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pai
- 762 curves to pai -
Pai, just 762 curves away from Chiang Mai meant that I arrived feeling a little worse for wear and with a little goody bag whilst Lou was as fresh as a daisy. Up in the mountains is this small town where not very much goes on except people just milling about and relaxing, keeping away from any hustle and bustle from any main cities. Here we found ourselves a nice, cheap bungalow at Family Huts at the bottom of the town just across the small river and we had little intention of doing very much apart from eat, sleep and find a pool to chill out by.
Best way to cure the ride of death up to Pai was to enjoy an ice cold Lassie from Duang II. We said it, these were definitely the best lassies we had had in Asia so Far; so cheap, soo big, sooo cold, soooo creamy and sooooo fruity, they were perfect. You can then well imagine we had lunch at the same place every day to make the most of the perfect shake aswell as their good food
With there being a couple of pools in the area, we opted for Fluid Pool just about 1km out of town across the main bridge. Here you would usually have to pay 50baht per person but with the pool not being very clean we were able to use it for free which was a bonus. Alongside the pool was also an area of grass with umbrellas where we would just chill which by mid afternoon was full with about 30 travelers. With 2for1 on cocktails and reasonably priced food, we couldn’t really ask for more and so we did the same thing for a couple of days
That's an odd road sign!
One afternoon we chose to be slightly less lazy and visit the few interesting sites Pai has to offer. We first started off visiting their main waterfall which was a waste of time as there was absolutely no waterfall at all, but rather a small form of mud bath that the locals were using. With it being quite a hot afternoon we snuck into one of the resorts close to the waterfall to use their pool which we found all to ourselves. The resort was really nice with many individual brick bungalows spread out in amongst some beautiful gardens and so was very strange as to to why it was empty.
On route to Pai’s most famous landmark, we stopped off at another peculiar site, the Land Split. which has formed on a locals farm by experiencing very large amounts of cracking. Although the cracks are no canyons, there are still substantial drops which have all formed naturally.
Upside down house!
The Pai Canyon, was a very impressive natural land formation which was a network of very tall, narrow ridges that raised well above the ground. Very different to anything we had seen before (having not been to the Grand Canyon) is was quite impressive and enjoyable as we were able to walk along these edges alongside severe drops on either side.
In the evenings there was always the local evening market that lined the “Main” Street which had mainly your local clothes, bags and souvenirs as well as a nice selection food stalls. We ate here for our last meal where we tried a traditional deep fried sandwich, a Turkish wrap and an Indian meal all of which were very tasty. So much so that Lou was sick the following day.
With Something Lou had eaten not agreeing with her, and I loving the winding roads back to Chiang Mai, it was an eventful ride back with us both producing the good old goodie bags this time.