Llew Wanders the World

As discussed previously, I arrived in Pai (the P’s pronounced sort of halfway between a P and a B) and was pretty happy with what I saw. I got my bearings then took a wander down to the river to look for guesthouses. The riverine ones weren’t as centrally located as others, but town centre was still only a five minute walk away and they looked far superior for chillin’ out.

Which was pretty much what I did. I picked out the Darling Riverpark Guesthouse from the bunch and settled in. Annie, the owner of the Darling was a super-sweet Thai lady and it was this that tipped the balance in her favour. She called pretty much everyone she met “darling” and as I’d later learn, is probably the hardest-working woman in Thailand’s tourism industry. Added to the fact that she has a special place in her heart for Canadians (she has a good friend from Canada, and one of her Bungalows is even named “Toronto”) how could I have stayed anywhere else?

Annie showed me around, and invited me to sit down with guesthouse crew (consisting of herself, her uncle and her Lisu “daughter”) for lunch. After a very authentically Thai meal of spicy beef and cabbage soup with rice, I climbed up onto the hammock (from which the view really was beautiful) and laid down for a read.

Despite the veritable library in my backpack at this point, I was still running a bit short on books I was keen on reading. I picked up Midnight’s Children from the guesthouse library and started in. I was enjoying it just as much as the first time I’d read it and decided that I’d stick around in Pai until it was finished.

Later in the afternoon I climbed out onto the bamboo rafts that lined the sides of the river and splashed my way into the water. It was wonderfully refreshing, after the hot afternoon sun, if a bit shallow for actual swimming.

After my swim and a bit more reading, I went out for a bite to eat with Chad and Gary, a pair of Americans who were also staying at the Darling. They introduced me to Na’s kitchen, a place that produced delicious Thai food, and where I’d be spending a fair bit of time during my stay in Pai. After dinner I ventured out onto the market street in search of some desert. No problem there. Pretty much any Thai food one could ask for was available (what you’re looking at here is transluscent dried fish), as well as such western delights as corn on the cob, baked poatoes, hotdogs and the freshly made strawberry waffles I settled on (and enjoyed thoroughly.)

As I walked, I noted something I’d never seen anywhere else in Thailand: quite a few couples consisting of male Thais and female farangs. True, they were usually not “typical” Thai men (many of them wore rasta hats covering their dreadlocked hair) but it was still an encouraging change from the hordes of young Thai women with foreign men I’d seen elsewhere.

Upon returning to the GH, I procured a couple of Chang beers and laid back down in the hammock planning on spending my evening in a similarly literary fashion to the afternoon. My plans took a quick turn when Annie pulled the TV out into the cushion-covered bamboo-floored lounge area for some Thai entertainment.

They took an even bigger turn when Annie’s friends and the Thai half of a Thai-English couple showed up. You may or may not remember the game Jenga, which involves removing wooden blocks from the middle of a tower and replacing them on its top until it collapses. It’s safe to say, however, that pretty much all of Thailand does. I spent most of the night playing with the two Thai ladies. After the first warmup game, we started playing for beers. Much to my surprise, I was the pretty clear winner on the evening (though this may have had more to do with our relative alcohol tolerances than our relative jenga skills.)

After several hours of jenga (and once the Thai ladies were too drunk to play that with any skill at all, dominos) everyone succumbed to the beer and the hour and all headed off to sleep.

The next morning I woke up feeling surprisingly good, and got dressed intent on a nice Thai curry for breakfast. Before I even made it out of the guesthouse, however, I was invited to sit down with Annie’s family and the other guesthouse um… guests… for a breakfast of “jungle food” prepared by Annie’s uncle, Loung Cha.

Jungle food is basically food that’s culled from the jungle (duh) and can include all manner of odd delicacies, but most common amongst these are insects and their larvae. The particular jungle food we all partook in was a spicy broth chock full of ant eggs and (wasps? flies? flying ants?) It was pretty tasty, and didn’t require as much imagination to swallow as some of the other arthropods I’ve consumed in Asia.

After brekkie I went out for a wander in town. This walk took me away from the streets full of guesthouses and restaurants that cater to tourists and expats, and into very nearby but infrequently visited sections of the town. I found my way to the local market it was even more “authentic” than many markets I’d seen in that it sold virtually no tourist type goods, but was oddly foreign in that it was so organized, quiet and efficient, as epitomized by the neatly stocked shelves of one grocery stall.

