Epic adventure: Pai in the Sky

So the night bus from Bangkok actually left about 1km from where we were told to meet, so we had to trudge through the city with our bags, which was fun. It was due to leave at 6pm, but by about 8pm we were just in sight of the bus. Once on the bus we realised that the seats were not sleeper seats but normal reclining bus seats. Anyway they put a film on (the Rihanna one with the aliens), which could have been worse. We stopped once for food at about 11.30pm, then it was a very uncomfortable 6.5 hours to Chang Mai.

I had made a reservation at a guest house and told them that we would be arriving at this ungodly hour of the morning, so we took a saengthaw to the guest house. A saengthaw is basically a pick-up truck with two benches in the back and a roof added over its back end, a communal get-anywhere vehicle that you flag down in the street and tell the driver where you need to get to. There are hundreds of them, they're controlled by the local mafia.

Once we arrived at the guest house we were created by a very surly looking man who told us to come back later. I informed him we had a booking and the email had said we were welcome to arrive that early, but he was having none of it. Being that i am not good when tired and i really wanted a shower, i was not amused. We walked out into the street, and came across a man that looked like something out of Pirates of the Carribean and called himself Arno, the White Rabbit (????). I told him what had occured, and that we had also had thoughts about going onto Pai. He began to tell us that Pai was an amazing place, and recomended a place to stay, called Ganesh guesthouse. He told us it was up in the mountains right near the waterfall, a really tranquil place. We took one look around at Chang Mai (which is the 2nd biggest city in Thailand), and just felt a bit cityied out really, following on from Siem Reap and Bangkok, a bit of tranquility sounded perfect.

Pai is a small town in northern Thailand's Mae Hong Son Province, near the Myanmar border, about 50 miles/80 km north of Chiang Mai on the northern route to Mae Hong Son. It lies along the Pai River. Arno told us that the buses go every hour from the bus station (where we had just come from). So as one of the joys of travelling is changing plans at the last minute we decided to head to Pai. Just as we were walking to main rd to get another saengthaw Arno called us back and asked us to take a German girl, that he had also befriended walking the streets, with us. Her name was Elise, she was on a gap year and a really pleasant travelling companion for a few hours.

So by about 8.30am we on a bus headed to Pai, this was due to take 3-4 hours but noone had told us that Pai is famous for Route 1095. Route 1095 is the connecting highway between Chiang Mai and Pai. Whilst Route 1095 is known for being a very scenic drive over the rolling mountains, it is also known for the 762 curves up and over this beautiful scenery. Lets just say that it was a very bumpy, unconfortable but beautiful journey. Pai is set in a large valley at about 650m (about 2000 ft) elevation, and the view of the valley coming down from the mountains is really breathtaking.

On our arrival in Pai we were dropped at a small bus stop in the middle of town, full of good intentions again we looked for Ganesh Guesthouse on the map, and suprise suprise it was not there. After asking for a taxi we were told that Ganesh Guesthouse is 7km away from town, and too far away to stay. After a little negotiation they agreed to take us but only on motorbikes. So we took a motorbike taxi each, Craig with the big rucksack and another bag, and me with the little rucksack and my handbag. That was probably the most terrifying ride ever, we went up into the mountains on the worst roads, covered in potholes and slippery gravel. When we arrived we asked for Pou and told her that the White Rabbit had sent us, she offered us a room with no bathroom for 200B, or a room with bathroom for 400B. We went for the room with a bathroom, and were told we would need to wait for a couple of hours for the other people to check out. So we had a little wander, up the mountain road, we then immediately decided that we had made the right choice, we may be 7kms from town, but it was absolutely beautiful. All you could hear, were birds, bugs, monkeys and the little stream that ran below the guesthouse.

When we got back our room was ready, and if we werent sure before we certainly were now. For 400B we got a split level room, with two double beds, hot shower, our own toilet and best of all a fire place. The rooms were all built by Pou herself and you could see the thought and work that had gone into them. There were no gappy bamboo walls, they were concrete with embeddded rocks and the floor was tiled.

For the rest of the afternoon we decided to walk to the waterfall which was only 1km from our house. Our first sight of the waterfall was as below with loads of Thai children using the middle section as a waterslide and the next picture is where we sat for the afternoon.

On the way to the waterfall a very bizarre thing happened, all the little old ladies on their balconies shouted "smoke" and "Opium" as we walked past. There are about 13 houses between our house and the waterfall and all of them it was the same. It was weird because all of the ladies looked like a grandma and some were dressed in traditional tribal clothing. We later found out the Pai is on the edge of the Golden Triangle. This is a massive opuim growing area that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.

That evening we discovered why we had fireplace, because it gets bloody freezing in the mountains after dark, so we made ourselves a cozy little fire.

The following day we decided to take a walk into town, yes 7km. And it was really beautiful but very exhausting.

We stocked up on supplies including locally brewed strawberry brandy, and we couldnt resist a little trip to Ping Burger Queen!

