Pai in Love

This past weekend we continued our travel outside of Hang Chat by visiting the town of Pai, which is a little over 4 hours northwest of us, up in the mountains. To get there we had to take a bus to Chiang Mai and then a van from Chiang Mai to Pai. The road from Chiang Mai to Pai is famous for its 762 curves…meaning Emily and I were crammed into a 13 passenger van speeding around 762 sharp turns on narrow, steep roads for 3 hours. We had read online that the trip often causes passengers to get sick…and we were so very lucky to witness this in our own van. The girl was very dainty and Thai about it though, because I didn’t even notice it was happening. In any case, Emily and I kept our eyes closed for most of the trip to avoid doing the same.

Our trip started off on the wrong foot when one of the seats we bought for the van to Pai had also been accidentily sold to another person. Of course since we are foreigners we had to be the ones to wait and take another van. After the two hours we had to wait for that van, we had to wait another two hours to get on a van with available seats. We were saying that if the same situation had happened in America, both of our tickets would have been refunded and we probably would have been given free tickets to ride the bus in the future. In Thailand, you get one of your tickets refunded (which only saved us about $2 each) along with a big smile and apology...fine, we’ll take it.

To set the scene…the best word to describe Pai is “chill”. Everything and everyone is extremely relaxed and it’s a bit hippiesque. It’s also small enough that you can walk just about anywhere and it seems to exist entirely for tourists, with the downtown full of shops and restaurants all geared towards visitors. Most people were extremely friendly and everyone seemed to know one another, even if they’d only been in town for a couple of days. Emily and I quickly found out the truth in this when, after just one night in town, we started recognizing people the next morning while we were walking around. The man driving by on the motorbike was the guy who had played guitar at the bar the night before and the girl dancing by the stage had previously been our waitress. It became almost comical as we found ourselves waving to people and had people coming up to us asking us if we were going to be at a certain place again that night. It was certainly a very homey place. People are so at home, in fact, that many even wore sweatpants and ski hats to the bars…where you sit outside on pillows by fires and listen to live music under the stars. Perfection.

When we finally arrived in Pai it was already dark and we still hadn't found a place to stay. The other couple weekends that we have traveled we have called the guesthouses listed in Lonely Planet (our Bible) the day before we arrive, but when we tried this for Pai they all said that they were full. We decided we would just have to walk around when we got there, guesthouse by guesthouse, asking if they had room. We quickly realized why it was so impossible to find a room…the town was completely packed! There were so many people squeezed in the streets that our van could hardly get through. We got dropped off randomly on the side of one of these busy streets and started looking for a place to stay. It was a pretty pathetic scene as we got turned away, one place after the next. We were informed that Pai only became so touristy, especially with Thais themselves, two or three years ago when two Thais films were made there, causing a lot of people to want to visit (“Pai in Love” was one of these movies, hence the blog title, and the fact that we fell in love with Pai!). Long story short: we ended up staying across a river and up a dirt hill will no street lights (thank goodness for my new flashlight purchase) in a little village of “bungalows” aka camping 5 feet off the ground. It was not what we were hoping for, but we had no other options unless we wanted to sleep on benches.

For all our trouble getting to and finding a place to stay in Pai we rewarded ourselves with cheeseburgers for dinners. We usually try not to eat Western food as it is more expensive and kind of pathetic to do while you’re in a country with such great local food, but that night it was necessary! After dinner, we stopped for a quick drink at a bar with a live band full of random old Thai men. They happened to be on their last song when we arrived and ended up talking with us after. Somehow the lead singer, Nong, who wore dark glasses even though it was dark, scheduled Emily to sing a song with the band the next night. He was just our first of many new Pai friends.

On Friday, we woke up early in hopes that we would beat other travelers to the guesthouses to find a more suitable place to stay for the next two nights. Luckily, after a hearty breakfast of banana pancakes with honey (which seems to be the only thing we order whenever they are on the menu), some good luck came our way and we found a lovely guesthouse called “Mr. Jan’s” that happened to have just one empty room. We almost jumped on poor old Mr. Jan we were so thankful to have found a nice place without much trouble. The funniest part was that when we arrived, a sign was hanging up that said “FULL”. Thankfully, we decided to check just to be sure.

Next, we decided to take a trip out to the hot springs we had read about. I did some Wikipedia’ing upon return home and I found out, if anyone is uninformed like we were, that hot springs are like any other natural spring, but the water in them is heated deeper in the Earth’s core than the water in cold water springs. The deeper water seeps into the Earth’s crust, the higher temperature it reaches as it comes into contact with hot rocks. Ok, enough science for one post. There are no traditional taxis in Pai, but instead motorbikes that are driven by people with yellow vests that say “Taxi”. It made for a thrilling ride as we drove about 15 minutes up and down hills that were surrounded by beautiful fields and mountains.

