As we’ve only been up to north Thailand once since we’ve been here (once in 6 years for me), we thought that we should use this long July bank holiday to go up to Pai. Pai is in the north west of Thailand in the Mai Hon Son region and is famous for its relaxed feel and richness of culture. Due to Pai’s remote location, it was many years before this area, previously dominated by hill tribe people, was reached by the modern world of business and tourism. This makes it one of the more unusual areas in Thailand to visit. It has definitely retained some of its old world charm, even after becoming an increasingly popular backpacker hangout in the past few years. To get up to Pai, we took our new favourite mode of transport to Chiang Mai; the Thai first class cabin sleeper train. It wasn’t so punctual this time however, and we were 2 hours late before we even left the platform in Bangkok. Meant to leave at 7.30, instead we sat on the train for 2 hours not moving. This added to the normal Thai railway delays meant that rather than arriving at 8.30 the following morning, we ended up arriving at 12.30. This is more like standard practice than freak occurrence. It’s hard to get annoyed however, when you have a bed to lie on and the views are nice. Definitely beats being delayed in an airport anyway.
Once we arrived in Chiang Mai, we were supposed to meet up with a car hire representative. Those who have been to Chiang Mai train station know it has the standard gathering of touts that miraculously appear in every 3rd world country wherever you get tourists gathering. You have 10 people shouting 'taxi taxi!' at you, and just as many shouting ‘mini-bus', or 'tuk tuk’. After fighting your way through them with a cry of ‘Mi Owe’ (don’t want), you’re faced with the guest house touts and their ‘where you stays?’. It is really annoying, and you’re never given a chance to think. You always end up taking a deep breath, barging through, and becoming super rude. It also gives a those arriving a really bad impression of the locals in the area. Anyway, to stop ourselves getting as irrationally annoyed as usual, we thought we’d have some fun winding up the touts. Every time they came over to us shouting 'taxi' or 'tuk-tuk', we just repeated whatever they said. This got them really excited as they thought there luck was in. They all ran through the entrance following us. Sadly, after they all worked out what we were doing, and walked back annoyed, I made a spectacular fall down the front step (yes, that is in the singular form) and landed on my face in the dirt. Suppose some would call that Karma. Whatever it was, I ended up with stiff bruised knees and schoolyard scraped fingers for the rest of the trip.
We had been warned by many that the minibus journey from Chiang Mai to Pai is one of most tortuous ever, with more than 100 near hairpin bends on the way. We heard stories of domino affect vomiting and over cramped, steamy buses. For this reason we had decided to hire a car. We thought we had been really resourceful and found a great deal from a small Internet site, getting a jeep for about £10 a day. However when we arrived at the rental shop (pride still smarting from my graceful fall), we were advised that only moments before, the jeep we were supposed to hire had been involved in an accident, and our only other rental option was a pick up truck at nearly twice the price. This was told to us with the standard ‘Sorry, no have’ and Thai smile. When we refused to pay the extra price they miraculously found another jeep, covered in a tarpaulin in the backyard. They did however question it’s capabilities for getting us up the road to Pai, ‘were we sure we didn’t want the pick-up…?’
Not ones to enjoy an attempted rip off, we set off with Nick wrenching through the gears and wrestling with the unassisted steering. The car probably hadn’t moved for a long time and everything was extremely rusty and seized up. We had been advised repeatedly before departing that if we didn’t put water in the radiator every time we stopped, the engine would blow up. Fill us with confidence why don’t you.
Once Nick got hang of the car it wasn’t too bad. It did take us 3 hours instead of 2, and there were a few moments of concern when we searched for something lower than first gear to get us round some particularly steep bends. We were exhausted by the time we got to Pai, me from praying we would make it, Nick from heaving a very heavy car round over 100 bends. Not sure how the gear box survived either. When we arrived at the resort we parked the jeep, and it didn’t move again until we left. It was easier for us just to pay extra to hire a motorbike. Definitely a case of you get what you pay for.
One of the main reasons for going to Pai was to use it as training for our October treks in Nepal. There isn’t a hill to be found near Bangkok, and Pai has some great trekking. We also wanted to go tubing down the river (like a pub crawl on water apparently). We hadn’t really looked into the seasons too well, and we had no idea that we were going up for the start of the rainy season. It must have rained nearly 80% of the time we were there. Luckily we had booked into a really nice place so it didn’t matter that we ended up spending so much time chilling in the room. It had a huge day bed in the window overlooking a pond and the hills, so we got to appreciate the scenery without getting soaked. Shame I didn’t get to top up my tan by the pool though.
We did get out to do a few things. On the first night out in town we were given a flyer inviting people to come help at an organic farm planting rice. We went down the next day expecting some kind of cheesy guided tour where we would be dressed in wellies and given a few plants to stick in a muddy paddy, but we thought it’d be worth a go so we could tell the kids at school about it (they eat rice everyday and have very little concept of where it comes from). When we got there we found a self sufficient farm where tourists stayed and got cheap rooms for helping out. There weren’t many of us and we spent the morning pulling juvenile rice plants out a dry nursery area, to be planted into the paddy fields in the afternoon. We spent a few hours pulling up the plants but decided to call it a day early, as wading around in the muddy fields before site seeing didn’t seem like a good idea.
As the rain and cold put an end to the other planned activities (yes we are pathetic excuses for travelers, but I’m sorry we don’t have 6 months of bumming around to do, this was a weekend off work). We ended up just doing a lot of relaxing at the resort. On our last day there the rain cleared for long enough for us to go off exploring on the bike and see one of Pai’s many waterfalls. Even though we didn’t do much, the scenery is so nice there that it’s just cool to drive around and take in the views.
As a place to chill out and see a different kind of Thailand, Pai is well worth the arduous drive. I would however recommend checking out what season it is before you head up there. And paying for a car that is either automatic or has power steering, or even better, both.
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