A Slice of Pai, Thailand

Pai is a small town in the northerny north bit of Thailand. It's full of bad pun restaurants like "Pai in the Sky". Because it's up in the hills you get baked during the day and shiver at night if you only packed t-shirts. We stayed for 2 weeks there - which means we're probably more like settlers than travelers.

The road to Pai...

...is 762 curves of woo! A savvy business called Aya in Chiang Mai lets you rent a little motorbike and drop it back at their office in Pai so that you can enjoy the hills. They even take your luggage in one of their breakneck speed minibuses which will be in Pai long before you get there.

The road is generally good with the odd yawning pothole and slow moving pig wagon. It's about 3 to 5 hours depending how often you stop to gape at mountain scenery.

Woo!

What kind of Pai?

Pai has a tasty filling of hippies and eco-warriors, garnished with riverside bamboo huts, herbal tea cafes and sleeping dogs. The pace of life is extremely leisurely.

This sums up Pai

The expat community is big enough to get home comforts like fig rolls and lasagne; and if it's your birthday, and you're so inclined, then you can buy a guitalele from Boy's music shop.

Pai by night. Pai by day.

What else is on the overstretched metaphorical plate next to the Pai?

Well, there's a big white Buddha on a hill over looking the town and there is Pai Canyon which is an astonishing geological oddity with an unsettling lack of fences.

"Fences, please" - Jon

There's also Piranha Fishing Park which has a lake of genuine imported teethy fish (or so we're told) among others. Us first time fishers found the supposedly relaxing pastime quite intense as Jon caught two huge (non-teethy) fishes in two hours - both of which required me to net the fish, take the hook out their mouths with pliars and release back to be caught again. Amusingly one of them managed to slime Jon's new trousers on the way down.

We used human toes exclusively for bait

Other attractions like waterfalls and hot springs were not visited due to 4 days of rest necessary after our experience at Tip Off-Road Motorcycling where, after an adrenaline fuelled morning on Honda 250cc enduro bikes in the countryside, Jon messed up a corner which in turn messed up his knee for a little bit. He's ok now though!

It's worse than it looks

In the evening there is usually something-a-happening in Pai. The Bebop Bar (a new contender for worst pool table ever) has a massive open mic night on Wednesday which, on our visit, featured gypsy jazz, computer game themes and rock flute solos. At Edible Jazz Bar, Nai Noi, the Thai double acoustic guitar tapping maestro, entertained all, and Jon was able to turn some of his injury-frustration into sound on drums at Mr Nong's practice room. Mr Nong being the hooded stickman in Giant Bar's Hendrix worshipping house band.

Musicians of varying ability

Tacomepai

No that's not an obscure pun (as far as we know), it's the name of a permaculture farm stay on the outskirts of Pai. In our 4 nights there we got stuck into some rice paddy harvesting, coffee bean peeling and roasting, mushroom watering, fruit and vegetable foraging and lots of cooking. And washing up.

Simple Living

Work is more or less optional, but whether you join in or not everyone eats together which really makes you feel part of community (despite our short time there). We had a surprisingly successful attempt at making pizza (sans cheese) and garlic bread in the clay oven which pleased even Sandot, the farm owner (not known for his love of foreign food).

Back to basics. Farming and Pizza.

The farm employed some interesting systems, such as using ash instead of Fairy liquid, bamboo for everything from plates to hut construction, and the 'food forest' in which plants provide shade, protection from erosion, habitat for pollinating insects and nitrogen-fixing for the soil as well as food. On the other hand for an organisation so keen on minimising waste they certainly get through a lot of wood cooking on open fires! However, if you were thinking of growing some food in a sustainable way you could probably get a lot out of the courses they run.

Which machete to buy?

It was a fun to stay somewhere a bit different, and even our spider web riddled shell of a hut we slept in had some amusing surprises such as a frog on top of the mosquito net (how?) and a midnight puppy visit. The latter actually became a puppy stay and we missed the early morning getup because you can't sleep through 5 hours of puppy crying unless you're made of stone. The next night we actually had 2 puppy visitors but we'd tracked down the owner by then who gave the puppies to a rather exhausted looking mum dog!

Cutest. Puppies. Ever.

...and that was Pai.

- Kath