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	---> MORE Destinations: _________________________________ New Perspective of Chiang Rai at Latitude 19 VISITING A BORDER TOWN: Mae Sot – then and now The Poy Sang Long Festival in Mae Hong Son The Samoeng Strawberry Festival Far Out and Cool in Fang District PICTURE PERFECT Mon Jaem Chiang Mai Reflections and a Night Safari Adventure Wat Palad: The Temple below the Temple The Bua Tong Waterfall Park The Cave and Hot Springs of the Mae On Area A DAY TRIP TO DOI INTHANON Two wheels good four wheels…er… The Sino-Thai Dragon Temple of Wat Tha Ton Doi Inthanon - Thailand’s Highest Mountain Kad Mua - an all-you-need market Chiang Dao High! Chiang Mai’s Red Cross and Winter Fair Loy Krathong at Tak A RETREAT TO... Kwan Yin Bodhisattva Hall Living with nature: Galyani Vadhana District Treasures of Myanmar A Journey to Shangri-La Pha Wing Choo – A Lover's Cliff Wiangtakan – The Past Remains Rural Life and Natural Mystery in Chaiprakarn Taking Aim at Chiang Mai's Shooting Gallery Chiang Mai - Maerim - Samoeng Route Hot Springs (and eggs) Ratchaphruek Festival 2009 The 5th Lanna - Japan Festival 2009 Make a Day of it at the New Look Night Safari Mae Sa Snake Farm Marine Lives in a Mountainous Zoo X-Centre Mae Hong Son, Pang Oong and much more along the way... Mae Kampong Village Tiger Kingdom Pai: The Hub of Joy Flower Festival Annual Bo Sang Umbrella Festival at Bo Sang Village Wiang Kum Kam: The Underground Ancient City Loy Kratong: The Town's Joyful Festival Monkey Centre Maerim, Chiang Mai Baankwai Thai Maerim Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden THE ROYAL PALACE ON DOI SUTHEP The Night Safari Ban Saonak Chae Son National Park Lamphun's Wat Chamathevi Doi Tao Lake Mae Sai Bai the Beautiful Wieng Kum Kam Mae Klang Luang Village Doi Pui - Hmong Tribal Village Nan Province Wat Suan Dok Chiang Saen: a city in myth and reality One Night in Chiang Rai and a day across the border A trip full of tour guides Two Days and a Night in the Country The Sumptuous Angkhang Gourmet Tour AWAY FROM IT ALL IN NEARBY MAE WANG Children's Day at the Westernmost Point of Thailand To Lamphun Along the Road of Histories ESCAPING TO PAI A WINTER TRIP ON THE PING RIVER To the Back of Beyond, right on your doorstep Visiting the Shrine of the Elephant-Headed God Visiting Samui Back to Nature at Opkhan National Park Lost in the Chiang Mai Zoo Three Days through the Northern Countryside DOING A NINE-TEMPLE KARMA TRIP - Right Here in Chiang Mai An Early Summer Trip to the Thi Lo Su Falls Nan: Forest, Temples and the Salt of the Earth TREKKING AND TUCKING IN: Wawee Coffee Plantation Mai Long Yee - Lovely Whatever Else You Call It Magnificent Creatures at Wat Changkham Off to See Some Mural Paintings in Lampang The Salawin and the People of Tha Tafang A Hike in the Forest A Journey back in time A Long Night of Luxury in the Chiang Dao Valley Ice-cold in Omkoy A Quick Visit to a Karen Wedding Strawberry Fields Forever A quick ride to Jaesorn National Park A Journey to Wawee A Birding Trip for Newbies Nam Bor Phi Cave A Breath of Sea Air Shopping With a Difference: Kad Luang Airport ELEPHANTS AND ORCHIDS AND THE SNACKS IN BETWEEN Monsoon Miscellany MAE RIM LAGOON AN IMPRESSIVE TRIP - to the Sukantara Resort Visiting Luang Prabang, the Pearl on the Mekong River Phrae: refreshing trip, auspicious visits Up on the Mountain (again) at Khun Wang UP THE MOUNTAIN TO THUNG LUANG SINGAPORE - City of Parks A Short Sight-Seeing Trip to the Monkey Centre GIVE PAI A TRY! You won’t regret it A BUSY DAY’S VISIT TO SANKAMPAENG A Rainy Day Outing to Phrao Monsoon Miscellany TRIPPING AND TASTING ALONG THE HANDICRAFT HIGHWAYS