My wanders also took me past a construction site where I got a look at some falsework using a non-traditional (if you’re from Canada) or very traditional (if you’re from Thailand) material. (For those of you who’re unaware I’m a structural engineer back home, so forgive me this one nerdy reference to my profession.)

I’d hoped that getting out of the touristed areas would show me a bit of election action as well. I’d been noticing the campaign advertisements ever since I returned to Thailand, and had learned just the day before that THIS was election day. As it turned out however, there was nothing to be seen. I couldn’t find a polling station, there were no people rushing out to vote, campaigning had stopped. Indeed, the only thing rthat seemed at all different was that restaurants and bars weren’t allowed to serve alcohol.

This didn’t seem to stop the pub I went into to watch a couple of six nations rugby matches, mind you (as an aside, I was delighted to discover that Wales had beaten England earlier in the day.) They just sent the rugby fans (all four of us) upstairs to a small room with a TV and sent our drinks up there whenever we needed them. The matches were reasonably entertaining, and much closer than anyone would have expected, so I went to bed satisfied, having got my first international rugby fix since being on the ferry from Tasmania to Melbourne back in November.

All in all my first couple of days in Pai were both fun and pretty relaxed. The fun would continue for the duration of my stay, but the energy level of the whole affair would take decided steps upward over the coming days.

Day three sarted out pretty sedately. Several of Annie’s Lisu (the Lisu are an ethnic minority or “hill tribe” who live in northern Thailand) friends came by plying their wares. Ever since arriving in Pai I’d been… well, perhaps admiring isn’t quite the right word… let’s say I’d been looking with a mixture of wonder and confusion at the costumes of thwe Lisu women. They’re obviously of a unique, probably ancient design, but the Lisu are big on colour. Fuschia, neon orange, fluorescent yellow… All of these and more find their way into the dress of the Lisu ladies. Their goods were quite pretty and I actually picked up a gift for a family member from them, but I won’t say who, in order to preserve the surprise.

Another entertaining aspect of talking with the Lisu women (with Annie acting as a translator) was their enthusiasm for marrying off their daughters (or, indeed, themselves) to falang (foreign) men. This was probably due to a couple of “success stories” where Lisu women got hitched to western men and led wonderful, idyllic lives operating family businesses in Pai. They really were genuine in their desires, but much more friendly and less pushy than many ethnic Thai women seem to be in their chase after foreign men.

After a breakfast of green curry, rice and a pineapple shake from a nearby restaurant (this pattern would be repeated very regularly) I went out for another wander around town, this time focussing on the area near my guesthouse. While perambulating, I met Malin and Lien, two girls (respectively Swedish and Belgian) who were staying at my guesthouse. I followed them around for a bit, trying out some of the insanely sweet treats that Malin picked up on the market street. Between this and another lay in the hammock, and another swim in the river, it was dinner time before I knew it.

I wandered around a bit, trying to find familiar faces, or at least strangers eating solo. I eventually gave up, but on my way home I met Gary, Chad, Lien and Malin all finishing up dinner at Na’s Kitchen. After joining them for a Thai herbal whisky I did a quick about face and we all headed to the Bebop, one of the (surprisingly) many bars in town with live music.

The band playing was actually really good, and were from Boulder Colorado. Bebop was just packed, but there was a little bit more room in the upstairs section where shoeless patrons sat around low tables on floor mats. Before long, however, we’d transformed that space into another dancefloor, which rapidly filled up with fellow revellers.

At the close of Bebop no one was quite ready to go home. We asked around and discovered that yes, there was one other place open: the infamous bamboo bar. (I’m applying this infamy retroactively, given my later experiences there… None of the people we asked really explained much about it.) The ladies (sensibly) chose to forgo the many offers of motorcycle rides to Bamboo from drunk Bebop patrons, while the men didn’t have any offers to refuse. The walk took less than 15 minutes, but the place was already pretty packed when we arrived.

