allaboutpai.com → Introduction

Introduction to Pai

Table of Contents

What's Pai?

I embarked on my sixth trip to Thailand with a goal to find a place where I could stay comfortably for a long time (including the hot season, which has smoked me out of Thailand 3 years running), relax a lot, and also continue to develop my tiny software businesses (Word in the Hand PDA Thai<->English dictionary, Lurkertech, and a few other projects) over the Internet in order to fund my cost of living.

On December 21st, 2003, I board the ancient, solid-steel, fume-spewing third-class bus which plies its way through the steep, windy mountain roads of northern Thailand from Chiang Mai to Pai. I switch out of tourist mode and stay in Pai for months years, renting a house long-term and taking only occasional trips out of town.

Pai is pronounced exactly like the word 'spy' without the 's': more of a popping 'b' than a 'p'.

Pai is located about at the green star on this map, stolen from the Lonely Planet website:

Pai in Thailand: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai in Thailand
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Thailand or Not?

As described in a previous journal entry, most which I will repeat and elaborate on here, Pai is a small, rural mountain town with an interesting mix of Thais, short-term Thai and farang tourists, and long-term expatriate foreigners. The many cultures blend together here in an interesting way, as opposed to most places in Thailand, where large numbers of farangs just bring forth more scamming tuk-tuk drivers, McDonald's restaurants and go-go bars. In fact, there are no tuk-tuks at all, not even the ubiquitous KFC or Lotus/TESCO chains have an outpost here (though 7-11 invaded in August 2004), and if there is any prostitution here it is well-hidden.

Pai has a reputation for music and other forms of art, and many folks come with their instruments or their work and share it with others. Pai has plenty of hippie culture, yoga, reiki, cleansings, shiatsu, acupuncture, other forms of mysticism, cultish behavior, and soft drugs. It would be easy to dismiss the place as a white hippie haven and look no further. However once you get here, the place begins to challenge your assumptions. You find Thais and farangs wailing out blues music nightly in a bar straight out of New Orleans, fifty-something farangs living in hill tribes building export businesses to support their village, Thai street vendors eagerly learning how to make the country's best falafel, hummus, and tahini from hordes of Israeli travellers, war-torn military veterans looking for a peaceful and quiet place to live out the rest of their life, young Bangkok Thais who rejected their metropolitan hell to come live in bamboo huts in remote villages, and even some computer nerds trying to find a comfortable place in which to follow their dreams. Pai is a mix of eccentric but interesting folks with stories, scandals, and adventures that often remind me of the old TV series "Northern Exposure," or "frontier" towns like Telluride, Colorado, USA before its mass development in the 1990s.

Living in Pai is not "going native" by any stretch of the imagination. There's a local bakery/grocery store that sells baguettes, banana bread, butter, and Crisco. Sometimes, during the tourist high season, it seems that there are more farangs in the center of town than Thais. However, Pai is surrounded by small rural farming villages where the farang population varies between 0% and 2%. In these villages you will find a huge variety of cultures and languages including Thai, Thai Yai (Shan), Lisu, Lahu, Akha, and Karen. Expats like myself can move into these cultural scenes when we want, occasionally surfacing for air as we commiserate with our fellow farangs. I am quite happy with this balance between Thai cultures and those with which I am more familiar. In March and April 2003 I spent nearly a month in hot north-east Thailand pretty much immersed in Thai culture and language. While it was fascinating and educational, I learned that it is also trying and exhausting: beyond the simple difficulty of trying to make sentences in Thai, I found it is a constant source of stress to understand and tolerate the very common Thai views on telling the truth, saving face, and independence described in an earlier journal entry.

