Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Left Chiang Mai, now in Pai - Eric's report

After more eating, more drinking, more Muay Thai (I won $400B from a Scottish guy sitting next to me), and more shopping, we left Chiang Mai on monday morning. So after a 4hr mini-van ride from Chiang Mai we are now in the little valley city of Pai (pronounced "Bye"). We were only going to spend a few days here but we love it so much we're going to finish out our trip here and stay until Saturday morning when we will mini-van back to Chiang Mai and fly to Bangkok... spend the night in downtown, and fly home on Sunday evening.

Pai is awesome... it's a little city basically comprised of a 2km rectangle... so it's very small but it's very artsy, very hippy, and very beautiful. It's tucked in-between the mountains in a little misty valley. The surrounding mountains are very lush and the skies are clear (during the day when it's not raining.. rain starts around 4pm), clean, and blue. There's a nice river that snakes through the town. The first two nights we stayed on the river with an amazing view... there was a little bamboo bridge that connected our side (side the town is on) to the other side of the river. There were three bridges actually.. all very janky. No lights, no handrails, and not very sturdy. On the other side of the river are these bamboo bungalows nestled right on the banks of the river. Guests of those bungalows had to park their motor bikes on our side and walk across to reach their "home". Monday night as we were sitting alongside the river I joked about the stability of the bridges and laughed imagining drunk people trying to cross at night. Well anyway, it rained all night and when we woke up in the morning guess what... all 3 bridges were GONE! Completely washed away. Julie and I sat and ate breakfast watching the unfortunate people who stayed over there try to cross the swift moving river with 12kilo backpacks above their heads... water up to their chest. Sucks. One dude slipped and fell soaking everything.

So later that day we chatted it up with the owner of a restaurant... an American expat from Alaska who's lived here for about 8 years. He told us that in 2005 the river flooded and washed away all the bungalows on that side of the river. Apparently they are built on flood plains. 30 people died as their bungalows were washed away at 5am. Imagine waking up to that. So after 2005 the Thai government stepped in and said no one could build bungalows there..... so what did the owners do? They built them up the hill and moved them back down into the flood zone. Unreal. Anyone who stays over there is literally risking their lives and they don't even know it. Crazy the stuff you learn when you talk to locals.

More on Pai later, I'm hungry. :)

-Eric

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