The bamboo bar is a crazy place. It’s constructed entirely of (you guessed it) bamboo. There’s not a spot of furniture in the place. Everyone just sits around the four or so fire pits (yes, you read that right. There are open fire pits in the bamboo stilt building) occaisionally getting up to grab another drink from the bar. There’s no music, due to noise regulations (or more truthfully, due to the fact that the bar’s operating past legal hours and doesn’t want to draw attention to itself. In some senses this sort of sucks, but it’s probably more of a plus, since it means that the only entertainment is to talk to the bewildering array of characters you meet.

That first night at the bamboo I met (aside from the Swede, Belgian and two Americans I came with,) a Bolivian, two Spaniards, hordes of British, an Irishman who carried around a set of uillean pipes (rather like small bagpipes) with him everywhere he went (he tried to play, but the staff asked him to quiet down after just one song,) A Canadian from Port Dover, and towards the end of the evening, a crowd of besotted Thais who joined us and insisted we help them finish off their multiple bottles of Song Sam rice whisky. It was fortunate that the Bamboo Bar wasn’t far from our guesthouse because by the time the 04:30 closing hour came, our locomotive capabilties weren’t at the top of their range.

The next day got off to an (unsurprisingly) late start. I spent most of it just laying about, reading and taking it easy. I hadn’t been doing all that much reading since arrival, and if I was serious about my vow to finish Midnight’s Children before departure I’d need to pick it up or spend my whole three Thailand weeks in Pai.

I can’t believe I just summarised all of the daylight hours for an entire day in one paragraph. That’s what staying up ’til 05:00 does to you I guess.

Anyhow, just after sunset (18:30 or so) I left my hammock and took my leave of the guesthouse for a bite. As I was leaving, I met Emma, an Irish woman who’d just arrived that day and we headed out to eat together.

Before we even got to Na’s (our intended destination) Emma suggested we check out some kind of activity going on in the yard of Pai’s big secondary school. Good call! We wandered in and found four Thai men playing petanque (a French game very similar to bocci or lawn bowling.) They invited us to throw a couple of balls in their game (I made a spectacularly lucky shot on my first try.) When that was over and two of them departed, the remaining two (who we later learned were named Bia and Monmung [There is NO doubt in my mind that I’ve butchered their names. While I feel a bit guilty about it the fact that it’s a transliteration anyway and there IS no “proper” English spelling makes me feel a bit better]) invited Emma and I to team up and play against them.

And at a stake of only 10 baht per game… I had a strong feeling that it was 10 baht we’d never see again, but it wasn’t much money and was worth it for the fun of playing alone. Things seemed to be going okay for a while, as we were tied 2-2 after four “ends” or rounds of play, or whatever you call them in petanque. Unfortunately it went kinda downhill from there and we ended up losing the first game 11-3.

We switched teams and carried on playing, everyone having a grand time, as evidenced by the dance moves Bia broke out whenever he made a good shot. By the end of our three games my cheeks hurt from smiling so much (and I was only down the 10 baht from the first game.)

When everyone had packed up Emma and I headed on up the road in search of refreshment. We met the Gary and Chad at Na’s and had yet another delicious (if slow) dinner there. By the time we were done we were ready to head back to the guesthouse, but not without a few Changs and Singhas to keep us company. These lasted us well into the evening, though we had to obtain reinforcements partway through. We lounged around in the lounge until 12:30 came and Emma put forth the suggestion that we should decamp to the bamboo bar. To tell the truth, the place had done me enough harm the previous night, but I wasn’t about to let it get the better of me.

Emma and I headed over and were joined a bit later by Gary and Chad. The night progressed in much the same fashion as the previous one (I think) and once again, 05:00 found us just tumbling into bed for a solid slumber.

The cumulative effect of the previous two nights ensured that I only actually got out of bed once before 15:00 or so, for my (by now accustomed) breakfast of green curry, rice and a pineapple shake at a nearby restaurant. (40 baht for the lot. US$1!)

When 15:00 came and I DID finally emerge, I discovered that the Usual Suspects (Gary, Chad, Devin, Emma, Malin, Lien, and Lien’s new mate Shane, a kiwi who I’d met at a street food stall a couple days before) were preparing to go tubing along with a large group of mixed English speakers and one entertaining Japanese guy named Hiro, all of whom had just arrived. For those unfamiliar with the use of the word “tube” as a verb, I’ll fill you in. Tubing is essentially floating down a river in an inner tube. Sounds a bit boring perhaps, but with good company and a couple of beverages (Singha for Shane, Emma and I, Song Sam for the Yanks and a mixture of whisky, rice wine and various soft drinks for all the rest) it can be great entertainment.