Nature

Pai a beautiful place. It is located in a large valley at about 650m (about 2000 ft) elevation, surrounded by mountains that go up to 1500m (about 4500 ft). Most of Pai valley consists of fruit orchards or garlic, green onion, or rice fields. From many spots you can catch views like this:

View from Nah Chalong Hill: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
View from Nah Chalong Hill
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The shallow Pai river, along with 6 or 7 other rivers originating in the hills around, winds through Pai and the neighboring villages, waters the fields, and provides life for thousands of residents:

View from Cafe Del Doi (Source: David Giacolone): If image does not load automatically, click link below.
View from Cafe Del Doi (Source: David Giacolone)
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Pai river view of former Rimtaling Guesthouse: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai river view of former Rimtaling Guesthouse
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Rainbow over field in Vieng Neuea, 2005: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Rainbow over field in Vieng Neuea, 2005
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Rainbow over field in Vieng Neuea, 2005: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Rainbow over field in Vieng Neuea, 2005
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Double Rainbow, 2006: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Double Rainbow, 2006
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There are many natural features to visit. There are lots of waterfalls of various heights, some accessible by road and some by long, beautiful jungle hikes. You can go floating down the river in an inner tube, white water rafting, hiking in a canyon, or take very long, hellish motorbike rides or multi-day treks to remote hill tribe villages (most of which are much less commercial than the common treks available outside Chiang Mai). Someone has also built a swimming pool near town and charges 40B entry; it's an interesting mix of scantily clad farangs and teenage Thai boys trying to make it seem as if they didn't come to stare at the scantily clad farangs.

Hot Springs: Help Save Pai Hot Springs from the Bangkok Bureaucrats!

Help Save Pai Hot Springs from the Bangkok Bureaucrats!

There is a special website on this subject at: http://allaboutpai.com/hotsprings

Tha Pai Hot Springs

There is a wonderful natural hot spring (official name: Tha Pai Hot Springs, not to be confused with the privately-run Tha Pai Spa Camping or Tha Pai Spa Exotic Home) about 8km south of Pai where a cold river and boiling hot source meet in 10"-16" deep pools. You can freeze your butt off motorbiking there in the pre-dawn hours and then sit and relax as the rays of the just-appearing sun shoot through the steam rising around you. Everywhere you look there are trees and nature, and not a speck of concrete in site.

This local treasure has been run by locals and available for free to all locals for centuries. It has even been free over the last 12 or so years, when it has been under the local Forestry officials' care.

40B for Thais and 200B for Foreigners?

Sadly, in July 2006, for the first time ever in the history of Pai, the Thai Forestry Department in Bangkok wrested control of the hot springs from locals and started charging for entry. Worse yet, the fee rapidly went to 20B for Thais, and 400B for foreigners, a 20x difference.

These outrageous prices, and this outrageous price discrimination, which are not just limited to Pai, have been alienating tourists and tour operators for years, spawning a flood of complaints about park fees all across the country.

On 22 November 2007, the Department of National Parks finally began to acknowledge the problem when they introduced a new pricing scheme which reduced fees for some parks. Tha Pai Hot Springs, which is part of Huay Nam Dang National Park, went to 200B for foreigners and 40B for Thais.

200B is still completely, utterly, totally ridiculous. For christ's sake, it's a little muddy hot creek with one little bathroom they have to clean! Give me 200 B per person and I will clean the bathroom myself! Even if you believe the nationwide 200-400B "national park fee" is justified for the high costs of maintaining large national parks, 200B is completely out of line for Tha Pai hot springs and can only be ascribed to greed and corruption. For some perspective on 200B, it costs 400B (8.50 Euros) for all-day admission to the Louvre in Paris! Even if you believe farangs should pay more, 5x more is not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination.

The order to charge came from Bangkok and I'm willing to bet the vast majority of the cash goes straight there.

Perhaps the real problem is that Tha Pai Hot Springs is priced along with the rest of Huay Nam Dang National Park. In reality, Tha Pai Hot springs is nowhere near the entrances to Huay Nam Dang, and cannot even compare with the facilities of Huay Nam Dang, which include luxury rental bungalows, a visitor center, restaurants, fancy baths, interpretive trails, miles and miles of hiking trails, etc. Tha Pai Hot Springs is just a little creek with no trails connecting to the rest of the park.

