July 15-18, Day 19-22
One of many quiet side streets in Pai.
Honestly, I hadn’t even heard of Pai until other travelers brought it up. A remote hippie town up in the north of Thailand that has fire shows and psychadelic mushroom shakes? Sure, sign me up.
After a stomach-churning 3.5 hour, 762 turn, breakneck-speed bus ride from Chiang Mai (thank god for Dramamine), I stepped out into this compact tourist town. It’s a common criticism that white and Chinese visitors outnumber locals and there are tons of western-style cafes, all-day breakfast spots, even burger places scattered through the streets here. (How many cows even exist in Thailand)? Add in a selection of bars for the partying hostel crowds and I can see why people who found this as an off-the-beaten-path haven before would dislike its newfound popularity.
Pai’s modest main street, which by night becomes lined with souvenir and snack vendors hawking a myriad of goods, including 10-cent meat skewers that you really don’t need because you ate dinner already but what the hell, why not eat two more when it’s that cheap?
After a few days here though, I can still really appreciate how chill the area is though - easily walkable, less crowded than Chiang Mai and Bangkok, and relaxed in a kinda hippie/Bohemian way. It also feels like a college town where everyone is walking the same few streets, so I constantly ran into people I met in previous cities.
I took it easy the first day and joined my hostel’s pub crawl by night, right on the main street. There was a Buddha holiday which prohibited alcohol sales for the next two days, to the lament of all the college kids who only had a few days in Pai, so people were going pretty hard. At 25, I’m oftentimes already one of the oldest people I meet at hostels. I feel even more ancient when I express indifference towards getting hammered every single day, but the bars were still decent with live music, beer pong, and cheap rum mixers abound.
As for the area around Pai, there are tons of nature sights to visit - waterfalls, canyons, rural villages, caves, so I rallied a few others to motorbike around and cross em off. I had qualms initially - the internet is full of information about Thailand as the second most dangerous country to ride in, police fining tourists without motorcycle and international licenses (which nobody has), and insurance not covering any potential damages. Seeing random 18-year-old tourists with no driving experience on the road with bandaged toes and arms alongside locals hauling three children at a time on a single bike didn’t help, BUT everyone assured me it was easy to learn in Pai and better than taking a tourist van around.
And they were right! I picked a rental place (Vespai) which provided a lesson on the side streets first, and being an experienced bicyclist made it easy to pick up. Coasting through the winding forest roads and overlooks was such a joy, despite the locals’ sometimes questionable road practices of swinging into the opposite lane on turns and aggressively passing on blind turns.
Successfully didn’t die or get arrested!
While the destinations were secondary to the journey itself, Tham Lod cave was a notable highlight. You follow a local guide with a lantern through three huge caverns. Commentary wasn’t detailed - he’d point and say things like ‘boob’ or ‘popcorn’ depending on what the rock looked like, followed by a gap-toothed smile, but the environment was breathtaking (literally suffocating at times). At one point you get on a pole-driven raft for a quick excursion into the light and back. The ride felt like being ferried across the River Styx into the Greek underworld.
See below for a few other Pai pics!
