I Like My Pai With No Chiang Mai

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After leaving the family of whom i had grown so fond, i made my way to the bus station. i was on my way to Chiang Mai. i took an overnight bus and arrived in the morning. nothing was open. so i just walked around keeping my eyes open for breakfast or a guesthouse. i ran into a few backpackers doing the same. i joined them in the search for a place to stay. we all had breakfast together but soon parted ways as they went on reasearching canopy tours and rafting trips. i walked around the city for a few hours just looking. within the first hour or so i had decided that chiang mai wasnt for me. many westerners moved here and loved the city. but for me, it wasnt small enough to be quaint or to have character and it wasnt big enough to have anything that would compel me to stay. the city is mostly a jumping off point for outdoors activities or a good place to take thai cooking courses. chiang mai has a relaxed and pleasant feel to it and many love it. im sure many will disagree with me but after visiting a couple interesting wats i headed to the bus station. all i needed was a couple hours for chiang mai.
so i bought a ticket to the small town in the mountains called Pai. pai is in the "golden triangle", where much of the world´s opium is produced. i was told that much of the production had been halted in the area and that most of the activity had been pushed a little ways to the borders of myanmar(burma) and laos. so why Pai? i dont know why. someone along my travels had mentioned it and i had heard that there are many hill tribes living around pai.
my transport was a minivan. pai is not too far from chiang mai but this ride was the most uncomfortable ride i had taken in southeast asia. first the road goes into the mountains and it seems that there is no moment along the way that you are not going around a curve. this is not a ride for people who get car sick. in fact i bought a tshirt in pai that roughly translates to " i wield the victor´s sword over the 762 curves from chiang mai to Pai". but the part of the trip that really got me was the seating. they jam people into these minivans. i was in the back of the minivan where 4 people were to sit. that is a bit crowded. but the woman that sit to my right had a child with her to share her seat. i can understand a baby or a toddler but this boy was maybe 6 or 7. and he wasnt sitting in her lap. he was laying on her lap so that his head was on me. uncomfortable so far. but then the boy was sick. i dont know what he had but it sounded bad. he was coughing and hacking up all sorts of stuff which wouldnt be so bad across an aisle or if he cough and hacked away from me but his head was either on my right arm or on my lap as i held my shirt over my mouth and nose for a bit. and yes you are thinking "poor little boy" just as i did for the first hour. but i was in a country with strange and scary diseases. i had no vaccinations, no shots before going to southeast asia. so i had several hours to think and there was no way to think of anything other than what disease i was contracting. it got dark and there wasnt much to see. no light to read. no music to take attention. once i would start down a path of thought i would be coughed on and at. and it was a strange and wet and hollow cough that produced enough that the mother kept throwing plastic bags of it out the window. so if i knew what the boy had, or if he had a proper seat of his own, or if he wasnt laying on me, or if he wasnt coughing on me, or if i had a window for fresh air, or if the hot, crowded, stuffy trip was only 2 hours, i wouldnt have had a problem. but i started getting a bit clausterphobic just wanting some space or some fresh air and i became concerned for my health. i seriously considered asking the driver to stop so that i could just walk. i felt sorry for the boy, but i guess i would have rather walk for an hour or two than to contract a disease that i would die from or hospitalize me or that would weaken my health for life. enough. i stayed on but was very relieved to get off in pai 762 mountain curves later.
i immediately liked pai. the town was small but bustling. the first thing i noted was that it wasnt overrun with tourists. the second thing i noted was that i wasnt constantly mobbed by vendors. i started feeling like a human not a dollar sign. i was just another person walking the streets. there was some sort of festival going on. school girls in shiny pink dresses were performing a dance in the street to a strange band of local musicians. vendors selling tribal clothing, jewelry, and food. corn on the cob, soups, sweets, grilled meats, crepes,... i walked the narrow streets asking for lodging and eventually found a place with huts along the river with vacancy. i left my bag and walked the streets. ate falafel and a banana crepe. i noticed strange lights in the sky and just stared. i couldnt tell what the lights were. but after walking for some time i discovered two boys in the street with what looked like a tissuepaper lampshade. and they were setting the bottom on fire. i watched with curiosity. after a minute or two the tissuepaper lantern began to float in the way a hotair balloon may defy gravity. soon the lantern rose higher and higher into the sky until it was just point of flame in the night sky amongst other such lanterns.
the next day after breakfast i rented a bike. i rode into the mountains through villages amongst the hill tribes. a greying woman in full tribal dress and no teeth pinched her fingers together and brought them to her pursed lips in an offer to sell me some kind of smoke probably marijuana or hash. i smiled and pedalled on. i visited a waterfall in the mountains. stopped to watch a man with his herd of goats. gazed over pai in the valley below. pedaled across the valley into the opposite hills to a wat atop a hill with a commanding view of the area. this wat had hundreds and hundreds of steps in nearly a straight line leading up the hill. i rode on through banana groves, past a line of elephants dominating the road, and stopped at some hot springs where a few people bathed. i rode to another hill tribe. where the other tribes stood out according to the brightly colored clothing they wore, this tribe's women stood out with rings elongating their necks. children called after me with the only english words they knew. i rode to a bridge from WWII that seemed to attract a few tourists and stopped for a cup of coffee. i had just enough time to make it to a canyon for sunset. through the darkness i rode back to pai and got back to the bike rental just as it was closing. i stopped at a small restaurant for some curry and rice. i asked the owner to make it hot. when she brought it to me she bragged with her fingers that she used 8 hot peppers. it was excellent. i found a small internet spot(maybe the only one in pai). i had a decision to make. julie from columbus had invited me to hang out with her friends in the far south on the beaches. at this point i had a week and a couple days before my flight back to kauai. i was thinking about going to laos and boating down the mekong. i heard good and bad. i didnt have enough time to visit laos properly and there was the issue of crossing the border. in the end laos would be difficult with borders, transportation, and time and what i would experience was described to me as some kind of spring break party which was not what i wanted. pai was awesome and i wanted to stay longer but if i wanted to see the beautiful beaches again i would need to leave pai the next morning as it would be 3 days travel to koh phi phi. so i bought my way onto a bus to chiang mai. the 762 curves back werent bad at all.

