My time in Pai wasn't nearly long enough as it is a common place where people find difficult leaving. Away from the loud tuk tuks and thick pollution Chiang Mai had, this place immediately grabbed me with its laid back vibe and peaceful atmosphere.
The bus ride from Chiang Mai from Pai has been notorious to induce a lot of chundering because of the windy roads up the mountain and crazy Thai bus drivers. So I equipped myself with some anti-nausea pills and was passed out the entire ride whereas the other girls on my bus had to throw up at a rest stop. Ben, my friend from Berlin I met in Chiang Mai and trekked with came with me because he has never heard of Pai and wanted to check it out. AREN'T YOU GLAD YOU DID, BEN? We checked into Darling's Viewpoint, the best place to stay in Pai with a great view of the sunset as well with a great social environment.
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| View from Darling. Sorry for the shit quality. |
The next few days we met up with Cesar from the Chiang Mai trek and explored the nightlife. Seems like everyone who bums around Pai is doing some fire poi or hula hooping, or doing tricks with some shiny ball. They practice during the day and we see them performing at night.
Cesar and I wanted to check out Lod Cave that is about 50km north of Pai, close to the Myanmar border so we left early in the morning on a scooter but ran into a problem when the police stopped us because Cesar wasn't wearing a helmet. No international license? Fine. No helmet? 600 bht fine and you are on your way. The ride was incredible, I got to see the beautiful scenery as we were winding up and down the mountain road. After about an hour we got to the cave. It was around 500 bht to hire a tour guide that would take us to the three caves via kerosene lamp. We entered the cave by bamboo raft where I bought a bag of fish food to feed to the fish that swam along with us. All our tour guide did was point to certain things and say, "look like crocodile/bear/buddha/corn/flower" so we would look and go "ah, yes." And so on but the cave was massive and I was just drooling over all of the different rock formations. After the cave we stopped by a little town on the way back to Pai to have lunch, there was absolutely no tourists so it was nice.
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| Cesar |
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| Our guide |
As much as I wanted to stay in Pai, it was time to move on to a new country, Laos! So I booked a 2 day slow boat ticket into Laos. Even as I was leaving Darling Viewpoint, I was so tempted to just turn back and stay. It is always hard leaving a place, especially Pai.
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