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Published: January 8th 2013
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After a nice and relaxed Christmas in Chiang Mai, I decided to celebrate the New Year in a small hippie / tourist hotspot called Pai. A small, idyllic place about 3 hours North of Chiang Mai. It is a word of mouth between all the backpackers traveling in the Chiang Mai area to go there and spend a few days, as you wouldn't consider doing that just from reading abou it in the guide books. Since Christmas and New Years is probably the busiest time in Thailand, I thought a nice small town would be the perfect place to party and not spend a huge amount of money. Most people were heading south, to the islands, getting drunk and high and whatever on Ko Phan Gan, Phuket and Pattaya and the surrounding islands.
So, I booked a minibus for 180 Baht from Chiang Mai to Pai. The ride took about 3 hours and was extremly curvy. You can buy T-shirts in Pai that state the exact amount of curves on the road (around 750), which is obviously one of the biggest attracktions in the area. I had already booked my hostel, Darling View Point Bungalows and had no problem finding
it. It is a wonderful place, just outside of town but easily accessible via shortcut across a fragile bamboo bridge.
After I had heard phneomenal stories of White Water Rafting in Pai, I decided to book a rafting trip and experience some river madness. I booked a one day tour for 1700 Baht for the next day, but was a little bit disappointed. I guess it was just the wrong time of the year (dry season), but the river was very calm and there were barely any fun rapids. It was more of a quiet paddle along the river. We did see some cool views though and it was a nice trip to the northern Thai countryside.
Back in the hostel I made some friends who would be the crowd I would spend New Years Eve with. We had a delicious curry dinner in town, a few drinks by the campfire and went for a jungle trek the next day. But, all of us being hungover from the previous night of driking by the campfire, we left pretty late and ended up having to turn aound before we even made it to the waterfall. It was supposed to
be a 2-3 hour hike each way, but by the time we had about 3 hours of daylight left, we met people coming from the other way telling us it was still about 2 hours to get there. So, we turned back without reaching our destination, but we had a nice walk through the forest and along the river.
Our New Year was pretty epic. Me, being a convinced boykotter of all new years celebrations, actually had a good time. I hadn't been to any new years party in ages, hiding out with my friends inside, staying away from all the boom boom action. But this year was really relaxed, we lighted lanterns by the river (which was our form of a firework) and headed to one of the 2 big new years parties in Pai, in an outdoor bar called "Don't Cry". A Ladyboy Ska band played some sweet tunes to bring us into the new year, followed by a "Ganja Ganja!" - style Raggae band. We drank and partied until about 3 a.m. and fell straight into bed.
The following days were pretty relaxed for me, I slept and ate and browsed the internet as there
is not too much to do in Pai without a motorbike. On January 3rd, I finally made my way to Luang Prabang, excited about spending the next 2 days on a slowboat cruising along the Mekong river.
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