Chiang Rai - Pai

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So our sight seeing around Chiang Rai continued with a visit to The Black Houses. Some call the Black Temple although not a temple in the Buddhist sense. First we had to get there. Another local bus from the central bus station. We established which bus it was after asking several people and the driver when we were on board. We knew it was around 10 kms out of town. So off we set along the same road we had been in the morning to the White Temple. Alarms bells started to ring and were confirmed when we got to the White Temple and the conductor told us we had reached our destination. She apologised when she realised she had given us wrong information and gave us back our fare! So we waited, luckily not too long, and managed to flag down a songheuw back to Chiang Rai and the right bus. Not the end of our journey! 30mins on the bus when the driver again told us we had reached our destination! We got off to find ourselves at the side of a busy four lane highway. No sign of any tourist attraction. No signs. There was a small shop at which we asked if he knew of the Black Houses. Out he came from his shop and pointed to a hand drawn map on the window. He showed us to a piece of wasteland with some planks across a ditch and indicated that was where we should go. So off we set and indeed it was. We arrived after a few hundred yards at the Black Houses in the garden of the artist. These are a collection of wooden houses of different sizes. One the size of a Buddhist Temple. They are the designs of artist Thawan Duchanee. One if the weirdest, amazing, beautiful, surprising, confusing, creepy places we have ever seen. The artist has an obsession with carcasses, bones, skins and skulls of animals and he has made some amazing furniture out of them which are in the houses. Under a tree, coiled up, was one of the biggest pythons we have ever seen. Some of the displays made us think of pagan, religious and satanic rituals. The toilet was one of the weirdest and most beautiful I have seen anywhere. To read more about the artist follow this link http://wander2nowhere.com/2011/07/scorching-heaven-idyllic-hell/



As everywhere else we had amazing food at incredible prices in Chiang Rai. Look where the locals eat is the best policy and we found a great kitchen there called Khun Noi Kitchen. Kitchens are very basic places to eat. Plastic table cloths. Limited cooked to order menus, nearly always right in front of you, at incredibly cheap prices. Curries, stir fries, sticky rice, fried rice, wonderful succulent meat, fish, noodle soups and spicy papaya salad pounded in deep wooden mortar and pestles. A favourite of ours. And of course there were, as everywhere in Thailand, the food stalls along the streets which are attached to the side of a motorbike. Steve couldn't resist the rootis on the way back to bed each night with a happy full stomach. This is why I for one won't be coming home smaller than I left! Neither will Steve.



So we reached the end of our stay in Chiang Rai. Time to move on. Whilst in Chiang Rai we had been planning to move towards the Laos border. We had spent many an hour looking at the different routes. Buses, plane, slow boat along Mekong ( 2 days for 7 hours). None of the options were appealing. A lot of travelling of different degrees of comfort. Our neighbours, an Aussie couple, told us of a town in the North of Thailand called Pai that we hadn't heard of. They described it as a small very laid back town in a valley surrounded by mountains with a river at the centre. It attracted quite an eclectic group of travellers and sounded wonderful. So that's where we decided to go and very pleased we were with our decision.



So as always the journey from Chiang Rai would turn out to be an interesting one. It started with a comfortable 3 hour coach to Chiang Mai. From there the only way we found, at the time, to get to Pai was a 4 hour trip on the local bus. So we bought our ticket and waited the hour at the bus station when in chugged a very beaten up old red bus with an equally old driver. So we all piled on with various forms of luggage. No under bus storage on these buses. You sit where you can and the luggage fits in around you. The allocated seats very quickly went out the window as we all made sure us and our luggage was on the bus and we were seated in some degree of comfort. Off we set. We had been told that the journey was a beautiful one winding up through the mountains and down into the valley where Pai was situated. The bus bowled along quite well until we started to go uphill and then it really was a snails pace. The elderly driver turning the steering wheel of the bus backwards and forwards as we wound our way up. What we didn't realise was that between Chiang Mai and Pai there are 762 bends!!! What we also didn't know was quite how high the road was. Some of you may know that although I have sky dived I am not a fan of heights in some situations and this was one of them. As we got higher (I was sitting on the side where I could see the height!) a few expletives were escaping from my lips. In the end I pulled the curtain and shut my eyes until we reached the valley!