You Can Help

If you feel as annoyed by this as I do, please help by spending a few minutes to do the following.

You can do this when you are in Pai visiting the nearby private hot springs, or you can even help via mail or email. Here's all you need to do:

Print and sign the following bilingual note (for email, just cut and paste it!):

Click here for an easy-to-print PDF file

Click here for an easy-to-print Microsoft Word file

To all management of Tha Pai Hot Springs:
เรียนคณะผู้บริหารบ่อน้ำร้อนท่าปายทุกท่าน

The Tha Pai natural hot springs is one of the main reasons I visited Pai.
พวกกระผมและดิฉันอุตส่าห์ดั้นด้นมาจนถึงปายก็เพื่อมาสัมผัสบ่อน้ำร้อนธรรมชาติที่นี่

I am surprised and shocked that you are charging 200 B for entrance. This is far too much.
เมื่อมาถึงแล้วก็ประหลาดใจและตกใจเมื่อพบว่าต้องจ่ายค่าผ่านประตูถึง ๒๐๐ บาท ซึ่งขออนุญาตเรียนตามตรงว่าเป็นราคาที่สูงมากเกินสมควร

I will now be leaving instead of paying you. I want to visit the hot springs, but I can not. I feel sad, but your price is simply not reasonable.
เพราะฉะนั้น พวกเราตัดสินใจจะไม่เข้าไปชม แม้ว่าจะเสียดาย แต่ราคาค่าผ่านประตูไม่สมเหตุสมผล เกินที่จะรับได้

I would be willing to pay 40 B per person and 30 B per motorbike, as Thais do.
พวกเรายินดีที่จะเสียค่าผ่านประตูในราคา ๔๐ บาท ต่อคน หรือ ๓๐ บาทต่อ รถเครื่อง เหมือนกับที่คนไทยทุกคนต้องจ่าย

Your price and your two-tier price structure for Thais and foreigners makes me feel very unwelcome as a tourist, as if Tha Pai doesn't want us here.
ในเมื่อทางราชการตั้งราคาสูงขนาดนี้ มิหนำยังเป็นระบบสองขั้น คือราคาคนไทยกับราคาฝรั่ง มันทำให้พวกเราอดรู้สึกไม่ได้ว่าท่านไม่ปรารถนาให้เรามาเที่ยว บ่อน้ำร้อนท่าปายไม่ยินดีต้อนรับนักท่องเที่ยว

I am certain that this policy of chasing short-term profits will backfire in the long term, because it stains the reputation of Pai and Thailand for all tourists.
พวกกระผม (ดิฉัน) เห็นว่านโยบายนี้เก็งแค่กำไรสูงสุดในระยะสั้น แต่กลับจะมีผลกระทบต่อชื่อเสียงของการท่องเทียวในปายและประเทศไทยในระยะยาวอย่างแน่นอน

Respectfully yours,
ด้วยความนับถือ


__________________________________________________

Now deliver the note in as many ways as you can:

Private Hot Springs

After making this brief stop, you can now go visit one of the nearby, private places that have big concrete hot spring pools or private rooms with hot spring water, such as:

Unfortunately, these places are not natural like Tha Pai hot springs, but at least they don't gouge foreigners. They charge between 40-100B for use of pools.

This will be your reward for helping to take back the natural hot springs from the Bangkok bureaucrats!

Thanks!

