Pai in the Sky

It was Tet holiday again[Chinese New Year] and Daphne and I were joined on our trip this time by our Welsh friend, Rob, who we've known since the beginning of our stay in Saigon when we took our CELTA together. This time, we had plane tickets bought and ready and flew over to Thailand, Destination: Pai.

Pai is not easy to get to and we had to make a one night stopover in Bangkok first. I remembered that after I had returned from my first trip to Thailand a year ago I had said, "I didn't see any sleaze or elephants, so does that really count as being in Thailand?" This time I was able to cross one of those two off.

After getting settled into our hotels we went out for food and some light shopping before heading out on the night. Eventually, we made our way to a place called Soi Cowboy. Soi Cowboy is a small alley tucked between two streets where all the neon signs in Vegas go to retire. Every bar on the street is a gogo bar. We went into one where about six women were dancing on a stage wearing only a belt. Although I'm not of a conservative nature, I had never been to a place like this before. Daphne said that I didn't blink once while I was there.

The next morning we had an early flight to Chiang Mai in the north and from there a very windy three hour drive through the mountains to Pai. Pai is a very small quite town nestled by beautiful mountains and built along a river. It has a lot of great food, some good shopping, very cheap bungalows and is visited by many backpacking hippies. We stayed in a bungalow at The Breeze of Pai for 600 Bhat a night, but there were places for only 15o Bhat as well [30 Bhat=1USD].

The town is a great place for people who enjoy the outdoors or those who enjoy doing a lot of nothing in a quiet, beautiful place. During the day, Daphne and I often frequented a place called Good Life, a tea house run by TK, a fellow Ukrainian from my hometown, Kharkov. At night, there was a market set up on the Walking Street and we would eat our way up and down the street. Two of my favourite Thai dishes were chicken with chili and basil served on rice and something called kow soy, which is a curry noodle dish served with chicken. We also enjoyed some good live music while we were there but the cold nights made Daphne and I reluctant to stay out and drink too late. Actually, I found the weather in Pai ideal, the daytime was very warm but not humid and at night it gets cold, but only just enough to warrant a sweater and pants.

[Pai, As Seen Through Rob's Eyes]

[Bamboo Bridge on the Pai River in Town]

[Not Bad, Right?]

While in Pai, Daphne and I went and visited our friend Steve who, until recently, was living and teaching in Saigon. Now he was living in the woods with his girlfriend Hazuki learning about permaculture. Permaculture is an agricultural practice that is designed to mimic natural systems to create a more sustainable agricultural practice. I had decided to write an article on the topic and was doing some research while on vacation, but more on that later.

Steve and Hazuki were living on a piece of land for free, but they had to pay for their food as the land wasn't producing enough for them to live on yet. Once a week they drive to the market and load up on mostly vegetables and rice. As they are living without electricity or running water, meat won't keep very long. Living on the land with them was Seb, a former Muay Thai boxing champion from France who now lives away from civilization and speaks fluent Thai. There were two others, Austin and Jenna, who were traveling through and staying there for a couple of weeks. One morning, Daphne and I joined them on a hike from their campsite to a hot spring that Seb knew about. Pai is known for its hot springs but normally you have to pay, this one was free. It was a one hour hike up the Pai River through rice fields and forest.

[Humble Living]

When we arrived the hot spring turned out to be a hot puddle. At first I was a bit disappointed, as I had imagined that we would be relaxing in jacuzzi like style, but it turned out to be a lot of fun for us anyways. The hot spring flowed into the river where you could swim in cold water and step on hot sand. We gave ourselves mud baths and enjoyed the hot weather, cool water and general tranquility of our surroundings.

[Sulfur, Smells Like the Water After You Boil an Egg]

[Commando Steve]

[Tribal Daphne]

[Hazuki and I Go for the Full Healing Benefits of a Mud Bath]

[Seb, Our Guide, Eats Sunflower Seeds on the Bank]

After exhausting our play time, Seb asked us whether we wanted to see a dam being built up river. Since nobody had to be at work[ha] we all shrugged our shoulders and followed his lead.

We could hear them before we could see them. First we heard a whistle, then some shouting and then the waterfall. When we arrived to the river, we saw several Thai men playing tug of war with a massive log. Our group grabbed spare rope and started to pull while I snapped my camera away.

[Snap]

[Snap]

[Snap]

Upon success, the men all went to the bank of the river to celebrate the hauling of another log by eating freshly smoked meat, smoking hand rolled cigars and drinking rice wine from bamboo cups that they carved up on the spot. They were very giving towards us and I soon found myself trying to change lenses while juggling a cigar, cup of wine and a piece of what I think was pork.

[Very Yummy]

Before I knew it, a large group of them had vanished up the trail, taking my companions with them. We found, to Daphne's surprise, a Singaporean there who had left his corporate life in Singapore for a pastoral one in Pai. He led Daphne and I to try to catch up with our friends and the other farmers, but after a half hour we were unable to find them and had to turn back to the dam and wait for them there. We waited a half hour and just as we were about to give up, our friends came strolling back to camp, telling stories of helping pull down a tree. I was terribly jealous. Fortunately, the fun wasn't over yet. The farmers had to still haul the log a kilometer downriver and it wasn't too long until we heard the steady rhythm of the whistle.

[Snap Snap Snap]

[This Guy Doesn't Have to Pull, Just Whistle]

[One More Down]

[I Helped Pull a Bit, While Taking Breaks to Snap Photos]

It was now getting late and we still had over an hour left to march back to camp. We enjoyed the last of the rations with the farmers and prepared to make our way back. The farmers are not employed to build the damn, they are all volunteers. The dam will help them to build an irrigation canal to water their farms at a higher elevation. I asked Seb how long it will take them to finish. "Three years, maybe," he said, "It's already been two."

[This is Two Years of Work So Far]

[On the Way Back]

Twilight had come and gone by the time we made it back to Steve's camp and the sky was bright with stars from the lack of light pollution. Daphne and I bid our farewells and drove back into town to enjoy some more of Pai's hot street food.

We spent a total of five nights in Pai, but we could have happily stayed much longer. For my article on the permaculture and natural farming scene in Pai I also went to visit a place called Tacompai. It was a much more developed farm then the one that Steve was living on. For 100 Bhat you could stay in one of their huts and the food was free if you helped out and worked on the farm. I talked a while with the owner, Sandoz, and then Daphne and I took a tour around his land.

[Sandoz, Making Something Useful from Bamboo]

[Daphne on a Bicycle Powered Washing Machine]

Daphne left Pai on an earlier bus to Chiang Mai so that she could go to a yoga workshop while Rob and I slept in. We spent one night in Chiang Mai, eating and shopping our way through the rest of our Bhat before flying back the next day.

Pai. We will be back again.