Peaceful Pai

I didn't have any problems with traffic until I met this gang of elephants! I challenge you to try and pass them - it's scary!
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The bus ride to Pai was an incredible journey, there are 762 curves in the road between Chiang Mai and Pai. No, I didn't count them but I am relying on the magnets and t-shirts that were for sale in Pai that gave me this information. You are climbing up and down mountains in a bus that seems that it might not make it up the next hill. The bus was incredibly slow but it was so scenic I really didn't care. I arrived around 4 in the afternoon and a storm was brewing. After walking around with my bags looking at places to stay I decided on the Pai Riverside Bungalows, I made it just in time before it started to pour. The owners turned out to be super helpful and friendly and the people staying there were really nice as well. I stayed longer than I had planned, which says a lot I guess! In retrospect I wish that I would have spent more time off the beaten path, but I'll save that for my next trip. I had my own little bungalow on the banks of the river and there was a restaurant and small bar where I spent my mornings eating breakfast and taking in the views.

The view from where I ate breakfast every day
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Pai is very small but, thanks to a booming tourism industry, manages to support a few local art galleries and from what I saw, a gang of ex-pats who came a long time ago and decided not to leave. Not that I blame them. The town itself is fun to walk around for a couple of hours but at that point you've pretty much covered all that it has to offer. The real thrill is getting out of Pai and into the surrounding hills. I debated about renting a bike or a scooter but decided on the motorized version so that I could see more. My scooter was orange and very fun to drive!

My bungalow and bike
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There are several waterfalls (there must be 1000's of waterfalls in Thailand) that you can drive to, it just takes a bit of patience to find them as they aren't so well marked. Or at least I kept turning off from the main paths to explore and I kept getting lost. The best was when I thought I had made it to one of the waterfalls and instead I found myself at a monastery where, thankfully, the monks spoke good english and were able to point me in the right direction. Fortunately there wasn't much traffic either, well, other than crossing elephants that you had to watch out for on the road! The scenery was grand and other than a mid-day typical passing rainstorm I lucked out with the weather.

Get your motor runnin'....head out on the highway....okay, so it's only a scooter but I still had fun!
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Because I wasn't able to find one of the waterfalls I headed back out the next day to test my navigational skills. This time I took along someone from the guesthouse and we were successful in finding it. The waterfall was very picturesque but it unfortunately smelled like an outhouse, which didn't really make me want to linger.

I ended up eating at a vegan restaurant almost every evening, the food was good and cheap and the best part was the free entertainment....well, not really. Across the street was the local community center where every evening they had an outdoor aerobics session, complete with peppy Thai music and a very enthusiastic and LOUD (thanks to a microphone) instructor who liked to talk a lot. It was fun to watch, if only from a humorous standpoint.

I've never seen a VW bus converted into a coffee shop, but now you have too
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I wish that I had spent more time here, as I had said. But now it's back to Chiang Mai and then on to Laos!