Help Keep Foreigners Welcome

It's very important not to give the Bangkok Bureaucrats (or anyone else) any excuse to exclude foreigners from the hot springs. To that end, remember that you are in Thailand and Thai customs in hot springs are quite different than those in the west:

Tell a Friend

Forward this hot springs news to your friend by sending him or her the following URL:

http://allaboutpai.com/hotsprings

Weather

At this higher elevation, it is dry and hot during the day (perhaps 70-80 F in the December-January cool season and 90 F in the March-April hot season) and cold at night. During the cold season, you can see your breath almost every night and you definitely need thick blankets on the bed. One night it went down to 37 F. The main benefits of this are that you can sleep well at night, there are no mosquitos at all except for a 10-minute window at dusk, and the day is very comfortable compared with the rest of Thailand. In the hot season, you definitely need a fan all day if you work inside, or at least you need to remain perfectly still in a hammock :) But the air is not intolerably sticky as it is in Chiang Mai or Bangkok. Very few places here are air-conditioned.

One of the most noticeable weather features from February until April is man-made: for some reason that still eludes me, the locals completely incinerate the surrounding mountains every year, one gigantic fire at a time, and this fills the whole Pai valley with thick smoke that dampens colors and sometimes even irritates the eyes. Every night you can see several ferocious, out-of-control blazes slithering up the hill like fire-serpents out of some ancient legend. Some people say they burn the forests to "protect" us from forest fires, but this is much more than a fire break: every visible hilltop is left completely brown. Some people say they burn the forests and then stand nearby as animals run out, killing the animals for food. This also seems unlikely as nearly all the animals are gone from the forests surrounding Pai. Some people say they burn the forests because this kills everything except the teak trees, which they wish to cultivate eventually. Some people say they burn the forests to eliminate underbrush that could one day get out of control. Who knows. It is best to come to Pai before this madness begins. It ends with the first few rainstorms, which wash all the smoke out of the air and stimulate an amazing burst of growth which makes the hills green again within days.

With the rainy season (August-October) come torrential rains, and typically mild flooding. Except in 2005, when there were massive floods rivaling anything seen in many decades. I have created a separate page devoted entirely to that subject.

Pai Time

Everything moves very, very slowly here:

View from Follow the Bird: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
View from Follow the Bird
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Pai is a place which teaches people how to slow down and relax. If you try to do anything quickly, like book a flight or solve a business problem at home or, oh say, leave, then some combination of the weather, the infrastructure, or coincidence will reach out its great hands and force you to chill out and ask yourself if it's really that important. I won't be using the day-by-day format of my journal for this period as days are almost meaningless here.

Sunset and Palm Leaf: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Sunset and Palm Leaf
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The Ride to Pai

There's a long, windy road leading to Pai from Chiang Mai, and until recently, the best public transportation choice has been the 4-hour trip in the extremely painful, hot, overcrowded 3rd class ordinary bus:

The Pai bus (Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son): If image does not load automatically, click link below.
The Pai bus (Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son)
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Inside this grinding, bellowing, steel and glass monster, there are hard bench seats which are wide enough for 2 small Thais or 1.5 normal farangs:

Inside the Pai Bus: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Inside the Pai Bus
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The fans are provided mostly for looks and work less than half the time. Sometimes, the driver must shut off the fans when making the tortuous, slow ascent of the mountains, otherwise the bus's electrical system will supposedly fail. There is a so-called "aircon bus" which apparently means that it doesn't have fans at all. Fortunately, the windows open wide on all the non-aircon buses.

I have only once in my life seen the Thais turn away a bus passenger anywhere in Thailand. Typically, during the tourist season, they will fill up the Pai bus completely, with 2 people or 3 kids in each bench, a line of people standing in the aisle amidst the stuck-out legs of the lucky seated passengers, and a full crowd in the front and back door areas. Often, the bus conductor will have to hang out the side of the bus, or climb up on top of the bus, because there is no room for him inside.

The Thai word for 3rd class buses like these is rot may, which comes from the fact that decades ago these buses were used to transport the mail. That tradition has ended everywhere I've been in Thailand—except Pai. So, for example, these mostly farang passengers who have crammed 5 in the back and await departure in the 90 degree heat:

Happy campers inside the Pai bus...not: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Happy campers inside the Pai bus...not
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are blissfully unaware that the space currently occupied by their legs is going to be used to transport cargo:

Hmm, it's for cargo too: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Hmm, it's for cargo too
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There are also private minivans that do the same route in 2 hours, but without getting into a multi-page minibus rant I will just say that they manage to make the bus look like a pretty swell option.

