We were unsure where to head to next, our plan was to go to Laos next as our Thailand visa's run out in 5 days. We checked transfers from Pai to the border, but they didn't leave until 6pm the next day and claimed to arrive at the border at midnight (I did some reading online and found out that you actually arrive around 3am) and then have to be up at 7am to cross the border into Laos. That did not sound like a good time to me, so instead we got a bus back to Chiang Mai.
The trip back to Chiang Mai took less than four hours as we had a much better driver, who understood how and when to change gears while driving up and down the mountain roads. The bus dropped us at the bus station outside of town and we had to haggle with about ten different drivers to get the price down from 100 THB ($3) per person to a more agreeable 20 THB ($.63), to take us to our hotel. Our hotel must not have been one of the very well known hotels as the driver drove around for ages looking for it and pulled over three times to ask shop keepers if they knew where it was. We were only able to locate the hotel after the driver called them directly and they told him where to go.
We dropped our bags in our room and then headed out to the city. As it was a Sunday, the Sunday Markets were on and we spent a long time wandering around looking at things. We were strong and refrained from buying anything. We ate dinner and had a couple of drinks before returning to our hotel.
When we got back to the hotel we found that the owner and his father were taking turns playing electric guitar in their lobby/Australian leather goods store for two other guests. We spent the rest of the evening drinking beers, talking to other travellers and listening to the owners take turns on the guitar. Here is a short clip I made of the father playing before my camera died:
Check out the rest of the pictures here:
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