Tag Archives: pai

Thailand’s greatest hits

Bangkok ⇨ Ko Phangan ⇨ Ko Tao ⇨ Bangkok ⇨ Pai ⇨ Chiang Mai

Thailand was different. The plan was to have a neat one-month vacation with great food and zero stress, but I ended up being ill most of the time. First mysterious fever with cough, then ear infection, which produced one of the most intense pain I have ever experienced and finally a biking accident with a lot of scratches. One month in Thailand and 80% of the time was spent being sick with two kinds of antibiotics, a variety of painkillers and a myriad of ear drops.

Fortunately the destinations we picked were chill enough to spend time being sick comfortably. Haad Yuan was magical as always. The common theme of this season was an invasion of Full Moon bucketheads in neon colored t-shirts. Half of the beach is already lost to full mooners and who knows where this development will lead further. The plan to build a dividing wall across the beach was hatched, which received enthusiastic support from regulars, but nothing ever materialised. Maybe next season then.

Ko Tao has not changed at all from the last time. It seems Sairee beach had reached its full potential for fitting in more resorts and restaurants and the end product is enjoyable despite its touristic nature. I could not go diving because of the ear infection, but did not feel sad about it, which finally convinced me that scuba diving was not my cup of tea. Oh well, there are a myriad of other things to enjoy in this life.

Pai has considerably changed since the last time three years ago. New resorts have been built and more are on the way. Now Pai is dominated by rowdy American teenagers and even more Chinese tourists. I had a horrible vision what if in the near future it will become a boutique destination with excellent shopping and eating options aimed at catering Chinese tourists en masse. In the end the most important thing that matters to local businesses is who brings the most money. In the contest of poor white hippies and wealthy upper middle class from China, the winner is clear. Thankfully for now the chilled out lovely atmosphere is still there. People are friendly and easy-going, food is great and live music is somewhere every night. What else could you wish? Pai could be fully enjoyed only for one day, after which we spent the rest of the time recovering from the biking accident in the 40°C heat. Not an ideal way to spend a holiday or treat wounds by any means, but what you can do…

Thailand has never been that rough, as if it was sending a message: you are not welcomed this time. Coincidentally a lot of time was spent in discussions about the real nature of Thai friendliness. Whether “the land of thousand smiles” is authentic in its smiles or whether it is just a cultural mask that stems from the fear to lose one’s face. Anyhow Thailand is still my favourite destination in South East Asia. No bad feelings.

Bangkok by night

Bangkok by night

Bangkok's own superstar Chapi checking out the situation.

Bangkok’s own superstar Chapi checking out the situation.

Sunrise at the Donsak pier before boarding a ferry to Koh Phangan.

Sunrise at the Donsak pier before boarding a ferry to Koh Phangan.

Wai Nam beach, Koh Phangan.

Wai Nam beach, Koh Phangan.

Coconut wisdom.

Coconut wisdom.

Somewhere between Haad Yao and Wai Nam, Koh Phangan.

Somewhere between Haad Yao and Wai Nam, Koh Phangan.

The rainy Koh Tao.

The rainy Koh Tao.

Sairee beach, Koh Tao

Sairee beach, Koh Tao

Nang Yuan beach at Koh Tao

Nang Yuan beach at Koh Tao

Arguably the best picture I took in Thailand

Arguably the best picture I took in Thailand

A magic shop in Pai

A magic shop in Pai

A creepy installation, Pai.

A creepy installation, Pai.

Pai river

Pai river

And its dog

And its dog

The proof of sending postcards from Pai

The proof of sending postcards from Pai

Witching Well restaurant in Pai.

Witching Well restaurant in Pai.

Kep kep kep

Kep is only 25km from Phu Quoc by sea, but there is no sea link between two places. It took me the whopping 8 hours to go from Phu Quoc to Kep with a stopover at Ha Tien. It was all good though, as I planned leaving Ha Tien by evening bus spending the day walking around Ha Tien. There was no evening bus, so I had to leave in the afternoon and made it to Kep earlier than planned despite all the delays. Fast travelling is certainly not one of the strong points of Vietnam or Cambodia.

