Pai, Thailand (Post #75)
Thursday, December 29th, 2005Hi Holidayers! Michele here….
For the past 5 days, we have been in a small town in northwestern Thailand named Pai, not too far from the Myanmar (Burma) border. We didn’t actually plan to stay here this long but a couple of things happened that extended our stay. We arrived in Pai on December 24th and immediately went to a guesthouse recommended by a woman in our Chiang Mai cooking class – good thing because we later learned there is a serious shortage of accomodations in Pai. In fact, we actually paid to keep our room while we were treking in the mountains (see story below) for fear we wouldn’t find a place when we got back. We are very fortunate since the room is reasonably priced ($7.25), clean, and had a bathroom.
Pai is a small town that is lined with internet cafes, guesthouses, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and clothing stores (where hilltribe people from the north sell their handicrafts). The town sits at the base of some beautiful hills covered with vegetation and it is also along a river. Here is a picture of me standing on a bridge at the edge of the town (yes, it was cloudy and rained a lot in Pai):
[read on]
Michele Harmon