Thai tourists we met in Chiang Mai did not seem to recommend or be too impressed with Pai. And really, there is nothing “Thai” about it. As Elise mentioned, Pai was recently described to us as a beach town without the beach. That could be one description of it, but I would describe it as follows since the city is something of an interesting phenomenon:
Imagine a random tourist city that seems to be growing and gaining popularity (and traffic) for no obvious reason - similar to Wimberley, TX for example - complete with the souvenir shopping and lazy river except that you can rent bamboo bungalows literally right on the river for next to nothing. Add in a Northwest coffee house culture, a laid back live music scene - rhythm and blues mixed with some reggae, and an Oregon-like hippy culture plopped down in Thailand not far from the Burma border.
The surrounding terrain is mountainous, tropical with banana and coconut palms, but with weather in January much like summer in the Colorado Rockies – dry, comfortably warm during the day, but you might need a jacket at night.
Needless to say, we loved Pai. Maybe it’s because we’re tourists, but we see the appeal. We hiked out of town to a waterfall one day and biked to the hot springs on another. This time the biking was a much better experience – better bikes and gentler terrain. And the surrounding farmland and northern Thailand mountains are beautiful.
An interesting note: the guidebooks seem to state that during the peak tourist season (now) Pai – and other places we have been - can be overrun by tourists and difficult to even find a room. This is definitely not the case in Pai or anywhere else we’ve been in Thailand so far. Also, the trend we are seeing is that there are many more Asian tourists (Thai, Chinese) than Western tourists. Is this a result of the Bangkok violence earlier in 2010, or a result of a downturn in international travel because of the global economy?
We have had multiple inquiries about the Key Performance Indicators of the trip. (If you a new reader, please reference our first entry, "A Year in Asia.") As of tomorrow, we have just reached one month away so it is still early. Let’s just say that since we started our trip in Thailand, we are completely spoiled and have not yet really challenged ourselves. As a result we are currently outperforming on all indicators.
We moved on and are currently in Sappong on our way to Mae Hong Son…
This stop sounds like my kind of place... quiet, rural and it has elephants:) I can't wait to hear more!
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