825. The Road to Pai | Day 2: Bamboo Bridge & Mountain Village

Here was day two from our Pai roadtrip! We continued along the Mae Hong Son loop, making several stops along the way. The scenery was all very beautiful. One of the attractions of Pai is the Kho Kuu So bamboo bridge. I guess the attraction is considered "closed" now due to COVID (as there was nobody selling tickets) but we were still able to enter. We were also the only ones there which was nice.

I really love visiting little rural villages, especially those nestled in mountains such as this one.

Scenes along the Mae Hong Son loop. All these stalls closed due to COVID.

A temple on the mountain in Pai. We were the only ones here.



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824. The Road to Pai | Day 1 (& travel update!)

I'm currently in Bangkok as I make this post. We arrived here a few days ago and planning to stay for a month again. As you may know, we've been in Chiang Mai the last month. As luck would have it, Bangkok decided to announce new restrictions literally the day after our arrival. We are now in a semi-lockdown. :( The main thing that affects us is that all restaurants/cafes cannot offer dine-in service anymore, only takeout and delivery. This is very unfortunate and inconvenient for us as we usually go to cafes each day to work on our laptops (or to read). I am way more productive that way. Also when we are out exploring the city, we have to eat as well meaning without dine-in service, we can't really do that. The way takeout orders are packaged, lack of seating and the extremely hot temperatures makes it impossible for anyone to really eat outdoors. They still allow malls to remain open (though all seating is taken away), gyms, pools, parks etc. I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't so hot though - there's only so much time we can handle being outdoors in a day without anywhere to sit/eat/drink. This is very detrimental to businesses as well (on top of their current struggles with the lack of tourists)..I think it would make more sense if they allow 50% capacity or something.

When this happened back in Toronto, I didn't mind it as much (at all) since I lived there but it's a different case when you're "on vacation". We are currently in Bangkok for 1 month and these restrictions will last for 30 days so pretty much our entire stay lol. It would have been better to remain in Chiang Mai (or have chosen another destination) but now it's too late. I will not complain too much though as we have been pretty lucky with all the previous places visited this trip up until mow.

Anyways maybe now I will have more time to catch up on my blog posts. While in Chiang Mai we did a roadtrip one weekend to visit Pai/do the Mae Hong Son loop. Then to go from Chiang Mai to Bangkok where we are now..we did another week-long roadtrip with several stops along the way. I really loved both roadtrips. We saw a lot of beautiful scenery along the way, many unique sites and rural mountain villages. Northern Thailand is really beautiful. I feel most people visit Bangkok or the islands when they come to Thailand, but I would definitely recommend exploring the north as well.

The journey from Chiang Mai to Pai is super mountainous and consists of over 700 turns. Some very sharp turns and on extremely steep hills. It's very scenic but not fun if you have motion sickness. I get motion sickness SUPER easily so this time I decided to take motion sickness pills as I wanted to enjoy the ride. Luckily it worked and I felt ok the entire journey there. I really enjoyed the drive there. It's one of those times when the journey is equally as nice as the destination.

A very beautiful cafe as we left Chiang Mai. It was like a garden. Very peaceful and relaxing.

A witch-themed cafe along the way. Chiang Mai/Northern Thailand has a lot of cafes, many with cool themes and designs. I think spending a month there got me really into cafes so that's why I'm extra annoyed by the closure of them in Bangkok. I was really looking forward to visiting different ones here.

WWII Memorial Bridge

Pai Canyon

This part was quite terrifying

The cute cottage we stayed in

View from our front door



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601. Rockies Roadtrip | Day 16 - Arriving in Jasper

After Calgary, our next destination was Jasper. I think out of the entire trip, Jasper was the most scenic. The mountains and lakes were just incredible. We were lucky to get perfect weather every day so with the clear blue skies and beautiful blue lakes..every view was picture perfect. I didn't really edit the colouring on these photos (only adjusted the contrast a bit)..they really did look like this in real life!
The last time I came to the Rockies prior to this trip was when I was 8 years old. I don't remember much from that trip..but I always remembered Peyto Lake. It is my favourite lake of the Rockies:








During the time we were there (and I assume it still is)..Jasper was such a popular destination. We started booking our hotels and planning the trip I think 3 or 4 weeks before we arrived. For all our other cities we had booked our hotels to be right in the city centres. However, literally all the hotels and motels inside Jasper National Park were fully booked up on our days by the time we were checking for them. That had never happened to me before on any of my travels lol. The best we got was this motel in a small town called McBride...a TWO HOUR drive outside Jasper. So yes, each of the three days we were there we drove back and forth for 4 hours a day getting to Jasper and back to McBride lol. On the day we went to the icefields it was an even longer and more stressful drive..but more on that in my next post.

The motel was pretty good actually. We each got separate rooms here and at first I was so nervous it'd be a creepy old place and that I would be scared to stay in the room alone. But it wasn't bad at all. It was clean, brightly lit and (most importantly) Internet was good. I have to say it was actually a nice experience staying in McBride..something different for a change.

After we checked in, we wanted to go for dinner and was recommended a restaurant closeby. Actually probably the only real restaurant in McBride so we didn't have much of a choice. We were told we could walk there and so we did....along the highway in the middle of nowhere lol. We must've looked like the strangest hitchhikers. When we spotted the restaurant, we noticed it was across the road. So we had to go up and down a ditch on each side (which were deeper than what it looks like in this photo) to get there.

After the dinner, we walked back to the motel (up and down the ditches again) and by that time it was already pitch black. I was terrified we'd run into a bear or something.




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