Chiang Mai to Pai and back again: 8th to the 18th September
Where were we? Well, it's almost time to go so while I'm waiting for Samart to pick me up before we board the night train to Bangkok (he's heading off to work and I'm off to play but considering his job as a tour guide, it's much the same thing), let me fill you in...
I think my last post was after Pai, first time round, so that leaves 10 days and these 10 days have been some of the best of my trip – great places, great people, great weather and great night life. I adore North Thailand! It was nearly two weeks ago in Pai that Hannah and I shared a huge night with the locals and then a bus back to Chiang Mai, where we thought we would spend a couple of days with Logan before I travelled South and she crossed to Laos but after a crazy weekend back, with an amazing trek-style picnic by the lake thanks to Samart and his tour guide mates, we were all getting ready to say goodbye and a new plan emerged (no doubt after a few Chang beers) and the next day Hannah and I found ourselves back on that bus for our second servings of Pai. What can I say? It's all so tempting and I'm all for giving in. So back we went. Logan skipped Friday's school and joined us for the weekend, we were back on the river overlooking the mountains for £4 a night and it was all feeling pretty good. Bring it on! One thing though, if you Google Pai you get hits like yoga, vegetarian and wheatgrass and if that's what you fancy then sure, there's enough of it here but avoiding alcohol in Pai would as easy as avoiding casinos in Vegas. Simply put, Pai has fitted into four streets some of the best vibes and the coolest bars than anywhere I have ever been. You can have mojitos in bamboo huts by the river, beers on wooden stools by the road, organic wines in a hippy café, tequila slammers in a bar called Crazy (Ting Tong in Thai) and you can do it all until 4am on a tenner. Detox? I don't think so.
The 6 days back there felt somewhere between going home and going to your favourite holiday place and it was amazing to wake up under the mosquito net again to the sound of the river and the occasional hippy playing guitar, despite having to wake up on what can only be described as a wooden mattress. We have brunch around noon in the bamboo restaurant and then pass the afternoons slowly with a lot of laughs, a lot of sun and a lot of evenings of Siamsato. This stuff was a discovery and a half – if I could read Thai then I would explain exactly what it is but basically we think it's some kind of rice wine, served in pint beer bottles and costing an impressive 45p and as an extra bonus, its borderline delicious! This reduced our evenings (generally lasting well into the mornings) to less than £2 so even the budget is happy! And we woke up feeling fresh so we fitted in the canyon, a stunning waterfall (where a local washes my hair – guess it looked dirty...) and a lot of easy meanderings around the town. The pattern falls quickly and within days we have a favourite restaurant where we eat Thai curries and wait for the late afternoon rain to pass before heading to our favourite little stools on the road at Chai's bar. There's our favourite internet cafe, favourite food store and favourite book shop and if we can't be bothered going far then the hostel restaurant covers it all and then if we've left it too late then the lady at the end of our road sells grilled corn on the cob. All this and nothing is more than £2. It's easy to see how people have been here for years. But, the inevitable happens, for a town that has mail delivered on a local bus at the feet of the passengers, supplies are not frequent and we run out of Siamsato. With all our advertising of the stuff to anyone who would listen, I suppose you could say we drank the place dry. Time to go? Well actually, Logan has to get back to school and Hannah and I have essentially spent the best part of 2 weeks on 2 little streets so perhaps we better move on before we become some of those self indulgent weirdoes that I mentioned in the last post. Second servings are always good but we're watching our lifestyles so for now, this is definitely enough Pai.
And so it's back to Chiang Mai, we catch a local bus by minutes (after a slightly worrying discovery that all minibuses are booked out – guess people are proactive in Pai after all) and spend the next 4 hours in tropical rain being driven over a mountain in a rusty biscuit tin on wheels. The indicator is a man leaning out the door, which doesn't close, and the other passengers are a mixture of people who constantly offer us slightly stale biscuits (you shouldn't say no in Thailand), wear balaclavas and balance Honda cloths on their heads. It's an experience anyway but it's nice to get back to Logan's place (where we're bunking 3 to a bed) and back to an ever so slightly more subdued (but still fun packed) Chiang Mai.
...So that was four days ago. In that time we marked our weeks together with ear piercings, after being advised by a tattooed monk in a backstreet bar of a good place to go - how could you not trust that? Logan and I had the tops of our ears pierced with the earring directly and Hannah essentially had the side of her head pierced. Of course, we took our stunned bodies for a quick chemist trip for some alcohol and cotton buds and amazingly, they are all fine and looking good! We also fitted in a trip to Samart's land in the country, an elephant ride, a museum and a night in so we did pretty well I think. And now here I am, it's 10am and I've been up for 4 hours, said two notable goodbyes to Logan and Hannah and packed once more for the journey to Bangkok. I have that bitter sweet end of a party feeling: where you don't want to go but you know it's coming to an end and it might be best to leave while you're still having such a great time - so it's with mixed feelings about leaving and nothing but great memories that I can recommend the following: if you do one part of Thailand, do the North and if you do trekking, do www.travelwithjoethailand.com. You won't regret a second of it.
