The last buffet
We woke up at 8am today, pretty early! After breakfast, we had a bus to catch which would take us to Pai. Due to this, we packed all our stuff away before heading down. Once we’d packed, we left our stuff in the room and had our last great buffet breakfast. I had another random assortment of food today; I’m going to miss this free buffet when we’re gone. After breakfast, we grabbed our gear, and sat around in the lobby, waiting for the minivan to pick us up.
Instead of a minivan, we were shown to a songthaew, which is a converted pickup truck with a shelter on the back. There were a few folks already in the back, and we proceeded to pick a few more travellers up in our bus to Pai. After everyone was accounted for, we arrived at the actual minivan, where all our gear was packed into.
A queasy journey
For the first half of the journey, I managed to get to sleep. Quite impressive considering the heat and humidity, we were similar to a greenhouse., slowly cooking. At the half way mark, we had a short stop at an isolated restaurant/shop in the mountains. The second half of the journey…didn’t go down so well. Due to the heat and winding roads, I soon began feeling sick…very sick. I don’t know how I didn’t end up with breakfast on the floor, but I managed to keep it in.
When the bus finally got to Pai, I was so thankful. We got off the minivan, and both had to take a minute to recover. It was a small town/village, but it was bustling with activity. I feel Pai’s popularity as a tourist destination will rocket in the future, especially with backpackers. In 10 years, I’ll go back and it’ll be full of huge hotels, a shopping centre, and a theme park. Mat and I had a 10-minute walk to our hostel.
Recuperating
The hostel was called Carrot on the Moon, and it was very serene and peaceful. It had a bakery next to the main building, and I heard there’s a proper bakery shop in the town. Due to the tall hedges, you could forget that you’re in Pai or Thailand, and instead could be anywhere. The hostess was very pleasant, and was baking some cakes, so the smell was amazing. We wasted no time checking in and choosing our beds, because I needed to recover from the bus ride here.
After having recovered from the ride earlier, we decided to go out for some food. Along the main street, there are plenty of options, so we opted for a large place close to us. I had Thai yellow curry, and it was absolutely delicious, loved it. No one seemed to know for sure what the order of the 3 curries are in order of spiciness; green, yellow, and red. Someone said green was the spiciest, red makes sense for the spiciest, so I thought, yellow was probably in the middle. We also managed to find a cheap place for laundry around town, thank god for their signs outside of shops.
After our hands were free, we decided to take a walk around the streets. Pai isn’t very big, in fact we almost walked out of the town by accident. We headed in the opposite direction, and ended up walking through some market stalls on the street. It’s pretty nice to see the fresh produce, probably picked that day. After having a good look around the markets and buying some fruit, we headed back to the hostel.
Night market
One of the main things to experience in Pai is the night market. Pretty much the entirety of the main street is converted to a night market after dark. During the evening, we popped out of the hostel to the market. We walked through, and there were so many different types of food being sold on all sides. Instead of having a meal, we decided to have bits and bobs from multiple stalls as we walked along. It was very busy, and the atmosphere was pretty upbeat.
Amongst the food we had was chicken on skewers, fried quail eggs (very small), some spring rolls with sweet chili sauce drizzled on top, more chicken skewers, a homemade donut, and some mango with sticky rice. Everything here was so damn cheap, and so damn delicious, I love night markets. After a few hours on the market, having walked to the end and back, we decided to call it a night. I went to sleep a happy and content traveller.
