A tasty piece of hippy Pai

Trip Start Sep 21, 2009
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Trip End Apr 10, 2010


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Where I stayed
Pairadise
(Pai hotels)

Flag of Thailand  , Chiang Mai,
Tuesday, March 30, 2010

The road to Pai must be one of the windiest in bendiness history! We both arrived quite nauseas after about 4 hours on the road. A quick phone call later and we were picked up by two scooters, one with a side-car for our luggage. The challenge with boarding any type of unfamiliar vehicle, whether it's longtail boat, tuk-tuk or side-carred scooter, is to do so with nimble ease - like the locals do. But more often than not you end up feeling like just another clumsy white boy. Gem didn't have the side car to contend with and therefore managed more grace than I. I, on the other hand, bumbled my way on, and then dismounted with equal measures of stumble, managing to burn my leg on the exhaust. I can only hope that, with his back turned, the driver had missed the shenanigans. Despite the painful pun, Pai-radise was beautiful - little bungalows set between coconut trees around a large pond. Gorgeous.

Pai, we soon discovered, was hippy central - a bit like being at a music festival
Mike in Pai
Mike in Pai
 
Comments!
. Plenty for dreadlocks, hippy sandals, the occasional tie-dye, bangles, ankle bracelets and europeans trying to pull off Thai fishemen trousers. When we arrived the town seemed overrun with europeans, but the balance redressed over the next few days. We suspect the early lack of locals was due to some holiday or other. The town was tiny and quite quaint, apparently just going through a small transformation as word spread and the tourists, mainly hippies, descended. We arrived in low-season and so it was also generally very quiet. This was our calm before the storm. Our peace before the frenzy of our homeward journey began, and we relished it. We did very little at all. The height of our activity involved hiring a scooter and making a trip around Pai's outlying villages and other attractions. We read, thought about what tasty Thai food we could try, ate, and generally did our hardest to do nothing.
 
We did witness some of the celebrations surrounding the monking (I'm not sure of the correct word) of several young children - open back trucks full of people banging gongs, with the soon-to-be-monk child dressed in colourful costume and headress. After four nights we were driven by the same means as our arrival, I mounted with far more skill having learned my lesson, and we were dropped off in town. There we were informed that our mini-bus driver had fallen ill and had been rushed to hospital the night before. So alternative plans had been made - a little Thai lady drove us with our luggage, one at a time, to the nearby bus station on her scooter. A sticker on her scooter read, 'Hippies Smell'. We boarded a minibus and headed back toward Chiang Mai. See you there ...    

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Comments

Joey on Apr 3, 2010 at 05:04PM

"Hippies smell" - ha-ha! That reminds me of a sign I saw on the Web once, being carried by a protester that read: "Homosexuals are GAY!"

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