before or the army was using it - who knows! The next bus was at 10.30 so we had a couple of hours to kill, so we ended up going for a early morning brew and a good old read of the Bangkok Post. They are ace the papers over here, there doesn’t seem to be the same censorship so they are really rude and generally quite funny about American and European politics!

It soon came round to 10.30 and phew this bus was running and filled up pretty fast, so we were fairly lucky to actually get some seats! We were going on a public bus as this was a lot cheaper than the air con minibuses and only took an hour longer, or so we thought! It was a fairly bumpy ride and was very busy due to the early morning one being cancelled, it was full of people, vegetables, poultry feed, local tribes people and rucksacks! It was an experience to say the least!

Pai
1st - 6th Nov
The bus arrived about an hour late but that was due to there being some road rebuilding after the recent landslides caused by the monsoon. We wanted to stay just outside of town as the town is really lovely but quite touristy and the surrounding countryside was so beautiful that we thought it would be criminal to stay in the town. We were heading to a place called Sun Huts but after walking for what seemed like an age in the baking hot sun and my rucksack being very heavy as it had both the camera and laptop in it, by this point I was starting to grumble about the distance so we opted for the nearest place, Rainbow House, which had an array of bamboo huts. We were shown a hut right next to a pond and paddy field with superb views and at only 200 baht (£2.80) a night we thought we’d stay here for tonight and possibly move onto the Sun Hut place the next day. Due to the