Pai: Hippy Heaven

The next stop of my trip, after a horrendous bus ride on a "VIP" (cough) bus through some crazy Northern Laos "roads" (cough), was Pai - a lovely little hippy town way up in the mountains north of Chiang Mai. I had heard that there wasn't really much of anything to do in Pai, but that there were plenty of ways to relax, and that was exactly the case.  The scenery was beautiful, the town was full of cute little cafes and gift shops, there were some great restaurants serving delish Northern food, and I had a pretty amazing massage.  I stayed at a really cool hostel called SpicyPai, a little outside of the town area, but set back from the road literally in the middle of a rice paddy - felt like I was back in Suphan. The hostel itself was a bamboo hut with about 20 dorm beds, no windows or doors, and some handy mosquito nets.  It was a bumping hostel and made it easy to meet people since I was traveling solo for this part of my journey. 

I also of course made friends with pretty much every Thai person in town, impressing them with my (nidnoi) knowledge of Thai and one of the DJ's at the bar in town offered to take me around Pai in a motorbike - I could hardly say no since Pai is billed as the place in Thailand to explore by bike and there was no way I was going to drive myself around the mountains! We took about a 40 minute ride through some curved roads, beautiful coffee plantations, and some crazy fog and made it to a viewpoint at the top of the mountain. I was happy I was wearing pants and a light jacket because it was SO cold at the top of the mountain - my blood has definitely thinned out this past year and I cannot handle being cold, so I was glad to see the view but happy when we started our descent and were met with a blast of that hot Thailand air I love so much. I'm glad I was able to see outside of the town center and check out some of the amazing views from up top, Pai was a great little sleepy town and a really nice place to relax and chill chill.