We’ve spent the last five days in Pai and we’ve absolutely fallen in love with this little town. A short three hour van ride around 762 curves up the mountain from Chiang Mai to Pai was well worth it. It’s been such a welcomed change of pace from the two cities; since arriving, we’ve mostly just been relaxing by the pool and enjoying the mountain’s cooler weather.

On a quick side note, we’ve been updating our Flickr account with all the pictures we’ve been taking, whether they made it onto our blog posts or not. Feel free to peruse here!

Touching down in Pai, we rented a motorbike right away (140 baht a day, $4.50 CAD) so we could drive around and find a nice hostel. We usually only spend We stumbled upon Chang Pai Resort, a bunch of little bamboo bungalows with a pool, tucked away just one minute from the town center. A bungalow to ourselves cost 350 baht ($12 CAD) a night with AC.

It’s safe to say that the view in Pai is absolutely stunning. You can get to waterfalls, canyons, caves, and temples all in under 20 minutes by bike, and you can walk everywhere in town. At night, there’s a market lining the main streets with the cheapest and best street food we’ve encountered. Everyone in Pai takes life slowly, so we spent most of our days swimming and sunbathing with our Irish friends, Jane and Brian (hi guys!).

The Pai Canyon was a 10 minute drive out of town and was both scary and breathtaking. Luke and Brian had fun hiking atop the narrow canyon ridges, while Jane and I tried not to watch nervously. The sun was absolutely scorching on the canyon but you really couldn’t beat the view.

 

After that, we all headed to the Pembok Waterfall. Although it was the furthest drive from town that we took, it was only a small hike after you park your motorcycle. We explored the waterfall that was nestled inside of the rock cliffs, creating a half cave. The water was refreshing after nearly baking in the canyon. Luke and Brian got excited about climbing the rocks and doing back flips into the water while Jane and I watched on.

By now we felt fairly hungry, so we biked back down to ‘the land split’. This split is a piece of land on a farm where the farmer says that one day in 2008 he woke up to a massive fissure running through his property. Each year the crack grows, and new ones are created. He’s placed year markers atop each ridge and crevice, showing the progression.

Since most of his land is no longer useful for farming, it has become a tourist spot, where the woman serve roselle juice and a spread of snacks. Luke and I tried a passionfruit for the first time! It was delicious, and so was the juice. They also provided peanuts, lady finger bananas, boiled potatoes with salt, and a small bottle of roselle wine. They worked only on a donation system, so if you stop by make sure to give what you think is fair. Given that a small lunch in town would have cost us 30-40 baht, we gave accordingly.

On our way back to town, we stopped by the famous Pai coffee house, Coffee In Love, for an iced latte and a piece of cheesecake. You can’t beat the view from the patio, so if you’re ever in Pai make sure to take a second to stop and have a coffee.

Since everything in Pai was so close, we had time for one more stop at the Buddha on a hill. The sun was still out in full force, so walking up all the stairs to get to the Buddha nearly melted us. Once at the top however, it was well worth it. As we’ve been finding with Buddhist temples, they’re almost always located on real estate with incredible views of the city.

Later that evening, we did our nightly tradition of street food and walking through the market. Luke and Brian tried baked locust, crickets, grasshoppers, and larvae, which didn’t go over so well. After about two each, they gave up on the rest. Jane and I walked from store to store trying to find the perfect postcards to send home. There are a bunch of shops in Pai that allow you to buy a post-card and stamp right there, sit down to write the postcard, and mail it, all in-store. Very cute! We developed a bit of a postcard addiction…

We managed to squeeze so much into our visit to Pai that at this point, I’m going to have to summarize most of it. Some highlights: tea in bamboo shoot cups at the market (30 baht for the cup and tea, then 10 baht for every refill), thai massages, sunbathing, more iced coffee, finding the best pizza in Thailand, and playing Jenga while sipping Mojitos and Mai Thais in a little deep-house lounge.

It’s with a heavy heart that we split up with our travel companions Brian and Jane. They’re staying behind in Pai to finish a Thai massage course while Luke and I move on to Laos by slow boat. With plans to meet up again, I guess it’s just goodbye for now to our “savage” friends from Ireland. It’s been a gas!

– S & L