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Absolutely everything about Kep is just lovely. It is very Fengshui friendly – there is sea, there is a beach, there are mountains. There is sunset over the sea. It is quiet and far away from maddening crowds. Even the Birthday of the King and influx of local tourists did not break the tranquility of the place. It is very green and Kep National Park is most enjoyable, despite that Lonely Planet has to say about it. Buildings are pretty and architecture is a blend of French and Khmer styles. Abandoned buildings from the French era steadily get overtaken by the jungle and add charm to the overall prettiness of Kep. Back in the day Kep used to be a seaside resort for the French elite, but the civil war put an end to that. Now the grandeur of the past is slowly returning back and indeed many if not most of the visitors are French speaking expats. The atmosphere is laid-back and somewhat Pai like, even the names sound similar. Kep, Pai. Pai, Kep. The bungalow in Treetop is probably the nicest of all I have stayed in during my travels. A basic bamboo hut, but spacious and with a touch of style. Seven bucks a night with a bathroom next door. Located in the midst of a fruit garden and guarded by jungle laden mountains on one side. It is a mango season too. Five mangos for 25c from a market or free ones from the garden delivered by the force of gravity. I love Kep.

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Apart from mangos in season, Kep is rather expensive. Especially when it comes to food and especially after Vietnam. A 6$ breakfast buffet at Veranda, a castle like luxurious resort, fully compensated high prices at other places, though. Shame that I went there only once. Kep’s very own specialty, green pepper crab is most excellent and worth the high price. There is even a grotesque statue of the crab in the center. On a similar note, there are weird statues all over Cambodia. Giant crabs and chicken, nagas and multi-handed gods carrying proletariat tools in each hand. Cambodia is different.

Kep has a magic shop selling beads run by Stefan, a very charming French man in his forties. Big life experience, no formal education, tons of different jobs and traveling. Plus irresistible charisma only the French are masters of. I was lured there by a flyer and ended up having three days of profound conversations and one self-made bead necklace. Who would have though that bead shops could be so much fun and excitement. He relayed me his life story and told that people tend to make radical changes, when they approach the decade change. Indeed, now looking back at my life, I moved out of my parents’ house and started independent life, when I was 18. Now I am 28 and I quit job to become a dharma bum. Maybe, the next dramatic change at the age of 38?

Easy Rider

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At the the age of 28, I rode a motorized vehicle for the first time in my life. I chose Pai for a maiden voyage, because of its low trafic, excellent roads and scenic views. I was tempted to ride a motorbike on Koh Phangan and Koh Tao, but poor condition of roads, extremely hilly terrain and a high number of accidents put me off. I did not have a chance to explore the islands (taxis are expensive there), but personal safety is far more important. Learning process was surprisingly easy. The first attempt: an automatic bike, a crash course into basics, extremely slow driving. On the second ride I drove more than 100km in one day and the third rida was a nighttime driving with a passenger on the backseat. On the fourth try I switched to a manual gear bike and rode in somewhat busy traffic of Chiang Rai. Much more intense than sleepy roads of Pai, but nothing extraordinary. The learning curve for a manual gear bike was a little bit steeper, but essentially it is just like a bicycle with gears, except that you do not have to do all the hard work. Then I had a chance to test substandard Laos dirt roads with a passenger on the backseat too. That followed by an 185km ride from Tha Kaek to Kong Lor cave and back the next day with a passenger on a backseat. And finally a three day tour around Bolaven Plateau. The highlight was riding 71km on a dirt-road after heavy raining the night before. It took almost four hours of very intense and cautious driving. When we hit the paved road and I thought the hardest part was over, the final 45km ride to Pakse proved even more intense than the dirt road part. Darktime driving, crappy light, millions of wasps aiming for the eyes, wandering dogs, a very agitated snake on the road and finally busy traffic of Pakse. At some point it started feeling like a computer game progressing from one level to another and ever-growing intensity. The weirdest thing was three people on a tandem bicycle appearing out of the blue. No accidents nor near-death experiences.

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I remember reading an article about Saudi women and how they were not allowed to drive cars. Saudi women have been trying to obtain rights to drive in the recent years, but the Saudi patriarchy resist these motions, as the right to drive is closely linked to freedom of movement and subsequently emancipation. Having learnt to drive a motorbike, I can fully relate to that. Being independent from public transit, overpriced taxis or own physical capabilities is truly liberating. Distances which are too long for walking or cycling are easily doable with a motorbike. After a couple of days on a motorbike in Pai, I rented a mountain bicycle just to see how it was. The lesson I learned here was that going 6km uphill in the +30C heat was not an enjoyable task by any means. A similar thing happened in Vang Vieng, I had a chance to compare to a) a crappy bicycle b) a less crappy bicycle c) and a motorbike. The motorbike came out as a winner here as well.