In January 2007 we got a glorious new option, the chinese-built #24 Golden Dragon Half Bus (it even sounds like a chinese dish).

For an up-to-date summary of all the transportation options along with prices and schedules, see another site of mine.

But don't let my review of the transportation options leave you with a bad taste. It really is a good thing. I really believe that if it were easy to get to Pai, it would attract a whole different set of folks, ones who are interested in air conditioning, go-go bars, and concrete hotels, and not at all interested in music, art, long stays, or anything else that makes Pai so compelling.

This could all change with the opening of a new road and the airport, as I explain below.

Guesthouses in Pai—Bamboo Hut Variety

There are a ton of guesthouses, and most of them consist of a few simple one-room thatch huts held up on stilts over former rice fields. Here are some shots of the excellent (but, alas, now destroyed) Yawning Field guesthouse where I spent quite a lot of time:

Pano of Yawning Field: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pano of Yawning Field
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Yawning Field hut: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Yawning Field hut
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The rooms contain mattresses, skeeter nets, and sometimes a light or candle:

Inside a Yawning Field hut: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Inside a Yawning Field hut
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Most guesthouses feature a large, central shade structure with hammocks and comfortable bamboo and pillow couches (angled just right for slouching) next to tables filled with games and other time-wasters:

Pano of Yawning Field slouching area: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pano of Yawning Field slouching area
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There's usually a restaurant and the proprietor is often some kind of Thai hippie or other dropout who is just as interested in slouching, playing music, and chatting as the guests.

Life at the guesthouse goes slowly, on Pai Time. In Pai the mornings are cool and nice and occasionally people go out to explore the natural sights, readying them for a long nap. In the afternoon it gets extremely hot and this further reinforces the desire to rest. In a major display of good taste, most of the guesthouses in Pai do not have TVs or radios so it is actually possible, and quite easy, to chill out. In the evening it is nice again and everyone goes out to see music. At night during the cold season it is extremely cold (a welcome change from other parts of Thailand) and everyone sits around by campfires or wraps up in blankets and/or sleeping bags in their huts.

Another interesting feature is the bathrooms. Far from the smelly, insect-ridden concrete squat cell one would normally expect at such establishments, the proprietors of many of the guesthouses have constructed huge (4m x 3m at least), roofless bamboo huts at ground level. Inside the huts they landscaped a forest scene with bamboo, flowers, lush greenery, and in one corner, raised on a concrete pedestal as if a ruin of some ancient shrine to the gods, a fully functional western sit toilet with a seemingly endless supply of TP, squirt hose, water bucket and pail. While marveling at this, one ponders where the shower must be. At the Yawning Field, it turns out that a bamboo contraption on the other wall of the hut is a "waterfall shower," whose concealed PVC pipes squirt you when you turn the handle!

Yawning Field waterfall shower in jungle bathroom: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Yawning Field waterfall shower in jungle bathroom
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In general the guesthouses blend in with the scenery of Pai and it is not possible to figure out if you are looking at a guesthouse or some huts for the locals.

Yawning Field hut: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Yawning Field hut
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Yawning Field cat: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Yawning Field cat
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The Yawning Field guesthouse was started by a 20-something transplanted Bangkok city slicker named Jay and a jovial and gregarious Thai woman named Mink. Their shade structure has the best hammocks. Their setup is so rigged for relaxation that I managed to spend an entire day in a hammock, something I've never done in my life.

Yawning Field owner beside sign: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Yawning Field owner beside sign
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The Yawning Field, and several other guesthouses, are located in an interesting area of Pai town, across a rickety bamboo bridge over the Pai river:

Bamboo bridge and snow: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Bamboo bridge and snow
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In December and January, huge trees in the area start letting go of dandelion-like feathery floating pods and when the wind blows it literally snows in 90 degree weather, as seen above. Very beautiful.