We all piled into the back of Annie’s little pickup truck and headed down to the put-in point, a few km upriver from our guesthouse. Everyone piled onto their tubes and we floated down the river. There was the odd mildly exciting bit (some small rapids, running into the bank, or washing aground on a shallow spot) but generally everyone just had a good time, talking, laughing and floating from one group to the next all the way down.

After 1.5 hours or so we made landfall back at the Darling and climbed out onto land. Everyone was feeling a bit chilly at this point, since the sun was very near the horizon and the tempurature had started to drop. Thus there was a bit of a lineup for the only warm shower in the place. I’ve no idea who exactly started it, but before long someone yelled out (jokingly?) “everyone in! Everyone into the shower!” Or words to that effect. Miraculously the door opened up and all 15 of us piled into the one shower. Once inside everyone was smiling and laughing. (picture stolen from Gary’s blog, since I didn’t have one.) The shower head kept getting passed around so we’d all have a go at the hot water (though the fact that there were 15 or so soapy sozzled travellers certainly lent an air of figurative heat to the place too.) Some spoilsport (who shall remain nameless) was in the other shower, shooting cold water over the wall at the lot of us, but even this was part of the fun of the whole thing. It was such a bizzarre situation that even after everyone’d cleared out, dried off and re-clothed I couldn’t stop thinking about it and laughing gleefully for a good few hours.

Warm, clean and dry, the whole party decamped together for dinner. We all piled into one restaurant (in fact one table.) It’s a credit to the staff that they produced our orders so amazingly fast. Or perhaps it only seemed that way as a result of our very first order being four bottles of Sam Song (note the surprisingly lucid looking Irishwoman and Japanese guy in background) and a dozen Cokes. Whatever. Everyone had a great time sitting around the table laughing, drinking talking and so on. Over the course of the meal Emma introduced me to her menthol inhaler (meant for colds and sinus congestion and the like, but it feels super refreshing at any time) and I introduced Lien to the Rock Lock. (If you don’t know what the rock lock is, and can’t figure out the sequence of motions from the photo I’m afraid you’ll just have to live with it.)

After dinner we all headed out to Bebop again. This time the entertainment on stage was an incredibly good blues guitarist (Pai is known for its live music scene, but the quality and variety of it was still starting to surprise me.) The offstage entertainment continued, with more drink, dance and erm… some word that begins with “d” and means entertaining conversation.

The end of the evening found us all at the Bamboo Bar (are you starting to see a pattern here?) I won’t even bother to say that it was the same as always, since it was always the same (that’s not ENTIRELY true. It did sort of seem to go in two day cycles of busy-not busy, as many people didn’t feel too keen on re-visiting the place having just finished recovering from it.)

The next morning a scene of carnage greeted me in the lounge area. We’d spent next to no time there the previous day… We couldn’t be responsible for this mess, could we? A bit more observation and I realized that there were actual people amongst the mess. Ah yes! I’d forgotten about the one Canadian and four English(wo)men who’d showed up at the Darling, having been unable to find a room anywhere else. Annie had set them up with blankets and they’d all slept out in the lounge. Given how chilly it gets in Pai at night it was fortunate that they’d all (I remembered at that point) been to the Bamboo Bar the previous night and probably not noticed it.

I spent a good chunk of the early afternoon (or “morning” as I’d started to think of the time between 12:00 and 14:00 over the past few days) chatting with various members of the English crowd. At its core were Chloe and Dan, a couple who’d been travelling in India for the past five months. They were joined by Chloe’s mom Katharine and Dan’s father, Ted, who had come out to visit them for a few weeks. Chloe and Dan had had some utterly miserable experiences in India (Chloe had caught Malaria, dysentary twice, and they’d been lost in the jungle in the Andaman islands following the tsunami) but they still had a number of fond memories and good stories about India. They had interesting relationships with their ‘rents as well. Without meaning to sound at all critical, I found it odd that they all drank a lot, smoked pot and even (later) smoked opium together. And despite what many people would have one believe they still seemed like really happy functional families. It was really interesting to watch their relations.

