Life of Pai and Other Places We Didn’t Visit

I’m kidding, we did actually go to Pai.

Pai lies over the mountains and to the north about 130km.

After a week of hard riding in Chiang Mai, we decided to head north to Pai. Victor had made the trip once before while I staying and rode, and he claimed it was worth the trek up. This considered we got up one morning, had breakfast at our favorite local spot, rented a couple of motorcycles and started the ride north.

For $5, this is a steal.

Unique menus and awesome tea mugs, Yummy is the place to be in the morning.

Pai is sort of like the National Parks of Thailand, at least from our impression. The feel of Pai is similar to the major National Parks of the US. There are some amazing attracting to see and activities to take part in, but it’s crowded and very touristy. In the US parks, there are vast crowds of Asian tourists. If you replaced those Asian crowds with Americans and Europeans, you’d basically have Pai. For being a fairly small town in a remote (ish) area of Thailand, there’s an obscene number of Westerns that go there for some reason. It’s a tourist trap in every scene of the word.

That being said, Pai has some things worth braving the crowds for, and deserves some credit for that.

This cave is actually in Tham Lot, about an hour north of Pai. It’s still sort of “in” Pai though, as most visitors make the drive to see it.

Just north of Pai is Tham Lot, which is home to quite a large hole in the ground (i.e. cave). Of course, being a good tourist town, there are guided tours of the cave in question. Each tour lasts about 30 minutes to an hour depending on the guide you get, some guides practically run through the tour to maximize their profits, which other will slowly mosey and let you take in the sights.

The cave is a couple stories tall in side, and includes a decent sized river as well.

Our initial tour guide unfortunately landed in the former category, and I spent the first half of our tour running and gunning the camera. As you photography buffs know, and I suppose people in generally probably realize, caves are quite dark. And what do cameras record? Light. If there is a lack there0f, cameras have a hard time making a picture. Give time, they can sit and gobble up all the little photons floating around, but if you don’t have the time to sit and wait, things don’t always work out. In short, I ended up with a lot of blurry or badly framed photos. Which is fine, because the cool stuff didn’t happen until the next half of the tour.

Victor’s and my tour group consisted of us and four super cool Spaniards. I couldn’t tell you what we’re all looking at here, but it must have been pretty interesting as everyone seems focused. I was focused on the interesting lighting that was going on.

About half way through the tour, our group split up into two groups for some reason. Another guide joined us, and Victor, I and one of the Spaniards got to relax a bit more and take a slower cruise through things.

The cave has four main chambers we visited. The first two we hiked through, both had massive formations in them made from hydrological activity. Hopefully that’s correct word usage.

This is taken on the hike up to the second chamber. Below us we could see other visitors making their way to the first chamber..

Left: The formations were pretty outstanding, almost every surface had been sculpted by water. Right: For the last part of the tour we took a bamboo raft down the carp-rich cave river.

As we floated slowly down the river that runs through the cave, we were treated to sights of massive stalactites hanging from the roof of the came. Thousands of bats were tucked up between them, and we even saw a python patrolling at the edge of the water.

After our ride down the river, we explored the last section of the caves. To our surprise, on display were a few wood coffins that were claimed to be over 2,000 years old. I was surprised at how intact they were, and how many of them there were. Sadly, all the information about them was in Thai, so I don’t know the history of them at all. Maybe a quick Google will revel some secrets for the curious.

Below: Bamboo raft adventures

After visiting the last section of cave, we got back on the rafts and made our way back to the entrance of the cave. The whole tour lasted less than an hour, but was certainly worth the money and time. I mean, it’s not very often you get to go hike around a multi-story cave that also happens to have a rive in it that also get to take a bamboo raft down to go see 2,000 year old coffins. Just saying.

Spelunking completed, we hopped back on the bikes (and by bikes I mean the Honda CRM 250s we had rented for the trip. Much vroom, very go fast), and began the journey south back to Pai.

The roads around Pai have more corners than straights in them. I believe there’s like 762 corners in a littler over 125km of road between Chiang Mai and Pai.

Once back in Pai, we visited the Canyon of Pai (probably not the official name, but the colloquial one I prefer). The canyon is actually a collection of tall ridges with deep valleys between them. Each ridge is about 50 to 100 feet tall, separated by massively deep valleys with thick underbrush. It’s a unique spot to say the least, but one that is also home to a million sight-seers.

People, people everywhere.