The entire area floods up to one meter underwater for a few days during every rainy season! The exact month of flood and ebb varies from year to year and nobody can predict it. The onset is often very fast: on very rare occasions, people have woken up in the middle of the night with water in their hut and all their belongings floating down the river. Occasionally, the floods carry away some of the huts too.

Because of the floods, the local Thais do not build any houses or businesses in this area, and this has the wonderful and unintended side effect that the whole area is much quieter than almost any other guesthouse place in the whole of Thailand.

Unfortunately, in the rainy season of 2005, these guesthouses' luck ran out. Massive floods, rivaling anything seen in many decades, obliterated the entire area of the Yawning Field and its neighbors and several other riverside areas of town as well. I have created a separate page devoted entirely to that subject.

Interestingly, the owners of the neighboring Rimtaling guesthouse moved their entire guesthouse and renamed it the Paddy Field guesthouse on higher ground above town (over the big bridge next to the school and up the hill a bit), about one month before the floods. The Rimtaling owners will be applying for the position of town psychics.

After her guesthouse floated away, Mink was successfully scared away from the guesthouse business for the 2005-6 season, so instead she set up Mink's Restaurant/Hiccup Bar in town, near Mama Falafel. Go say hi!

In late 2006, Mink finished building another Yawning Fields guesthouse on higher ground (next door to the new Paddy Fields and near Farmer Home). This time, it consists of fancier wooden bungalows, though still with the teak leaf roofs and natural surroundings.

A surprising amount of the decor and even some of the architecture of these bamboo guesthouses comes from the (possibly bored?) guests themselves. Amongst the peaceful, clinking mobiles hanging from the roof edge and ceiling of the Yawning Field are intricate, nested, multi-pointed geometric polyhedra made out of plastic straws. A guest who arrived in February 2003 was a major math nerd and he spent several days calculating the angles and building them. He also calculated the lengths and angles for a geodesic dome, and another guest who's particularly handy with bamboo built a 2-3m tall geodesic half-sphere frame out amongst the bungalows. By the time I left he was planning on making it into a shade structure by thatching each of the faces!

If, anytime in 2003, you wandered around PS Riverside guesthouse, you would notice a giant, 4-story, open-walled bamboo structure with dramatic thatch fan patterns, stairs between each level, and roof sections at odd, exaggerated angles. It was sort of like a bamboo version of the SGI (now Google) headquarter buildings. Turns out this is the art/architecture project of another guest named Kalo who just decided one day that he wanted to build a giant hut. He had attended Burning Man on many previous years and was known for building large-format bamboo art. Why not do it here in Pai too? He hired a bunch of local Thais to help him and built it in a month or two, and left it to the guesthouse to use as they please. He also built a giant pentagram surrounding a stone mound nearby, I suppose for those last-minute times when you've just got to have a Pagan ritual. The tall structure was still standing as of April 2004 but the thatch roof has been removed for no adequately explained reason.

Last time I talked to Kalo, he was following his dream of building a bamboo academy in nearby Soppong as a way to keep alive the dying art of bamboo construction techniques! Kalo plans to build another large, temporary bamboo structure at PS riverside during the crazy, upcoming 7-week 7/7/2007 festival. He welcomes volunteers to come learn all about bamboo construction.

In Pai you see random, intense acts of creativity like this all the time. It's one of the things that makes the place interesting.