I spent most of the following day hanging around the guesthouse, a lot of that time talking to Katherine, with occaisional forays out into town to grab some food. In the evening I went out for dinner with Dan, Chloe, Katherine and Ted. That was actually a pretty uneventful evening, except for the fact that we sat down beside an older Australian man who said something particularly offensive to Katherine, and that Na’s really outdid themselves in the “long and careful food preparation” department.

Compared to some of the previous nights this one was relatively sedate. I said “relatively” mind you, and given the sort of evenings I’d been having recently, that’s not saying much. We all took a trip into town to procure beverages and the whole population of the guesthouse spent the night out on the deck talking and listening to music. Most of the people had headed to bed by midnight, but before I had a chance (and I really would have gone to bed soon after. Really, I mean it!) Katherine stated that she really thought the Bamboo Bar could do with our further patronage. Ah, why not? It’d be a shame to break the streak, after all. So there was yet another long night/morning spent at the same old same old. It was actually particularly quiet that night, and they’d only lit one of the fires, which prompted some cold/rebellious patrons to start their own up with extra pieces of [admittedly, cheap and easy to make] bamboo flooring that were stored underneath the bar. This being Pai of course, no one really minded. That night I had a good long chat with Katie, the expat from Port Dover, who I continued to run into pretty much daily over the whole course of my stay in Pai.

As per usual, the day was well underway when I woke up and took the walk up the alley and around the corner for my curry and shake.

Before the “morning” was far done, a bunch of people had organized a trip to a waterfall outside town. As with the tubing, Annie piled everyone into the back of her truck and off we went.

Before we headed out of town, we stopped on the market street where Annie suggested we ought to buy some food for a group of kids who lived in a village just before the falls, and who she’d got to know reasonably well. Everyone went into the shop and picked up 20 or 30 baht worth of food (as well as some still-warm baguettes for lunch which may well have been the best bread I’d yet had in Asia.) I was kind of torn about what to buy. I wanted to get the kids something they’d like, but of course having huge quantities of candy and other junk food dropped on them all of a sudden would almost do more harm than good. In the end I picked up a few packets of salted pumpkin seeds. Hope that was a decent compromise.

On the way out to the falls we passed by Thailand’s largest mango tree (it really was monstrous. The trunk was maybe 1.5m in diameter and the canopy had a diameter of 20 or 30m) as well as the Pai airport. Yes, tiny little Pai has an airport. Or, rather a runway. There weren’t really any facilities in sight, and the runway itself began a scant 20m or so from the edge of the road, with no fence or barrier between them.

The falls were surprisingly distant, but about 1/2 hour of driving got us to the village. We grabbed our treats and walked down the dirt path into the town itself. This village actually looked much worse off than the hill tribe villages I’d seen in Cambodia and Laos, something of a surprise given how much wealthier Thailand is than those countries.

Before too long a group of children had appeared. They all looked thin and were raggedly clothed, but one boy in particular caught everyone’s attention. He (and as we later learned, his brother) suffer from a skin disease that looks something like excema, except for the fact that it was far worse and covered all of their bodies. Everyone (well, certainly I, and I assume everyone) was very happy when he and the rest of the children smilingly collected the treats we’d brought for them. Someone asked if they’d all share the goods evenly. Annie assured us that we would and led us ’round a corner and sure enough, the kids were inside dividing up the booty between themselves.

After our trip to the village we walked the short distance to the waterfall. The falls there were pretty enough, but that wasn’t their main attraction. The swimming was good (if cold) but even that was surpassed by the slide. The rock that the falls tumbled down was very smooth. So smooth, in fact that you could sit yourself down near the top, push off then slip your merry way down to a splasheriffic finish in the pool at the bottom. Shane had already been in when we arrived and he coaxed first me, then Chloe and Sarah to follow. It was a bit nerve racking at the top the first time, but not really fun thereafter.

We left the crowds at the falls behind after only an hour or two, since everyone wanted to get back in time for the next activity of the day: a tip up to the local hot springs. We wandered back past some beautiful hillside fields I’d been admiring earlier. I hadn’t recognized it at the time, but after Chloe pointed it out to me, sure enough, I could smell it: they were garlic!

As we all piled into the back of the truck the Lisu women near the village approached the pickup and quietly said “kancha? opium?” Some of the other passengers were on the verge of buying some, but they couldn’t work out a deal and left empty-handed.