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Photos

Breakfast Over 'Atlas Shrugged'
Muesli with yoghurt and coffee for breakfast in Pai

Wat in Chiang Mai
i dont know what happened to the top to make it crumble.

Buddhist Monks in Deep Meditation
buddhist monks like video games too. Chiang Mai

My First Sight in Pai
it was some sort of full moon celebration. note the band in blue and those long long fingernails

Was I Ting Tong
i dont know. there were mirrors all about the town. some told me ting tong was inebriated in some sense. another told me it was just a silly happiness. whatever it means i was only ting tong on the inside

Bridge Near My Lodging
i think the posts were somewhat sturdy. everything else was bamboo. the flooring was cardboardthick bark or panelling woven through bamboo

Dragon Railing
A snake or eel swallowing a horned dragon made the railing for the steps leading to a wat on a hill overlooking Pai.

View of Pai
View of Pai From the hilltop wat. part of my bike outing

Pai Traffic
i had to bike around these road hogs. they dont bother keeping to their lane

Floating Lantern
i thought i was seeing things at first. then i thought there were huge fires on the mountaintops. then i noticed this lantern being launched. a few minutes after it is lit, the warm air causes it to rise hundreds of feet into the air.

Gas Station
the 4 X 6 shack on the way to Pai contained 2 50gal drums with hand pumps. one diesel and one gas. it had a shelf with quarts of motor oil as well.

Garliec Nadpeppers
on my way south from pai to phi phi i encountered several interesting signs. i will share a few. i am not making fun of errors in translation. but when it seems funny because i dont understand the language or the error suggests something it doesnt intend i take note. for instance there was a sign advertising motors 'guaranteed not to explode.' im easily amused. and i didnt try the nadpeppers at the Chiang Mai trainstation

Mmm Ice Cream Sundae
KFC is popular in Thailand. i like to try new foods but the franchising, along with poor food quality at fast food restaurants, and the thought of corn chunks in a warm sweet corn flavored sauce over ice cream didnt appeal to me at the trainstation in bangkok so early in the morning. plus 29 baht is a little expensive.

Save the World?
this billboard in Bangkok confused me a bit. i stared for awhile. then decided to take a picture to think some more. i think earth starts to get sick, then gets to the point where it kicks all the animals off. then starts feeling better and becomes happy. dunno

Bathroom Signs
Thai's express their need to go a bit more passionately by squeezing their legs together. men resist a bit more and only squeeze one leg. women, as well as the usual dress also normally wear pigtails. men, wearing pants as usual, either normally wear their hair in a ponytail or have long noses or stick their tongues out when the have to go

Human Bread
i dont know. i was walking down an alley in bangkok and there was nothing other than this door. a poster of what looks like a human head in a breadbag. and so human bread is for sale at 70baht($2us). is someone selling bread that looks like human heads or is it... i just dont know. it was just an alley that i left in a hurry.

Pictures Help
Busstop sign. i cant read thai, but i figured out that this was the men's urinal. incidentally the urinal troughs were buriedin viny plants and shrubs as if to give you that...natural environment

No Smoking and No Cannonballs into the Toilet
ok maybe it is just saying not to stand on the toiletseat to go to the bathroom(most toilets are squatters in southeast asia)

Possessions
ok. i am not making fun of subtle mistakes in translation. if anything i am making fun of myself for not being able to read thai. but when i see these signs they make me stop and think. being in a buddhist country i was hoping that this was not a warning about pickpockets.