Thailand: Pai

On my way to the market

I arrive at Pai around 4 p.m. and head towards the hostel to check in, after settling I head towards the tiny city centrum to meet Paul, and just as I reach the centrum I get to see how they are setting up a little night market, so as soon as I found Paul we went to have a look at the market.

The first stand that catches our attention is a tea stand where you can various kinds of tea served in a bamboo stick, and after getting the bamboo stick you can have it refiled for 10 bat. That’s like 25 cents!!

The best thing about the Pai night market is all the street food, probably 40% of the stands that you had on the market where just food, so many different things to try. You had Thai cuisine, Chinese cuisine, Indian and even Italian! There was a little stand serving lasagne and cannelloni. We end up getting a noodle salad which I think was Chinese style and something that looked like a pancake, but fried and served with condensed milk (sometimes even with egg, cheese, banana and condensed milk, just in case that you feel like trying a strange combination.

To end the night we find a little local bar that claims to do 16 different kind of mojitos, interesting, so we have a look, it ended up being 16 different kinds but all with almost the same flavour. Mojito with passion fruit that tasted a bit too much like a regular mojito because of the amount of mint used, and one with mango that didn't seem to be all that different. Anyway, the music was good and there was a nice atmosphere, which is nice.

The white Buddha 

The next morning we got up pretty early because Paul said that the motorbikes would all be gone by 7 a.m. which I later found out wasn't really the case. We got the motorbike and decided to explore the surrounding of Pai.

The first waterfall was kind of a disappointment, when we got there there was barely any water flowing down the river, a tiny bit of water following its path down the rocks. We continue towards a little natural park nearby, a park that would lead to the hermit caves, but after an hour drive we didn't seem to get any closer, and on top of that, the road was becoming a gravel road, so we decided to head back to have a look at the famous Pai Canyon, the so called Grand Canyon of Thailand.
But on our way there we got distracted by a massive statue of a white Buddha that we could see up in the mountains, so we absolutely decided to have a look there. The walk up to the top resulted being quite long and exhausting but it was well worth it once we saw the scenery available from up there.

We then continued to the canyon and with the views being this incredible we decided to come back for the sunset.


After the canyon we proceded to the nearby strawberry farm, which is something that I think is extremely over hyped, because all you could really see where a few miles of strawberry bushes, but people seemed to think that it was very special, because they where all taking tons of pictures.  

We continued towards the second waterfall as it wasn't too far from where we were, just to have a look at it. So once we got there, even though that we weren't expecting much, we still managed to be a bit disappointed, the river was dry, all we could see was a bit of water running of the wall, even less than on the first one.

So on our way back to town we take a moment to visit the land split farm. It once was a regular farm but because of a split that occurred in 2008 his land became imposible to farm, so the owner decided to make it a tourist attraction where he serves his own drinks and fruits, and then it's up to you to leave a little something to help the family.

By the time that the sun started to fall we grabbed a bear an headed towards the canyon. The view of the sun setting with the canyon on the foreground and the mountains in the background made it ideal to take some amazing pictures.
And on our way back we noticed the stunning full moon which gave some incredible pictures as well.
We ended the night in a very nice bar with live jazz music and Thai rum.