Back in town we all went through a whirlwind of activity. Everyone purchased drinks at the shops in town, stocked up with warm clothes and then once again piled into the truck for the trip up to the springs (the gate closes at 18:00, but if you’re in by then you can stay as long as you like.) When we arrived there were already dozens of people basking and/or bathing in the springs. It was actually more a “hot river” than hot springs. Thus you could move up or down to various pools in the river and be hotter or cooler depending on how far you were from the source. We all slipped into the first pool, which was (in my mind) the temperature of perfect bathwater. This marked the first chance I’d had for a bath since leaving Singapore on December 8, and only the second since leaving Melbourne in early November. I like my baths, so this was absolute heaven.

We all lounged around in the bottom pool, and before we knew it dusk was upon us. No problem. We just set up the candles that someone had thoughtfully brought. We all laid about in the pool drinking and talking as someone or other passed around a pipe. The candlelight made it all the better. We were all just about to leave when Dan and Chloe showed up and I had to admit that I’d given away their half (and indeed, almost all of my half) of the bottle of Sang Som that we’d purchased together, since I’d figured they wouldn’t be able to get in after 18:00 anyway. They stayed behind, while the rest of us dried off and climbed back into the truck for the trip back to town. We all had a merry time on the way back, singing horribly out of key, but fun, renditions of American Pie, Yesterday and other such classics (I was appaled to learn that no one else knew Sweet Caroline! Only Gary had ever heard the chorus!)

While it’s true that Annie did charge us for these rides, it certainly wasn’t much more than the price of fuel and reinforced my idea of her as the hardest working guesthouse owner in Thailand.

After returning home we all went out for dinner (a mere two Song Sam bottle that night) and headed next door to a bar called Ting Tong (in Thai and Lao this means “crazy”.) As with most of the places I’d been in Pai there was a spectacularly eclectic mix of people, from a mother with her (4 year old?) daughter, to a New Zealand TV personality (who I’d never heard of, but whom the Kiwis assured me was quite well known), to still more Canadians (including the second I’d met from tiny Salt Spring Island in Pai.)

While at Ting Tong I picked up a bucket for Lien, who had picked up my camera at the hot springs when I’d failed to notice that it had fallen out of my backpack. A more than just reward, given the value of the camera and the photos on it. (For those who are unfamiliar, a “bucket” is, unsurprisingly, a bucket, filled with 375ml of Song Sam whisky, a bottle of Red Bull, a couple bottles of Coke and lots of ice. In short, a mighty big drink.)

The day after the falls/hot springs trip was something of a relief. No one had much of anything planned as a group, which allowed me to lay about and catch up on my reading. Though it had been slow going, I was beginning to realize that I’d spent too long in Pai already, but I was bound to my self-promise that I’d finish the book before departing.

Of course it wouldn’t be a day in Pai if I didn’t go out somewhere or other for a beer, and on this particular night I (or rather Emma) managed to find a particularly interesting spot. As a couple of nights previous the two of us were headed out to dinner together when something caught her eye. Or rather ear. All day there’d been noise from the field in front of the school as some sort of large gathering was in progress. At night the noise continued, but from an unknown source. All that seemed to be going on in the field was a series of unorganized races between little Thai girls (Emma participated barefoot while I held her sandals.) After her little run we followed the sound until we found a big indoor theatre or community centre or something. Inside were long tables full of Thais eating and (more commonly) drinking, as well as some karaoke action up on the stage at the front.

We weren’t entirely sure whether we were welcome or not, though I was a bit keener on going in than Emma (I think.) Eventually after a few cautious steps inside, a group of young men beckoned us in and offered us a couple of cans of Chang from a bag they carried. We sat there near the back of the hall drinking our beers, eating from the conveniently nearby trays of Thai snack food and watching the show (which featured a particularly pretty and flamboyant ladyboy, as well as a spectacularly drunk and rowdy Thai in ripped jeans and a football jersey who leaped around the dancefloor like it was made of hot coals and his feet were bare.)

