In May 2013, during the last week of the school term break, my boyfriend and I hopped on our CBR 150cc, and began our adventure to the town of Pai. I had been on this Pai journey once before, in the high season, and didn't quite understand the difference going in the low season would make. Of course, the trip there was thoroughly terrifying, although extremely enjoyable as well (if that makes sense). A lot of the more treacherous roads seemed to have been repaired since I had been on the same ones a few months before, and there were many more construction workers milling about and fiddling with heaps of tar. It rained heavily, as usual, and this was the part that made the trip so dangerous. Unless you can overcome the paranoia of flying down a natural water-slide on your vehicle, I'd recommend pulling over for a coffee while the rain subsides, which it nearly always does.

Because it was so quiet in Pai, with a noticeable lack of people and parties, we spent more time exploring the town and its surroundings. We would drive aimlessly along the little roads that make rings around the place, and stop wherever we thought we had spotted something interesting. This is how we came to find a lonely chained-up elephant, the Pai canyon, some adorable puppy friends, and many, many beautiful views of the scenery. Pai is a lovely little town, but it does have an extroverted, party-crazed personality during the high season, and I'm grateful I got to meet the beauty of this place when things were calm, quiet and peaceful.

A lonely elephant off the beaten track in Pai.

About an hour out of Chiang Mai, you can find yourself wobbling on a houseboat in the middle of a picturesque dam,

One weekend near the end of 2012, my boyfriend and I grew restless (as we often do in the city) and decided to take an aimless drive to see if we could get lost in some nature. In a place like Chiang Mai, that's very easy to do, and before we knew it, we were winding through breezy roads around Doi Saket, where we found a little waterfall in the jungle, a temple near the mountain, and a sprawling scene of fields just as the sun started sinking.

Here are the photos from our day-trip through Doi Saket: 

Welcome to Doi Saket.

The road up to the temple.

Wat Phra Tat in Doi Saket.

Here, I'm throwing another photo-heavy post at you. Near the end of 2012 a girlfriend and I made our way along the treacherous road to Pai from Chiang Mai. The actual road itself is riddled with potholes, steep curves and, apparently, 762 bends. It was a nightmare, although I do recommend that same old hired 110cc scooter I mentioned before as the vehicle of choice. There's just nothing that beats that adrenaline rush you get from sliding over every stone, or that "flying" feeling you experience when your tyres lose their grip on the road. And if you're lucky, you might witness a fellow scooter-driver plop on the road in front of you. If you're not so lucky, you might be the scooter-driver who ends up being squished by a truck - Falang Roadkill. Nice.

All in all, Pai is a lovely place, if a bit small. Go for a weekend in high season - you'll experience everything from waterfalls and bungalows to jazzed up guest houses and crowds of young party-minded tourists. It's awfully easy to forget you're in rural Thailand when you're casually hanging out at a flashy pool party getting chatted up by army guys. And then stopping on the way back to your guest house for a gelato cone and an avo baguette from a street-stall. And, of course, waking up to go get crepes and coffee for breakfast. Yes, this is still Thailand. It's just that you're in Pai now, and life is a little different here.

Typical outskirts of Pai scenery.

Mae Sai is a town with a bridge crossing into Burma from Thailand. It's a place people go to extend their tourist visas. Locals there sell lots of fruit wine and the other usual Thai thingy-ma-bobs. And that's really all that can be said about the town of Mae Sai.

The actual town of Mae Sai is not the interesting part about this trip. As a traveller you might have to make a visa run now and then, and many stories are less than encouraging. My own experiences with visa runs have left me running back to my temporary city of Chiang Mai. But the trip to Mae Sai can be made into a great little adventure. Here's what you'll need in your imaginary adventure bag:

• A vehicle - preferably a hired 110cc scooter, so that you can experience all that lovely plastic rattling and coughing while you drive at 80km along the highway.
• A passenger - this has to be someone who doesn't complain about having a sore backside, or not having toilet stops for several hours.
• Toilet roll - for when you actually do find a bathroom.
• A towel - you can sit on this to ease your sore backside, and use it to dry you off after splashing about in rivers along the way.
• Sunscreen - the amount of times humans have ended up looking like lobsters because they "forgot the sunscreen" must be astronomical.
• Clothes - I would recommend two shirts and a pair of pants for the more brutish of our species, and a sundress, bikini, lingerie, tank top, shorts, jersey, t-shirt, jeans, high heels and make-up, all in a Louis Vitton bag, for the more sensible of our species. Not! Go as minimal as possible - you're the one who has to lug it around everywhere you go. Plus you're weighing down that 110cc scooter.
• Camera - and the charger.
• Mosquito spray - you think you know all about mosquitoes? Welcome to the world's most incomprehensibly mean mosquitoes. I think they lacked love growing up.
• A bad sense of direction - this talent proves to be invaluable when you find yourself parked at the top of a mountain exclaiming, "I've found the top of the world!"
• An easygoing nature - you're about to eat at places on the side of the road that will put all sorts of creatures on your plate, and you're about to stay at places where the ceiling drips brown goo - into your eye. You're probably also about to drink all night in a dodgy little bar when it's election weekend, and therefore drinking is temporarily banned. On top of that, you're going to come across hundreds of people trying to sell you all the same touristy junk they try and sell you in Chiang Mai. And because you forgot the sunscreen, you're going to be horribly grumpy and sunburnt. All in all, you've got to have taken a massive dose of chill pills when you were a teenager, and they're still busy working their way through your system now. Mai bpen rai, no worries, hakuna matata.

Enjoy the (many) photos from our trip to Mae Sai:

Wat Rong Khun, aka The White Temple, in Chiang Rai.