Pai

Sweety… slice of… apple… in the sky… and numerous other denotations that can go with the name of this town, Pai, pronounced pie… I personally would have gone with something like 3.14!! Pai is a small town that is big on creativity and every Thai hippy or rastafarian in the country seems to be here to let those creative juices flow – handicrafts, artworks, quirky bars (bar stools that are bikes or weighing scales, a tuc-tuc that has been converted to a bar and so on) and more yoga classes than one bendy person can do in a day…although maybe they send their karma or spirit over to take the next class?!? Although not firmly on the backpackers trail yet Pai is slowly getting there and with that normally comes a certain amount of compromise and standardisation but hopefully this town is different and the characters and quirkness that made it a town worth visiting will remain and not be pushed out by chain coffee houses and fast food outlets!! We stayed in a cool little a-frame hut by the river and spent a few days here just chilling and taking leisurely rides out into the nearby countryside amongst the farmland, rice fields, small villages and remote temples followed by cold drinks in chilled out bars with fire-pits and Thai reggae music.
The other reason we’d come to Pai was to do some trekking so once we’d fully exhausted all the bars, bought all our Pai related tat and learnt the lotus position it was time to head into the jungle and go back to nature. The jungle holds many fears – wild animals such as tigers and boars, creepy insects like snakes and spiders, uncomfortable weather etc but what I feared the most was going with a trekking group and having some annoying gap year student with a guitar – although they are more common than tigers and deadly snakes we didn’t come across one. We set off with our guide and 4 other trekking buddies (3 Israelis and 1 Dutch) and headed to the hills about an hours bus ride outside of Pai, Shona soon got back into the swing of things from Nepal and instantly fell over whilst paddling across the first river crossing – little slip, tried to correct it, then in slow motion – splash…bum first in the water! All those dry clean clothes at the bottom of her pack took a dunking too! Bless her, I know your all laughing, as was I after the initial are you ok question!! We trekked for 4 hours, crossing a river a few times, climbing up the hillside, going through a couple of small hill tribe villages before stopping at a small waterfall where the lure of cold water was all too much so me and one of the Israeli guys (as Shona had already had a swim she opted against it!) took a much needed freshing dip, it was bloody freezing, but nice! Our guide then chopped up some bamboo to make a fire, tea-pot and cups before making us a nice cup of jungle tea. After another hours trek we reached our camp for the night, a bamboo hut perched in a clearing on the hillside complete with small farm – dogs, cats, chickens and pigs had the run of the area. When we arrived the fire was already burning and our guide, plus his little assistant set about cooking up dinner. We chilled and watched the sun go down over the hills before tucking into food and chatting around the fire for the rest of the evening. Once the fire had died out it was time to pick a spot on the floor of the hut and get as comfy as possible, about 4 hours later with the moon still high in the sky the cockerel woke up and quickly set about waking us up, this was soon followed by the pigs rumaging around underneath the hut. Bleary eyed that morning we set off in the humid morning heat back up through the valley and to a large hilltribe village, it was home to a Karen tribe, famous for the long ringed necks although this is not common anymore. It’s a pretty basic life, wooden/bamboo houses, working the land and fending for themselves off the jungle, but I guess if all else fails they could always check out the shopping channel on sky and order something!! It seems solar power and satellites have reached the hilltribes. Arrived just in time to watch a pig being slaughtered (always fun!) and a local getting a haircut, all part of daily life, before moving on and making our way back to the road to get back to Pai.