As we sat, all sorts of Thais appeared, smiling, shaking our hands and urging us to continue munching on their snack foods. One particularly memorable fellow wanted to take our picture. I was happy to oblige, but was slightly off-put when he looked at the LCD display of his camera and laughed. “Fat!” he said. He showed the photo to us, pointed at my picture on the screen, then at me. “You fat!” he said and laughed hysterically. And I thought I’d actually looked pretty good in the picture. Clearly a case of different cultural norms.

Before too long Emma realized that, lo and behold, we knew someone there! It was Monmung, who we’d played petanque with a few nights previous. He was terribly excited to see us and insisted that we sit down and join him for whisky, beer and whatever else he had to offer. At this point we still had no idea what was actually going on, but as best we could tell from Monmung it was the high school graduation. Or maybe it was the awards ceremony for some provincial sporting tournament. Whatever it was, everyone was having a right good time. Accompanied by Emma, Monmung and two German girls who’d also found their way in to the party (as far as I could see there were a total of five farangs out of perhaps 1000 people present) I made several forays out onto the dancefloor. The western women were always a big hit, and everyone seemed to appreciate my presence, less exciting as it might have been.

We’d arrived in the later stages of the ceremony, so we probably spent only about an hour there. When the auditorium had fully cleared out we bid farewell to Monmung with hugs, handshakes and nose-sniffs (Emma pointed out to me that Thais often hold their noses to one’s hand and sniff in lieu of kissing.)

When we finally emerged we walked up the street and met Dan, Chloe, Katherine and Ted and sat down to eat with them. After dinner we wandered to another of Pai’s music houses, Roots Rock Reggae. My opinion of the music scene dropped at the sound of the terrible Thai reggae band playing nothing but Bob Marley songs (though to their credit, at least they were trying.) Bad as the music was we still had a fun night out, sitting around the fire and talking. The night ended with an utterly bizarre Thai reggae cover of “Creep” by Radiohead.

Miraculously, we all managed to get home without being dragged into the inescapable vortex of the bamboo bar. This, combined with the fact that I was very close to fishing my book was clearly a sign. Before heading to bed I lent Emma my sleeping bag (she’d actually checked out of her bungalow, then missed the last bus of the day, so had joined the English folks in sleeping on the deck that night) and asked her to wake me up so I could join her on the 07:00 bus out of town.

Things didn’t work quite according to plan. I woke up at 08:51, clearly not in time for even the 10:00 bus back to Chiang Mai. I wandered out and found a note from Emma saying that I’d just looked so sweet sleeping that she couldn’t wake me (in fact it actually said that she’d been in a really big hurry and couldn’t have waited for me while I finshed packing. That first bit was just wishful thinking on my part.)

Indeed, by the time I had finished up my little bit of packing, said goodbye to Chad and Gary (they were about the only guests awake at this point) and Annie (she even gave me a Lisu woven bracelet a I departed. How nice is that?) and walked up to the bus station, I managed to miss the 10:00 bus as well. Ah well. At least I had time for one more delicious curry breakfast in Pai.

Finally I did manage to get on a bus back to Chiang Mai (this one at 12:00.) It was actually a pretty eventful trip back, but I think I’ll save that story for the next entry…

I suppose some would say that my time in Pai (almost eight days of it!) was a big waste of time and money, but I’d have to disagree. It’s true that I could have been seeing some of the “real” Thailand (whatever that may be) instead of spending day after day laying in a hammock reading and drinking a lot with other foreigners. But that neglects the fact that I’d been travelling on my own for six months by then, and that I hadn’t stayed in the same place for more than 5 days since November. And there had been only a few occaisions since leaving home that I’d spent more than 3 or so days with the same person, much less a large group of people.

So while I didn’t see the country, and I didn’t absorb much truly Thai culture (really bad reggae bands excluded) I did get a bit of socialization back into my life that was desperately needed. In addition to which, of course, it was simply a lot of fun. There. Done explaining myself to myself. It feels much better.

Thanks this time to all the cool folks I met in Pai, especially Emma, Gary and Chad (check out Gary’s weblog for an alternate take on Pai) and most especially Annie. If you’re ever in Pai, make sure to stay at the Riverpark/Darling Guesthouse on Soi 1 Tesseban. It may be marginally more expensive than some others, but Annie’s such a sweetheart that A. She deserves your business and B. You’ll have a much better time in Pai because of her.

Tags: Thailand

This entry was posted on Monday, February 14th, 2005 at 9:19 am and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.