We hiked around for a bit to explore the various ridges and valleys. I took a few photos, but ultimately decided the scenery was being polluted by the humanity. It would have been possible to find a good location for taking a pretty landscape photo, but only at the cost of being shoulder to shoulder of other tourists with cameras. Instead, I found some pretty OK clouds.

When the sun goes down this close to the equator, it goes down fast. From sunset it takes about half an hour for it to get to near midnight darkness, so as soon we watched the sun dip below the horizon from the canyon, we hightailed it out of there. Also, we wanted to avoid the herd of scooters that would also be making their way back to Pai soon.

Pai is home to a great night market, so once the sun goes down and most outdoor adventure stops, visitors can go gorge themselves on delicious Thai food and find little souvenirs to spend lots of money on (and by lots of money I mean lots of Thai baht, which is usually a couple dollars).

In addition to the many trinket and bobbles for sale at the night market, there are also a few musicians performing in the street. Most are singer/song writer types, sometimes they do Thai covers of American/western music. In Pai there was one other musician that was playing a large metal tub. It’s actually called a hang I believe, but essentially it’s a metal oval with depressions that produce certain notes when hit. It’s a very unique sounding instrument, and Victor, the crowd and I enjoyed listening to the performer play for a while.

Our “hotel” where we stayed was only a few minutes down the road from the street market. I put “hotel” in quotation marks because our room was a triangular prism with a 14 foot (ish) high ceiling. The doors were bamboo as were the walls, which just also happened to be the roof too. That all said, it was comfortable, clean and about $3 per night. Heck, in the US you can pay $18 for a piece of bare dirt to sleep!

Hut A1. Best hut around. There’s a whole complex of these little things, all super cheap for bum backpackers traveling through the area. Two beds per room and a communal shower/bathroom area.

The last morning we were in Pai we decided to get up before sunrise and go to the Canyon to observe the Big Ol’ Ball of Fire rise above the mountains to the east.

Even though it’s hot as a SoCal summer during the day, Pai gets cold at night, down in the 50s maybe. That may not sound like much, but after getting used to 90s for a week, sitting on a motorcycle in the cool morning air is like taking a shower with ice water. We’d only brought what we could carry in our backpacks, which meant so jackets or extra clothes to throw on for the ride.

Luckily, the ride was only about 15 minutes, so we didn’t quite get hypothermia. We arrived at first light, literally, and over the next hour we were treated to a growing glow of colors on the horizon. The burning season is in full force in Thailand at the moment, so the air was filled with smoke which only made the colors that much more vibrant.

If you look closely, you can hear the roosters going off.

Moments after the fire ball became visible.

Such tree, so artistic. Much branches, very geometry.

Zoos, Views and Fools

I’m not quite positive on the exact timeline here, but we’ll go with it.

At some point, Victor and I visited the Chiang Mai Zoo and Aquarium. And boy, what an adventure we had.

The Chiang Mai Zoo is quite large, about as big as the town of Friday Harbor. To put it into perspective, there are buses that take visitors from one exhibit to another.

Of course we didn’t take any buses though, there were far too many stair sets and other miscellaneous fun objects to ride. Bike’s are better for your health too!

When we bought our tickets for the zoo, we were told we couldn’t bring our bikes in. However, we went to the entrance, asked again and they let us right in! Mistake #1 on their part. The zoo is kind of a giant skate park/mountain bike trail. There are stairs absolutely everywhere as the zoo is built on the side of a mountain, and with small trails connecting many of the exhibits there’s a lot of fun to be had in between looking at animals.

This wall of asphalt was meant to be ridden. It’s basically just a giant quarter pipe, no other reason for it to exist as far as we could tell.

There is also a large aquarium in the Chiang Mai Zoo, it’s actually built in the middle of an artificial lake; pretty neat. The aquarium itself is, to be honest, not the best I’ve ever been to. However, it does have a long glass tunnel that goes through possibly the largest fish tank I’ve ever seen/been in. In the image below you can see about a tenth of the whole tunnel, it took us about fifteen minutes to walk through the whole thing. There’s a large variety of fish and other marine life including sharks, arapaima, and turtles. Not bad. Victor wore his helmet the whole time for some reason, probably scared of the arapaima attacking.

He’s looking a turtle taking a breather right above him.

Our work shop isn’t very glamorous.

The day after the zoo (and I’m just guessing here, I don’t actually remember), Victors tire finally decided to call it quits. Chiang Mai is very, very hard on tires. It’s steep, loose and the runs are very long. Victors tire wasn’t in the best shape to begin with, and on an outing to 7Eleven it began spraying Stans sealant everywhere. The center knobs were basically gone too, and maybe side knobs were starting to rip off. RIP tire, you served us well.

