Happy New Year!
Trip Start
Aug 29, 2009
1
38
46
Trip End
Ongoing
Pai, Thailand
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Arrived in Pai without a clue as to what I should expect. Some people told had told me it was chill and low key so I figured it'd be a cool place to spend a few days here. As I didn't know where to sleep, I stop two girls and ask them if they know of any good places. I follow them to their guesthouse, Golden Hut, which was the one I had picked arbitrarily out of my book. If I still believed in coincidences, this would have been one, but it was a sign. Kirsty is British and Neta is Israeli and I had a really good time with them over the last week. They encompass a level of laziness that I was yet familiar with and I quickly got used to their pace of life. We spent the majority of our days in hammocks, reading, talking and listening to music. The guesthouse is by the Pai river and had a little garden with palm trees and such. It was incredibly relaxing to literally do nothing for a while. The only two events worth mentioning besides relaxing and eating was renting motorbikes and New Yea's eve.
We rented motorbikes which was too much fun as I had never rode on one of them before. We had planned on each getting one, but after 5 minutes, Neta crashed hers in the middle of an intersection and refused to ever ride one again. So she climbed one with Kirsty and I had my own and we took off into the surrounding hills. We visited waterfalls and canyons surrounding Pai and it was really fun. There's something really liberating about riding in the open air around hills and valleys of northern Thailand. I was thoroughly happy.
New Year's eve we spent by the river, around a campfire. At midnight, everybody releases lanterns into the sky, which was amazing. With the full moon and thousands of floating lights in the sky, it was a truly memorable new year's eve...for the most part before the drink got a hold of me. As everyone else around the world, we drank a lot and made merry. A bridge over the river collapsed and we had to hop across it in order to avoid falling in the river. I was molested by a Thai girl who would not leave me alone and insisted that I have sex with her. I pushed her off me, said I had to pee and fled the premises without looking back. She was crazy and gross.
A side on Pai: It's THE biggest tourist destination for Thai people. The streets are crowded, and I mean CROWDED, will hordes of Thai tourists. They are so unbelievably corny, it's disgusting. They all wear stupid hats with animal heads on them. They all buy the most ridiculous souvenirs. By souvenirs I mean shitty trinkets that only a spastic imbecile would find entertaining like miniature Pai villages, I love Pai t-shirts etc. They take pictures of everything; every store they shop at, every item of food they eat. They stop in the middle of crowds to take photos and throw up peace signs. It's unbearable. They are the most slappable people I have ever met.
I'm off to Chiang Rai tomorrow to start my volunteering program. I'll be doing construction work instead of teaching English. We'll see how that goes.