Life in Pai (Part 2)

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I spent nine day on Koh Tao not meeting any people or feeling like socializing. It was fine, I did not mind. Pai was the exact opposite for me. Everybody seemed to be on the same wavelength and meeting people was effortless. You just walk on the street and strike a conversation with a stranger. Instant friends for life. Even before arriving to Pai, I met a bunch of people on the way thanks to hitchhiking. While most places are dominated by Swedish, Pai is different. No Svenska here, but Dutch are the majority, followed by Germans. There are a lot of Russians too. Not your typical package-trip type, but apparently a down-shifter crew from Goa. There are surprisingly many Finns as well. In fact I met more Finnish people in the span of two days in Pai than during half a year of my travels. Funny that. One of the most interesting encounters was Anna from Helsinki. It turned out that we share a bunch of mutual friends and I had been several times to the commune flat she lives in, never meeting her before though. It is a small world.

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While most tourist places are catered to Western junk food, Pai’s speciality is healh-freak restaurants. Vegetarian, vegan, raw food – make your pick. There is a small restaurant called Link, where they prepare everything from scratch, including picking up vegetables from the garden. A meal can take up to an hour to prepare (considering it is one woman operation), but the end result is well worth it. Then there is Witching Well with its selection of exotic herbal teas and raw foods. My favorite one, though, is Good Life. A charismatic restaurant owned by a Ukrainian man Kostya, who made Pai his permanent home. Some of the specialities they offer include bortsh, kombucha tea (a fungus that turns tea into a fermented drink), a wide selection of fancy teas, wheatgrass shots and so on. Not your average selection of pad thai and fried rice. Add good music and an impressive library (I snatched Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) and you have got a recipe for a perfect restaurant. On top of that, the owner does vipassana retreats once in a while in a forest temple not so far away. And all that in a small town lost in the mountains of Northern Thailand!

Pai’s nightlife is versatile, but yet tranquil, without a messy touch. Live jazz and acoustic music is on every night and proper jungle all-nighters are twice a month. And if that is not enough, there are always things going on here and there. The personal highlight was the art-gallery/installation/live music event at Baan Pittalepew. I did not know anything about it and had no expectations apart from “a bar with live music”. What I found was a massive open-air space with an art gallery, a gigantic bonfire, quirky but quality live music and dance/yoga performances. Mind. Blown. Just like a mini-version of Fusion with a Thai flavor. On top of that it was the season closing and also my last day in Pai. It made me really happy that I had not left Pai two days earlier as I had planned to. Talk about excellent timing.

Life in Pai (Part 1)

Lazy. Quiet. Slow. There is no sense of time. After a day here you are not sure anymore for how long you have been in Pai. A day, two, maybe more? No idea, nor it really matters. There is nothing much to do, nor anything has to be done. Doing my laundry by hand proved to be beyond my abilities. Same with writing this blog. I naively thought I would have had plenty of time to do lazy day things like writing the blog, watching movies and such, but Pai proved to be even lazier than that. Writing this entry a week later after leaving Pai, I am still feeling the effects of this profound laziness.

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So what is the deal with Pai? Pai is a small sleepy village 150km north-west from Chiang Mai and 450m above the sea level. Elevation results in chill evenings and even cold nights. A thick blanket and hot water are must have. There are scenic waterfalls and caves, rivers and hills, hot springs and a canyon showing its best around the sunset time. The most stunning waterfall, Mae Yen, takes two and half hours to reach through the jungle (one way), but the view is well worth it. Lod cave is some 50km away from Pai, located near Sappong village is rather impressive too. Home to hundreds of bats and swallows, dark and large to the extent that there is a low oxygen sign deep in the cave. And indeed after some time spent there, I got a long-lasting headache. Local nature does not look tropical at all, but rather resembles taiga around autumn. Rather moderate, red-yellowish and abundance of the jungle is nowhere to be found. Must be the dry season.

Some words should be said about accommodation. I stayed in Baan Pai Riverside on the other side of Pai river. Very basic, cheap and tranquil. 150 baht for a bamboo bungalow or add 100 baht extra for a view on the river, a hammock and extra noise. Privacy and security are only an illusion. It is very quiet, unless somebody has a conversation. You can perfectly hear what your neighbors few bungalows away talk about. Bungalows are sometimes broken in, valuables are better to be stored at the reception. Bungalows are very basic, made entirely of bamboo (no wood) and some concrete on the floor in the toilet. There is no bed, only a mattress on the floor and a mosquito net. Ants are literally everywhere with toilet bowl being their favorite spot. Other inhabitants include huge spiders, frogs and slugs. That is ok, though. I did not mind, especially for this price. On the other hand there is hot water (actually hot), soap (!), toilet paper (!!) and even shampoo (!!!). In a nutshell, a very charming place, never mind all the downsides.