubbish, a load of spare parts stuck together, or have been ruined by previous users. Use them at your own discretion.
Exploring the landscape
The ride to the Pai canyon is relatively short when you’re leaving from the town. There were plenty of parking spaces because it was early, so no problem. We reached the first viewpoint after a couple of minutes of climbing steps. Gets the blood pumping, but it’s quick. We were at the beginning of the Pai canyon trail, and could see where the different paths lead. There wasn’t much between them, so we just decided to go for the left side.
The trail was narrow, and the drops to either side rather steep! Some of the trail was quite a scramble to get up and down. It appears to be mostly sandstone, so it crumbles easily and is very dusty. After winding around the trail, and traversing up and down the small hills, we came to a point in the canyon that lead to the ground. As we wanted a bit more adventure, we decided to follow this path, and then explore at ground level. When we reached the bottom of the steep slope, we were greeted by trees, shrubs, and dry grass.
For more info on the Pai canyon, go here!
In great peril
Initially, we followed a dried up stream bed, winding through the valley. As it could have gone on for miles, we decided to go up a hill to our right. We trekked through the foliage, hoping to not get stung or bitten by anything. When we reached the top of this hill, we walked across the top, and then down the other side. We ended up in another stream bed. There was a large sandstone wall where we decided to carve our names into (as others had done). Eventually, we came to a dead end, and we didn’t want to turn back now.
Instead, we eyed up the steep, sloped sandstone hill to our side. We thought it’d be a bit of an adventure if we were to try and climb it, rather than head back. It was most certainly a difficult scramble, but we managed to make it to the first ledge in sight. There was then another ledge, and then you could carefully walk up the less steep hill, and to the top. Mat managed to make it up using the ledge on the right. However, due to it being sandstone, most of the ledge crumbled when he climbed up. So I decided to try around the left hand side. Everything was sandstone and mud mixed together, and so it crumbled under my feet.
I fell/slid a few times, due to the crumbling, and I acquired a few cuts and scrapes. The situation was a rather dire stalemate, I couldn’t see how I’d get up. I was relying on tree roots and weak plants to keep me up there. Eventually, I had to kick the rock to make footholds for myself. Thankfully, my shoes are sturdy at the front, which made quick work of the sandstone.
Returning to safety
It was a definite struggled, but eventually Mat was able to help haul me up at the last hurdle. After we had scaled the hill and joined back up with the Pai canyon trail, I licked my wounds, and returned to the bike. Once we were back on the bike, we headed back into town to drop it off. We booked our travel to Bangkok, a tour for tomorrow, picked our laundry up, and then ate some delicious food at a small establishment. After all of this, we dropped our stuff off at the hostel and chilled for a bit. We definitely needed to tidy ourselves up as we were quite dusty and exhausted. Check out our mountain climb in China here!
Once we’d recovered somewhat, we decided to visit the night market for some food again. Just like last night, we ended up trying a wide variety of foods, preferably ones that we hadn’t tried yesterday. This was quite a successful venture, and we managed to see more of the market than we did yesterday. After we’d had our fill, we returned to the hostel and turned in for the night.