We ended up being the only foreigners at the springs, which meant we were the only ones in bathing suits. For some reason, Thai people refuse to buy bathing suits. It may have to do with their modesty, but they take it a little far…they won’t even wear shorts and a tank top but usually don long pants and shirts. In any case, the hot springs were super relaxing. It was just like being in a big hot tub. We even saw a Thai family using the springs as an actual bath, bringing soap to clean their naked toddlers.

The next activity on the docket was Yoga with “Mama” (pictured above). Holy cow was this lady on another planet, but she was certainly entertaining. She was in her 60’s, a half Thai, half Indian wonder, with a weave of long hair down her back and anklets that jingled as she walked. We entered her “studio” to find it absolutely covered in tchotchkes, beads, and tapestries along with dozens and dozens of pictures of herself from her younger years when she was a model (her glory days). Her age didn’t hold her back from doing some pretty impressive yoga moves, though. It was a two hour session but half of the time we were supposed to be meditating, during which time Mama would mysteriously disappear, probably to finish some household chores. Mama’s cat was also participating in the yoga, occasionally sitting in our laps and rubbing up against us while we were twisted into pretzel positions. After yoga, it was snack time. It had been advertised on the signs Mama hung up around town that her lessons came with a free Indian meal. We may have to report her for false advertising as all we got were Thai rice cakes and oranges, but she did make up for it with her bizarre life advice. Some of her topics included: how to get rid of a hangover, a.k.a. “how to make bad day into good day” and how we shouldn’t slouch because not only will we develop bad backs but we are also causing the fat in our stomach to put pressure on our internal organs which will make us ill (questionable logic…).

That night we made sure to go back to the bar Emily was scheduled to sing at. As a warm-up, she sang “Jolene” with a younger English guitar player, and it sounded just lovely. I did my non-karaoke-loving friend duty by taping all of her performances. Her first song with the band, “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, also went well, but three songs in one night up may have been pushing her luck, so as Emily said about her rendition of “Country Roads, Take me Home”, “We only watch that video without audio”. Emily demanded we leave the bar after that, although I told her no one seemed to notice she wasn’t exactly in tune…c’mon, it’s Pai, no worries!

We continued to bar hop and met lots of interesting people, we even busted out our Thai dictionary to entertain some locals with our horrible pronunciation, the word “superman” being our favorite as its Thai translation is “poo-mee-um-nahd-lae-kawhm-sah-mahd-nur-ma-nood”. Riiiight.

The next day was an early one as we were going “white water” rafting. I feel like I’m always using quotation marks when describing things here, but this is due to the fact that almost everything we do ends up being totally different than what we were expecting. Translation: we thought we would actually be seeing some “white water” on our trip. To explain, Thailand has a wet season that lasts from June to October, and for the other months of the year it almost never rains. Therefore, since it has been 2 months since the rainy season ended, water levels in the rivers have gone down by about 6 feet. White water rafting quickly turns into paddling yourself down a river in a raft. During wet season, the trip, which is a 25 mile stretch, takes only 4 hours to complete, but it took us over 7 hours because the current was so much slower. This meant it was up to Emily and I, the Thai couple with us, and our guide, Taka, to paddle almost the entire 25 miles, give or take a few small currents that pushed us along. Although near the end of the trip there was some action, with faster currents and some small drops. Overall, we were taken by surprise at how much of a workout we ended up getting. We decided that if we were ever asked if we had been white water rafting, our response would be: “We thought we were going this one time in Thailand…”

That night we continued making our rounds. At first, we tried randomly choosing places that we thought looked cool, but they were all empty. Then we started talking to an American girl around our age who informed us that everyone goes to “BeBop” to start the night off and listen to live music until 1:00 AM and then moves on to “Bamboo” until whenever they can’t stay awake anymore, as it doesn’t close until the last person leaves…supposedly. Once we went to the bars in the Pai nightlife “line-up” we actually began seeing other people and making more friends to wave to around town. At BeBop, Emily got to sing yet again. This time as a back-up singer with a couple of Thai girls who Emily said were hogging the mic, rude. The band she sang with had a lead singer with an awesome voice…he is supposedly semi-famous in Australia.

Overall, our weekend in Pai was very busy. We left on Sunday morning after another banana pancake and hugs from all our new friends who told us they would be awaiting our return. As Emily put it, “People were sadder to see us leave Pai after 3 days than they were to see us leave America...", a bit of an exaggeration, don’t worry, we know you miss us, but it was a good, relaxing weekend with some very friendly people. If you made it this far, God bless you for reading this super long post!