ESCAPING TO PAI

We took this trip in early December, as the entire country was preparing to celebrate the King's 79th birthday, the perfect time to be away - when most of the country was on holiday. OK! The odd bureaucrat stayed at his desk, sweating it out all on his own. But the rest of us....? Pai tio - off on a trip, well-earned or not - who cares. And what better place to tio than Pai, that valley locked in by high mountains off the road north from Chiang Mai city, and half way to Mae Hong Son. And in our case we weren't even AWOL. We were legit, doing our office duty by taking the Trip of the Month. Now I ask you, at times like these, who wouldn't want to be a journalist?

To make it even more groovy, this was to be my first time in Pai, and I went in the company of a bunch of friends from the office who knew their way around there. Doesn't get better than that!

We left Chiang Mai in a pick-up, fully loaded and fueled, at eight o'clock sharp, the truck heading at top speed on the straight road in the direction of Farng at first, due north. And getting on for thirty minutes into the journey, at Mae Malai, where you go west off the Farng Road, we stopped for a bite or two at the market there. It was at this point that something strange happened.

"Better take your antihistamines right now," said one of my experienced friends.

"Anti-whats?" I said. "And what for?"

Well, I soon found out. A pretty hearty breakfast put away, you're well advised to keep it put away by taking anti-car sickness pills, whatever does the job for you. Because a few kilometres along the Pai road the road stopped being straight and sober, and turned drunk and - ohmygod! - curvy, swervy and precipitous. And I mean definitely not on the straight and narrow. Up, round and at speed. I mean fast. I forget how many times our heads cracked against the side panelling as we slid into and out of another unbelieveable curve, at an angle definitely up from the horizontal. Perhaps loss of memory from concussion - can't be Alzheimer's. I'm too young.

"Did you ever see that film Bullit, with the San Francisco car chase? Must have been our driver," I said, clinging onto my companion."Good job he knows what he's doing."

"He does, does he?" said the companion, and then shouted something uncomplimentary that I wont repeat in the direction of our helmsman.

"And can't you smell something burning?"

As a matter of fact I could - and so by this time could a couple of the rest of us.

"Hey! Help! We're on fire. Stop!! Stop the car?"

Our friends in the front meanwhile had been noticing the same thing, and noting also that the driver looked more and more solemn, muttering things like, "I wonder what's happened to the brakes."

And that's when the folks in front started jumping out without waiting for the vehicle to come to a stop, with the rest of us exiting not long - like five seconds - after.

So, we let the engine cool down and eventually made it to Pai. End of first episode

Pai is a small town locked - as I said - in the mountains. The number of tourists, Thai and foreigners alike, is quite remarkable.Since we hadn't made proper reservations, the first thing we did was look for affordable accommo. Eventually we found a good enough place with small bungalows, surrounded by rice fields with spectacular views. We unpacked our stuff and started looking for food. It seemed quite a while since we'd been in Mae Malai, at the other end of that equally spectacular road.

Our acquaintance in Pai recommended a noodle shop in a small Yunnan Chinese immigrant community just out of town. The noodles there tasted quite different from those in the city, as also did the kha moo (pork knuckle soup), with buns (salabau), and fried tofu. Stomachs tightly stretched, we hopped back in our brakeless vehicle and started doing our tourist bit.

