Pai - Mae Hong Son

Leaving Thailand for good, it must be done in style. So we decided to go for the last 10 days to the North of Thailand and do 'the Pai- Mae Hong Son Loop'. It was well worth it.

We set of to Chiang Mai and rent a car from there. Arriving in Pai, we decide it is such a nice chilled out place, we hang out there for 5 nights - oops! Half of our holiday gone and we haven't started properly... The fact we were staying in a beautiful place in the middle of the rice fields (http://www.thecountrysidepai.com/en/index.php) may have had something to do with it. Pai is a great place to do day treks from. With Jara we were obviously limited in what we could do, but we managed to visit a couple of so called 'coffin caves', drove to and through hill tribe villages and made a few walks in the villages and rice fields.

Arriving in Mae Hong Son, we immediately realized that if we would not have stayed 5 days in Pai, we would have done it in Mae Hong Son (http://www.sangtonghuts.com/index.html). MHS attracts lots of hill tribes who come to sell their local produce in town. There are lots of influences of Myanmar (Shan temples, Shan kitchen etc) which brought back memories of Griet's friends of Myanmar during her study. We also went to the Myanmar border and stuck our hand into Myanmar - didn't dare to cross the border as there was no-one there but a watch post a bit further and you never know if they are watching you with their binoculars.

Another great outing was visiting the Long-neck Karen or Padaung Karen village. They came into Thailand years ago, fleeing Burma and their refugee camps have become their home. Jara was as much an attraction to them, as they were to us. The same happened in every hill tribe village we passed. Jara was often almost pulled out of our arms, so keen were they to pick her up. And to be honest, it made it much easier to make contact and take pictures too!

In the Doi Inthanon National Park we stayed in a village-run place. The funny thing was that they cultivated their own coffee in the Karen village, which we could go and taste but the guest house only served instant Nescafé...

Al in all it was the perfect way to say goodbye to Thailand. We will go back but it won't be for the first couple of years.
Now, we are getting ready to move to Cameroon and start our new life there. Thorsten will leave for Yaoundé 2nd March but has to come back to Belgium for work in April already. So Griet and Jara will join him at the beginning of May, when the 3 of us will go back together and start the new adventure.