A Winding Road to Pai
By Lauren Gerzina & Justin Hayes
Car Sickness, Bamboo Huts, and Hippies
In our last morning in Chiang Mai, we woke up and packed our bags. We went downstairs to the café attached to the condo building, and Lauren had a large breakfast with eggs, salad, French fries and a hot dog? Justin got a shrimp salad with boiled egg. Somehow both meals were on the “breakfast menu.” After breakfast, Justin went back upstairs to do some last-minute packing, and Lauren walked the eight minutes to a nearby Starbucks to get a “been there” cup (which by the way is beautiful and even has elephants and lanterns on it!).
Our pickup was planned for 11am to get us to our new hotel in Pai (the Pai Village Boutique Hotel) at check in time (2pm) since it was a three-hour drive. The hotel arranged for our private ride (both ways). Our driver arrived in a pickup truck with his son who was about eight years old in the front seat.
The first hour was mostly uneventful, but when we hit the mountains, we were in for a rough ride. The road was very curvy. Too curvy. We are pretty sure the longest straight section was about 100 feet during the remaining two hours. Neither of us were feeling too great.
We stopped after hour two at a restaurant for a bathroom break and lunch. We were not really feeling up to eating, but we managed to find some carbs that didn’t seem to bother our stomachs too much. We also ordered some Gatorade, which was definitely helpful. The last hour wasn’t great, but we were SO happy to finally arrive at the hotel.
The hotel was right in downtown Pai (a one-minute walk to the main night market/walking street). And the landscaping of the hotel was drop dead gorgeous. Beautifully manicured tropical plants and flowers overflowed into every outdoor area, and they had a small stream running beside all the paths to each of our traditional looking huts.
The hut was small but cozy and the service from all the staff was top notch. We would definitely recommend this one (if you can stomach the ride over the mountains). Lauren decided to relax a bit and read her book, but Justin wanted to go exploring. He took a large loop around the main parts of downtown Pai (which took him only about 20 minutes). At 5pm, we walked around the night market and then headed to Na’s Kitchen (which had delicious food and was very packed). We had to wait around 20 minutes for a shared table with an English man and then another 15 minutes or so for our food to come out. Justin really enjoyed his green curry and Lauren got another order of Pad See Ew, one of our favorite dishes.
After dinner, we walked back down the night market and then went back to our room. We did a bit of planning to decide what local attractions we wanted to experience and decided on the Pai Canyon and the Bamboo Bridge for the next morning. We just couldn’t figure out HOW to get there. There was no Grab in Pai, and we didn’t feel comfortable renting motorbikes since the roads seemed dangerous and we’ve never driven one.
So we decided we would ask concierge the next morning. Lauren also found a drawing class she wanted to take for Friday afternoon. Again – couldn’t figure out how to get there. More on that for tomorrow.
Then we passed out.