First off in this respect was a temple where we noticed tourists milling around. This turns out to be the most famous temple in Pai, named Wat Nam Hu (nam = water, hu = hole) after fresh water springing from the hollow head of a Buddha image there. For some unexplained reasons, this small hollow is always filled with water, which the locals, not unreasonably, hold to be a miracle. There have been those who speculate that the water is related in some way to the materials the image is made from. However, there's no agreed scientific explanation, so I for one am happy to call it a miracle. Like the mysterious fireballs attributed to Phaya Nak - the Great Serpent - lying at the bottom of the Mekong river, miracles in Thailand are best left unexplained. They're more fun that way, some mysteries better off unsolved.

Our respects paid to the mysterious image of Wat Nam Hu, at all events, we left the saints and joined the many sinners flocking the streets of Pai, exploring what those streets had to offer. You should know by the way that Pai is reckoned to be some sort of Shangri La or Utopia (Utopai for some) so naturally it's full of artists, backpackers, hippie and yuppy sorts of people. And naturally, the place is burtsting at the seams with artistic hangouts, plus coffee shops, bars with live music, varied restaurants - you want veggie? they have it: Muslim? - sure: Chinese? Why not? and most of them with reasonable prices. A friend of mine once tried to get round to all the nice coffee shops in the town in one day - and not only didn't he succeed in doing so, but also he couldn't get to sleep that night, and so had to hit a lot of the boozers to overcome the cafeine overdose.

Speaking of which, it was, again, time for coffee. Although All About Coffee is the most favored cafe in town, it was so crowded we decided to give it a miss, and ended up at a small place called Groove Yard, which sits right beside the Bebop Bar, which is a must place to stop at for its quality live music at night. Turned out the coffee at this place was pretty OK too, and there were some lovely kittens there running around acting as receptionists.

I've already mentioned the mountains round the Pai valley a couple of times, which act as a kind of protective wall, not least if you rent a bike in town, because it doesn't matter how many gears it has, you're not going to throw yourself at the steeper of the slopes out east or west, not unless you're a Tour de France specialist. Stick to the delightful tracks all round, is my advice - the air's so good, the streams so clean and refreshing, why go elsewhere? (By the way, there are several shops offering bicycles and motorcycles for rent at affordable prices.) The torrents in the Pai River are usually strong, so another activity that's fun is renting a small raft made of an inflated tyre, on which you can just sit and enjoy the sun shining on the sparkling water. More conventional rafting on rubber or bamboo rafts is on offer too, and this can take you well down the Pai River in spectacular scenery on a one to two-day trip. Ask around. What's more, there's a hot spring just 10 kilometers out of the town. It has some private resorts offering mineral water bathing facilities, just the thing if you're into improving the texture of your skin - so they tell me.

At sunset, the air was getting cold. We Thai journalists had to put on our best sweaters before hitting the evening streets of Pai. It astonishes me how many shops there are selling beautiful postcards, both handmade and fine-printed. I think the people who make it to Pai really love to send postcards, showing where they've been. Unlike more modern communications such as e-mail and the cell phone, a postcard with the stamp on it may be like the flag you leave atop the highest peak you can climb, telling the recipient, I WAS HERE.

We'd actually planned to have a wild evening at Bebop after dinner, but what we did first - as we thought of it - was to warm ourselves up with a drop or two of alcohol at our guesthouse. But you know, the later it got, the colder it became, and we seemed to need a spot more of that delicious warming beverage - and then just a bit more. So that what we eventually agreed was that not a hundred Bebops could be more compellingly attractive than the warm blankets we'd been snuggled down into.

That night, as the snores of my companions shook the guesthouse, it wasn't the thought of the perils of the road, or the work that awaited us back in Chiang Mai, that occupied my mind, but the image of the star-spangled sky under which I lay, and the purity of the darkness and silence that enclose Pai all round. That and the realisation that being a journalist, and having to do these trips as a duty...well, one could have picked on a worse profession.

Text : iPor & Terryl
Photos : S.P.