Pai town is a bit of a strange place, it used to be very alternative and well known for arts and music. But more recently a very popular Thai movie was filmed here called "Pai in Love", and ever since there have been hordes of Thai tourists. The town seems to have adopted some strange motifs such as VW Campers vans and Vespa scooters, which are on T-shirts everywhere. It is a really lovely little town, but with its little boutiques it does feel a bit like Southwold in the moumntains.

Then the next few days were spend chilling at the waterfall.

There were lots of beautiful betturflies for me to practise taking photos of. I think some of them may have only just hatched as they seemed to be drying their wings out, and some let me get really close.

(It is there, it looks like a leaf!)

Whilst we were in Pai we booked ourselves on a trip to see the Long Neck Hill Tribe amongst some other things. It was one of the best trips i have been on, there were only us and a nice German chap, the driver and the guide (Jacko), in a luxury 4wd. We drove for about an hour out of town through the mountains to pick up our guide. Our first stop of the trip was fish cave, the park is known for unique features such as a small pond in a rock crevice called Tham Pla (Fish cave). The width is 2 metres by 1.5 metres depth and its teeming with a carp species of fish. The stream which feeds the pond also runs underneath a hill. The whole area is surrounded by mixed decidous forest and is drained by the Mae Sawi River. Our guide said that one day Buddha came and put one fish into the cave, now there are hundreds.

And one of the highlights of my day, a monk with an ipad!

There were some really pretty flowers too

The next stop on the agenda was the thermal mud springs. All three of us paid for a mud face mask and thermal spa foot treatment, it was a nice experience. Especially after the mud my face felt very soft.

On the way out we saw a very tiny, baby pineapple (how cute!)

The third stop of the day was the one we had been waiting for the Long Necked Hill Tribe. They are basically a refugee tribe from Burma, but they are in Thailand illegaly, so they are not allowed to work. Although i was not sure what to expect, it did feel a little odd. The ladies were basically just selling crafts that they had made, there did not seem to be a lot of genuine village life going on. We later found it that its likely that this is a village set up by Thai management for tourists. I am glad we saw them and i did purchase a couple of bits and peices but it didnt feel like an authentic village tribe. I bought myself one of the brass rings they use around their necks. We learnt that the girls start with the brass rings when they are 8 or 9, to start with they use 6 or 7 rings welded together in a set. The rings dont lengthen the neck in fact they push down on the collar bones and rib cage to create the visual effect of lengthening. Once the girls get used to this they add more rings to the bottom.

In this tribe if a lady is widowed or commits adultery the rings are removed. Because the mucsles have been weakened by wearing them, the ladies basically have to spend the rest of their lives in bed as they do not have the strength to hold their heads up. Suffice to say there is a very low rate of adultery within this tribe.

On the way back to Pai we stopped at a couple of temples. The first is the only completely white temple in Thailand, which is set very high up a mountain.

The second temple was Wat Chong Kam.

(Apparently this is where the monks pray and having any women in the same area would be a distraction),

And because so far we have had a monk on a mobile and an ipad, here is a monk on a laptop..

We dropped our guide off on the way back, and stopped for tour group a photo. A little old lady who had been there that morning playing some kind of flute was back and snuck into the photo.

On the last stretch back to Pai we stopped at a viewpoint for sunset, the sunset was really nice. But the little girl in tribal dress was sooooo cute and soooo serious, but she did allow me to take her photo, and i thought adopted the looking into the distance pose very well.

Here are a selection of some of the prettiest flowers growing around our house.

One of the more upsetting things we have been seeing more and more is tied up monkeys. We were told that they capture the mothers for the meat, then they have to raise the babies in captivity. I am not totally convinced by this, and this is one of the things that has been bothering me most. The main thing that annoys me about this is is that it is not hidden in anyway, in fact they have signs advertising captive monkey. Therefore there must be some really ignorant tourists who think that this is an acceptable way to see a monkey. The one in the picture below is outside a guesthouse, which always had one or two tourists sitting on the balcony. I just done understand how you can sit there whilst this poor monkey is going round and round and round, its just horrible.

Heres a very odd fruit we found growing from a tree, still got no idea what it is

One of the last things we did before leaving Pai was to have our new tattoos. We had decided sometime ago that we wanted to get matching geckos. After some very long detailed dicsussions we managed to agree on a design that we were both happ with. We had planned to go to a guy that Lee had been to a few years back, but everytime we went to talk to him he was not there or hungover. So we ambled into the next place along the street only to find the guy who had taught Lee's guy how to tattoo. We gave him the picture and asked him to do his interpretation of it.

They took about 3.5 hours each, and it felt completely different to having a tattoo by gun. It was pretty much painless, it felt a bit like a mosquito bite, but definitely nothing worse than that. Here are a couple of pictures of us having them done, and the needles the used (yes they are chopsticks).