Pai

We traveled four hours by bus from Chiang Mai to Pai, a small, peaceful town in a valley surrounded by mountains. It was recommended by a friend and our trip wouldn't have been the same if we had not found this bohemian paradise. As stated in our travel book, people do seem to spend much longer in this remote area than originally planned. Appropriately, this is where we decided to cancel our trip to Vietnam and take advantage of everything Pai had to offer.

We stayed three nights in a bamboo hut on stilts, just across a river. A rickety footbridge connected us to the town. Our first day, we rented bicycles and rode along country roads to Mo Paeng Falls. On the way, we passed some village women who saw us and put their hands to their mouths, as if they were smoking an invisible cigarette. We assumed that they were asking us for a cigarette, which we didn't have, so we continued on. Later, we learned that such signals actually means that they wanted to sell us pot or opium. The scenery was lovely, so much so that Jen forgot to watch the road, causing her to flip head-over-heels into a bamboo fence. See the photo on page 3 for a closer look, but be warned: it's nasty! The following day we rode our bikes along more scenic country roads to Tai Pai hot springs, passing several elephant camps along the way.

At this point we went on our 3-day trek. Upon returning to Pai, we rented a scooter (fully automatic) for the day, had excellent pad thai from a roadside vendor, and went on a hike, looking for Mae Yen Waterfall, which we never found. Craving indoor plumbing, we moved from our hut to a nicer bungalow in town.

The food in Pai was phenomenal. We didn't have a single mediocre meal here. EVERYTHING was amazing! We shamelessly ate epic portions of Thai food. We ended up spending just over a week in Pai before moving on.