We arrived in Pai tired after our journey and settled into our very pleasant guesthouse which was situated at the end of the 'walking street'. Walking streets are areas that in the evening are closed to traffic and stalls of merchandise and food are set up. So that's what we did that night. Tempted as we walked along by the bite sized food on offer. We have met some wonderful people and one of them was a tiny Thai lady who cooked the most wonderful tempura mushrooms. She was a total character. The restaurant opposite was playing European music and her pitch was always there. So she had learnt the words to several British hits and would break into song as she was cooking. Couldn't resist her mushrooms. It was also an evening of getting to know the type of people that come to Pai. 1. It's a favourite holiday destination for Thais since two films were filmed there. 2. Backpackers of all ages. 3. Hippies. Again of all ages! Some of the older ones are ex pats who have settled in the area. Great place for sitting with a hot or cold drink and people watching. A favourite past time.



The dress code for Pai. Anything ethnic in as many layers as possible. Why carry your clothes. You can wear them all! Harem pants, preferably with the crotch at ankle length. Dreddlocks or hair that mustn't look washed or brushed. The other thing we noticed was the different climate as we were further north, and higher up. Very hot in the day and then quite cold at night (will mention the night temperature again later).



On further exploring we found the 'real' part of town where the market was daily. Wonderful to sit and watch the different tribes coming down to the market either the whole family squeezed onto a moped or in the back of a pickup. We also decided we would like to stay on longer than the couple of days we had paid for at the guesthouse. Exploring we had found that on the other side of the river were bungalows of every type and price. From grotty to too posh for what we wanted. It was very peaceful just a few minutes back to walking street but somewhere to chill out. We found just the right one for BHT380 per night. Bamboo bungalow with deck and hammock. Hot shower, electric. Brilliant! This is where the temperature at night comes in. So we moved the short distance to our bungalow. Lovely. Dozed in the hot sun in the hammock. That night snuggled up in bed. IT WAS FREEZING!!! We hardly slept. So we searched the shops and bought some cheap leggings. In the end I was wearing leggings, socks, trousers, long sleeved top, fleece and a scarf. We had the duvet, three sarongs and a blanket over us.......in Thailand. It was like camping.



On the day we moved we decided to do something fun so went tubing on the river. We were in a party of 11. Unfortunately a three very obnoxious Americans! It's a big river! We had a great time bobbing along the river. Getting stuck on many occasions as the river was so low. Very relaxing with a cold tinnie that was until the river took me the wrong way down a very very small rapid much to the amusement of the rest and then, could only happen to me, I got a puncture. Sat in the middle of the river in a rapidly deflating inner tube, dragged it up the bank and had to walk back to town 15 mins away in soaking wet clothes! Wasn't the last time in a small town we would see the obnoxious Americans. We had discovered, down a very small side street, The Curry Shack. A very small kitchen owned and run solely by Li, who did the cooking. It was here that we found The Best coconut curry! Wonderful. We went back three times. On one of those occasions the Americans were there joined by an equally pretentious British woman. It soon became apparent that one of the American guys was doing his best too woo the American woman, who had a passing resemblance to Pink. Doing all that rubbing and stuff at the table, and we were trying eat our lovely curry on the next table.This was a small kitchen, six tables, you get the picture. They were also talking very loudly about food in that awful pretentious 'foodie' way. The Brit women was going on about how she'd had the best guacamole, the avocado had been grown by virgins, the chilli was grown in a garden in a Buddhist monastery, the onion could only be bought in one shop in the Himalayas. Only joking, but that's what it was like! We did see them around town a couple more times unfortunately, it's a small town.



We hired a moped for the day to get out to the surrounding area. Great day, Pai Canyon, couple of temples, waterfall, Chinese village and a beautiful viewpoint where we could see the whole valley and drank Chinese tea. We ate barbecued meat from the roadside. While we were waiting for it to cook the ladies baby was in a hammock in the shade so we were helping her out by keeping the hammock swinging. The managers of our bungalows, there were only eight, Thais Natalie and her husband were very friendly and would light log fires in the evening which we would sit round with a drink, hot coffee with Hong Thong in our case, and chat. On the night before we left around the fire the nationalities were Canadian, American, British, Israeli, Thai, South Korean and Ukraine. We learnt so much from those chats. We loved our time in Pai but it was time to move on. But where..................

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