Friday, May 9, 2008

Doing nothing in Pai

Day 40 (09/05/08): Pai, Thailand

Pai is quite famous for a town where you do nothing, they sell t-shirts on the street saying things like "doing nothing in Pai". It is a very relaxed sleepy town, and that is what I did all day. I managed to catch up on all my missed sleep, and woke up at the relaxed time of 11:30am, after spending nearly 14 hours asleep! Despite the heat and humidity outside, my little bamboo hut was relatively cool, with my little fan keeping a nice constant stream of cool air over me.

There are a number of pretty sights in the Pai area, several waterfalls, some cave systems and a hot water spring. The recommended way to get to these is to rent a scooter and head there yourself. I am very dubious about renting a scooter, I have seen way too many tourists walking around in bandages after having scooter accidents. And heard too many stories of travellers blowing their travel budgets after having to cover the cost of a wrecked scooter. Renting a bicycle is my prefered option, however I didn't really feel like cycling up and down all the local hills in the heat. You sweat enough just sitting in one place, let alone trying to grind your way up the steep hills on a rent-a-bike.

Instead I just spent what was left of the day walking around the town, investigating the different tour and trek companies. I would really like to do another 3 day trek in this area, even though I just did one in Chiang Mai. There are a lot of companies offering three day treks, in which you visit a number of different hill tribes and even do some jungle survival stuff. However, as it is just in the start of the low season, almost none of the companies had treks starting tomorrow. Typically you need at least 4 people for them to run a trek, and so because I am travelling by myself, I was a bit stuck. The best place I found looked really interesting. Not only do they take you on a three day trek, but you also get taught a number of jungle skills, such as cooking, hunting and some bamboo crafts. Unfortunately they needed a minimum group of four. I came back later in the afternoon, although no one else had booked. Continuing to look around, I did find one place that was willing to run the trek with just me, the guide said it would be me, him and his aunt. His english wasn't that good, and the trek route didn't look particularly good either, and so I decided against it. Eventually I found a decent looking trek company that is running a trek for tomorrow, they already had one other person signed up. I decided I might as well sign up with them, and so paid over my money. The treks here are a lot more expensive than the treks from Chiang Mai. I'm paying almost twice as much as I did for the trek from Chiang Mai, although it will be quite a different sort of trek, with a much bigger emphasis on visiting the local tribes and learning their customs. Apparently giving gifts is a nice thing to do, and so I went and got some pens and candles, which are the recommended gifts for the hill tribes.

It is now the early Friday evening in Pai, and the sleepy little town is holding up to its reputation. Shortly after this I will go and get some food, and then try and find if anything ever happens here, although I do have a bright and early start tomorrow to begin my trekking.

No comments: