Life of Pai – Part 1

My most dedicated of followers (and by that I mean parents) may have noticed that there has not really been any updates from me in a few days. There are a couple of reasons for this that mainly include having a terrible internet connection all the time and being at one place for the past week without doing much which has been exactly what I needed.

Pai is a small village in northern Thailand that just seems to have one of the most relaxed vibe that I’ve ever seen. My initial plan was to stay in Pai for a few days but when I got here I realised that it was just what I needed to get relaxed and chill out for a while without worrying where to travel next or what I need to see. After the first night here I knew I could see myself spending a few more days here putting worry and the real world aside for a while to just enjoy life.

As soon as you get to Pai you realise that it is quite a small town and that it is really built for tourism. As you cross the bamboo bridge out of town (yes, actual bamboo) you are quickly greeted by all of the bamboo huts from the various guest houses. Other places I have been have custom made hostels, however in Pai they have just embraced the bamboo huts and then rent them out as private rooms instead of having big dorms. It is a pretty cool concept and nice to have a little space to yourself, even if it is made out of wood and leaves.

I was in search of a place called the Pai Circus School that I had heard a lot about and had to trek for a little while to actually find it. It wasn’t signposted all that well but I am so glad that I went on my walk as I eventually found the place that I would call home for the next week. The circus school is an amazing place as it just seems to have the perfect balance of activity and relaxation (tipped over more to the relaxation side) to let you do things if you want and chill out if you don’t. Nearly every day we seem to try and plan things to do and somehow fall into a weird trap of staying in the hostel, playing a game of pool, playing in a pool, sitting in hammocks, playing with circus toys or just sitting around relaxing and chatting. Right now as I sit here typing this I can see some people swimming, someone playing a guitar, lots of people chilling and others doing acrobatic aerial yoga (which is crazy to watch!)

So many little things have happened over the last few days that I think I am going to have to break things down into smaller sections just so its a little easier to explain.

Brick Squad
When I first arrived I was sitting down at a table minding my own business and just figuring life out when I spotted a guy called Imy who I had met previously in Bangkok. I didnt know he was already in Pai along with Connor and Bill who were also at the same hostel as me in Bangkok. The guys had decided to name their little gang “Brick Squad” and were just heading out for a few drinks and to grab something to eat so of course I grabbed my stuff and headed off with them for a night out. This was the start of something as the chain of events from this first night shaped the entire time I have had in Pai and why it will be so hard to move on.

Gangster names
While hanging around the pool on my first morning I got chatting to a girl there called Chloe about life and whatever other randomness gets discussed when you are travelling. I told he my name and she insisted that it wasn’t black enough and I should be called something like Tyrone and because she was Ghetto too she should be called Shaniqua. Well this joke carried on a little too well as by the end of the day loads of people thought my name actually was Tyrone and so I just decided to run with it. From there we decided that we should all get gangster names and slowly but surely everyone at Pai Circus school gained themselves a gangster street name for them to be known by the for the rest of their time in Pai. Our little group went out that night and somehow we ended up with about 20+ people on a huge pub crawl all with gangster street names. It actually worked out well as loads of people were able to remember the unique and random gangster names rather peoples real names.

Poisoning
On my first morning here decided to get a coffee with my breakfast. It came out to me and from the moment I first tasted it it was completely vile and the worst coffee I had ever tasted. Being British I was not going to say anything and just leave it but I was encouraged by someone else to go and complain. Finally I went up to reception to see Tim (gang name “Tiny Timmy Tim T-Dog”) and told him the coffee was crap. His initial response was “yeah its just cheap instant, sorry”. I then reiteratted that it wasnt just crap it was aweful but he was still convinved that this was a coffee quality issue and nothing more he could do. With that I asked if we could just throw more milk and sugar at it to see if we could improve it and he agreed so we dumped more of both into it to see if it could make a difference. It didnt. I tried it again and it was still terrible. With that I just said “look thats bad, im not drinking it, you try it”. Thinking I was just being a snob Tim took a mouthful and the face he then pulled was priceless. He looked about behind the bar for a moment before having to spit the coffee back into the cup and announcing “I think that has salt in it”.

It turns out that the new girl, Beth (aka Sea-Dogg), has mixed up the salt and sugar and gave me a nice big spoon of salt to make sure that my coffee was horrid. At least she appologised when she realised what had happened but I suppose the positive of this is how we ended up becoming good friends.

Pai Street Food
One of the best things about Pai is that there seems to be a load of decent food here, be it the street food on walking street or  all of the little restaurants and cafe’s that scatter the streets. On a night we tend to take a walk down to walking street (named since cars and bikes should not be on there but always are) and see what they have available. It always seems that there is something new to try and you are always stuffed by the time you get to the 4th stall!

 

I know everyone hates a 2 parter (or maybe even 3) but I am going to stop there as it is stupidly hot right now and there is so so much more to tell about this place. I will hopefully write more later when it cools down and maybe even get some pics uploaded to everyone can see how awesome it is.

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