Stans was coming out of holes almost as numerous as the knobs.

Possibly after our day at the zoo, maybe that night, we went to the top of the Maya shopping mall and discovered one of the best spots to watch the sunset in Chiang Mai. The mall is taller than most other building in the area, and faces west toward Doi Suthep and the other mountains in the park. As the sun went down and the lights in the city came on, a soft glow settled over the city….which was quickly broken by the sound of a thousand Tuk Tuks roaring their way at 10 mph down the road.

Also, on one of the days I visited a temple in the Old City. I felt a little weird not knowing anything about the history of significance of the temple, but sadly all of the information was written in Thai and I had no chance of reading it. But that’s what the internet is for I suppose! I had no choice in the moment however, and simple enjoyed the craftsman ship and meticulous efforts that went into constructing such a place.

One of many spires at the temple, it’s very impressive how much goes into these sites.

Along our travels, we met a fellow American, Katie. She’s been living abroad for quite some time and currently calls Chiang Mai home. Apparently she’s more social than us, and invited us to come to a trivia night. I had no idea trivia was a thing in Chiang Mai, but apparently it is? We were dubious, but literally had nothing better to do with our evening so we showed up, ordered some milkshakes and fried, and prepared to answer random questions concerning topics we know little about.

As it turned out, Victor and I are pretty terrible at trivia, but the rest of our team made up for us and we came very close to winning! On our way to second place, we found more laughter and ridiculous jokes than we did answers to the questions, and while it might have contributed to our first loser podium position, I think we all will remember the night as a solid win in every other respect.

Sadly, most of our team left Chiang Mai soon after that night, so our performance will go down in history as a one hit wonder.

From left, Victor, myself, Kevin (english teacher), Katie (journalist), Gui Fru (Guinness Book of World Records Holder), and Roger (if you point to the nearest mountain he will run over it).

Left: Our host whom I forget the name of. Good guy. Right: Kevin knows exactly what and how long a syllable is.

The faces of uncertainly.

These two guys basically won us the night with their combined brain power. Also, we won back our entrance fees! So much baht, so little dollar equivalent.

Randoms and the Occasional Cat

On many evenings, it is still hot and arid in Chiang Mai, AKA perfect weather for a smoothie. Our current favorite smoothie spot is just across the Old City, about a ten minute ride away.

On the way over, many of the concrete walls that line the roads and back alleys are covered with street art. It’s quite nice to look at; most of the city walls that would otherwise be blank and drab are now colorful murals. Mandalas, portraits and landscapes are common subject matter choices, but only represent a fraction of what can be found lurking in hidden alleys and corners of the city.

On such section of street art is right on our way to the smoothie spot, and seemed perfect for a wall ride. There were even some nice chunks of concrete to stack up into a crude jump to help Victor get his tires up on the wall.

We photographed this spot for about twenty minutes, trying slightly different angles as the light began to drop and the shadows lengthened.

Of all the photos we got that session, the photo below wasn’t the one with the most amplitude or style from Victor. I preferred this one though as I think it finds a particularly unique moment. Victors tire has just touched the wall, his rear wheel is still mid-air and the suspension hasn’t begun to compress at all. Following his gaze, the viewer can predict his exact trajectory and landing zone. At the same time, the leading lines from the overhead wires and orange pillars coax the eye to the right over to the older couple ogling at the crazy biker doing weird things in front of them. To top it off there’s a weird pillar thingy growing out of the space between them.

How’d those get there? Marks left to puzzle future visitors to the area, stories they might only wonder at.

After our adventures with the street art wall, we finally went to the smoothie location. We sat and enjoyed our fruit goodness as the temperature finally started to fall. Across from our table there is a wall of post-it notes. Literally, a wall of them. Messages range from simple “Hello Chiang Mai!” to more personal messages. Many are in many languages, some are just pictures. One that caught my eye simple said…

I love you, keep going.

Another read…

Your life is wonderful. Believe it.

I have no idea what the context of those message are, but I’m sure there’s a good story behind it.

On that note, I’ll wrap with this post. There’s still many photos and stories to be told, so look for another write up in the very near future. Right now Victor and I are in Bali taking a break from the smokey air of Chiang Mai. Our time here is almost at a close though, we leave Bali Tuesday and then only have a week more in Chiang Mai before heading back to the frozen lands of North America. But until then there’s still a lot of riding and adventuring to take part in.