Pai, D23-28: Our Week in Pai

Before this trip and throughout I have heard about Pai (pronounced "pie"). Everyone talks about Pai as this majestic little unknown town.  Very tiny, very unknown. It's relaxing and nobody knows about it. It's so untouched, so unknown...

Yeah... OK. It's known.

Introducing my beef with Pai: it's completely overrun with tourists of the worst kind. There are travelers and artists and misfits and hippies and hipsters. There are people who walk around barefoot playing ukuleles (and to our dismay, they're mostly white with American accents).

You can see the bones of the town are beautiful and once upon a time there is no doubt it was majestic. The most recent census from 2006 records the population around 2,300. I can definitely picture its appeal then. We bike around during the day and see pretty landscape, though Thailand is in dry season:

Now? Bus after bus unloads hippies who've exchanged their shoes for dreadlocks, or Chinese families who walk around with the utmost urgency. Driving is a clusterflock too, because in China and America you drive on the right side of the road, unlike here. Furthermore, there were two Thai movies based in Pai in 2004 and 2006 that popularized the village as a tourist spot for Thai people, and while they stand out the least, it adds to the confusion of the situation. (Pai tourists, say from Bangkok, place their orders with their French waiters.) The signs are in Thai, English and Chinese. Some of the street vendors selling art are white. The bulletin boards are for yoga classes and trips to caves to meditate- all ran by white people. (No way, we're back in Tahoe!)

Wheatgrass shots? In SE Asia? Please.

 

You see people like this guy, in his cowboy hat, boots, white pants and painted yellow face. He's brought his own chair to sit by a vendor and read:

Overall, I think Pai lacks tradition and authenticity, and though it was once a quaint, peaceful village, it is now a place to shave one side of your head and befriend a stray animal. But enough of my opinion!

There are few things to do in Pai- see waterfalls, temples and hotsprings. You're charged to enter everything and you're fighting other tourists. The main draw and source of tourism is the night market.

This night market makes me question for the first time in my life: Am I over shopping? No, obviously, and I buy more scarves. This market has similar stuff to all the other markets but it has less of a pushy vibe. There are a few main streets full of food carts and art for sale.

Bugs!

Since this is more of an artsy town we were able to get a grip of caricatures done for $3-$9, and we got much more than what we paid for:

The absolute best part about Pai is the food. The streets are littered with hole-in-the-wall places. The night market covers every type of ethnic food. Every kitchen is semi-open so you're always watching the magic right before you. You make sure to order food when you're just starting to get hungry because most meals take an hour+ to get to your table. Truly, most of our days are spent trying to find things to do between meals.

Some of our favorite spots and what we ordered:

Na's- Yellow Curry, Green Curry and Chicken with Chilis and Holy Basil (THE BEST PLACE)

Fine Rice- Chicken with Chilis and Holy Basil

Top 5 Cafe- Avocado Toast

Witching Well- Anything breakfast

This Guy- Fried Pork with Chilis and Holy Basil

Art in Chai- Famous for Indian-style chai tea. (They even do open mic poetry readings on Thursdays! So artsy)

All About Coffee- Coffee

& The Best Meal of our entire trip so far is awarded to: The Curry Hut for it's "Special Curry"

Oh yes, the Special Curry. Ian went for green curry and it was also delicious... but this Special Curry! The Curry Hut was ran but one guy who was frantically cooking, cleaning, blending, taking orders and processing payments. There were five tables in his seating area and they were all full of people. He works hard for his money! I had eaten a lot of the same dishes recently so I ordered the Special Curry- 120 Baht ($4), chef's choice and served in a coconut. Ian joked that "chef's choice" was likely a concoction of "the rest" of the other stuff from the day. He ate his words and half of my meal when he saw the masterpiece: 

Before & After Pics of Best Meal Ever

It was amazing. So flavorful, so rich. It tasted like a butter-based curry but it was a coconut-cream based curry. OMG. Ian and I wolfed it down and I even drank the extra juice at the bottom. Over this superb meal we decided we'll stay in Pai a little longer. I mean, THIS FOOD. I admit I've been stubborn about Pai and I realize it's true value is the FOOD, which needs to be highlighted more than the unknownness of the town. 

Anyway, it's settled. We'll be in Pai forever. I'll eat everything and we'll live happily ever after. We bike back to AEH, I kiss Ian goodnight and have sweet dreams about curry. I toss and turn a little and then... well, then... things take a turn. 

I couldn't sleep because my stomach was starting to feel weird. Really weird. Really bad. OH CRAP. Crap, crap, crap. Vomit. Vomit, vomit. Crap, crap! The thing about food poisoning is your body just starts to reject everything, and reject it didddd!

It gets worse. Remember our little adobe abode? It connects to a bathroom that is OUTSIDE but isn't completely walled off, so Ian gets to listen to me die! It's 2AM on Monday morning here, totally pitch black, and the outside light stops working. I was dying in darkness. Worse, the sink and toilet were covered with ants, so I was dying in darkness with ants all over me and the love of my life was 2 feet away.

So am I single? No. Because about two hours in, Ian's stomach starts to feel weird. Then he starts dying. 

We take turns all night shining lights from our phones for each other to clean up. It lasts until sunrise. We lay in bed for two days and decide to get the heck out of Pai. 

As we had already motorbiked around Pai, I felt completely comfortable driving back to Chiang Mai. Remember, the road has more than 700 switchbacks and is super dangerous... but I have a punk-rock lifestyle to live up to. (Also punk-rock was Ian biking with his guitar on his back. Most punk-rock of all was the green zinc I put on my nose: )

Ian crashed on a similar road a few years back. The drivers are always in the middle of the road because the curves are so sharp, and a driver was in Ian's lane. We saw a ton of people in Pai who were heavily bandaged on one side of their body, obviously from a motorbike accident. There was also a fair amount of red spots from cars hitting... dogs? People? Definitely chickens. We passed a good amount of accidents.

So it was kind of scary, but because I logged maybe a thousand miles on an actual bike in Tahoe, I am super comfortable driving with traffic and I'm very aware of my balance. Ian keeps it slow and I follow him. Our only real hiccup went like this: Ian got a bug in his mouth--> Ian spit bug out of his mouth--> Spit nailed my right arm.

Now we are just about fully recovered and back in Chiang Mai at the Diva! Huzzah!