Guesthouses in Pai—Concrete

In the downtown area, Pai also has a selection of concrete guesthouses with small, very clean tile rooms, flush toilets, hot water heaters, and all the amenities. Most of these are in very loud areas near restaurants or bars. Pai in the Sky and Tonsa are the only ones I know which are in relatively quiet areas near a river bed, though they have thin walls between rooms, so try to rent a pair of rooms if you stay here. Here's the entrance to Pai in the Sky, confusingly mixed in (as is typical) with one of the many small wats in town, Wat Klang:

Wat Klang next to Pai in the Sky: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wat Klang next to Pai in the Sky
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Scenes in Downtown Pai

Map

Pai is a small town. There's basically 4 criss-crossed paved, two-lane roads, each less than 1km long, and a series of one lane paved alleys:

Downtown Pai: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Downtown Pai
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Note: I stole this map from Mae Hong Son Travel. You can check out their site to get the legend of guesthouse/restaurant names but be aware that there are many errors! Also, note that a large number of these establishments were destroyed in the floods of 2005.

July 2006 Update: You can find more maps, and links to yet more maps, on the maps page of allaboutpai.com.

The roads have names but everyone just says "the bus station road," "the bank road," "the Chiang Mai road," etc.

Most of town looks like this:

Seng Tong market area in Pai: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Seng Tong market area in Pai
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Day Market

The busy afternoon market, where everyone buys their fresh food supplies for that night's cooking, takes over the sidewalk along a 200 meter long section of road near the bank:

Day market in Pai: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Day market in Pai
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There's a whole spectrum of foods from raw ingredients (fresh cut greens like kale or morning glory, garlic, tomatoes, tofu chunks, endless fruit varieties, thai peppers, and other supplies) to ready-to-eat snacks catering towards the gawking farang tourists. Akha, Lisu, and other minority hill tribe women also sell their clothing and jewelry on the sidewalk along with the food vendors.

Vendors in Pai make delicious north-eastern style barbecued chicken (gai yaang) and northern-style pork sausages. There's even a shop in town specializing in "som tam," the famous north-eastern papaya salad. At rolling stands like this, you can pay 30 B (78 cents) for a complete meal of chicken and sticky rice:

Wednesday market area: BBQed chicken: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday market area: BBQed chicken
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Tastes of Home

In this area you can also find Aoy Bakery (Oy as in Oy Vey), a little grocery store/bakery with a collection of farang staples that rivals many grocery stores in Chiang Mai and Bangkok. The owner, like many business people in Pai, is very good at listening to what the farangs want and then finding the items somewhere in Thailand:

Aoy Bakery: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Aoy Bakery
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Here we see a shelf with ketchup, barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, cocoa powder, 3 brands of mustard, corn flakes, muesli, flour, and, of all things, Crisco. Most Thais have never even heard of Crisco let alone know what to do with it. In the refrigerator cabinets you can find yogurt, milk, cheeses imported from Europe including blue cheese and mozzarella, small but fairly tasty frozen beef steaks (beef is generally tough and hard to find in Thailand but these little ribeyes are pretty good), and frozen, ready-to-prepare french fries! The prices are predictably high: ingredients to prepare a Thai meal for a family of 4 might cost you 20 B (50 cents) out on the sidewalk, but inside Aoy Bakery you might pay 50 baht for a single stick of butter, 50 baht for a small loaf of rye bread, 100 baht for a small frozen steak, 100 baht for a quart-size chunk of cheese, or 200 or more baht for a bottle of cheap-ish Austrailian or New Zealand wine.

One day I shopped here for supplies and taught my grandma's recipe for apple pie to the owners of Rimtaling and Yawning Field guesthouse! We cooked the pie in their little portable glass convection oven and it came out pretty well.

Many business folks here make most or all of their living off of providing farang tourists with the tastes of home. In most cases the vendors learn to prepare the food from the very same tourists! The most colorful example of this is Mama Falafel:

Mama Falafel: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Mama Falafel
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Pai has a huge contingent of demanding but faithful short-term Israeli tourists. Mama Falafel (aka Pii Sii) set up a tiny food stand serving pitas filled with falafel, hummus, and lettuce from the evening until late at night. When she immediately started attracting the attention and criticism of the Israeli set, she knew she was on to something. In just a few days she had a menu translated into Hebrew. Over a few short weeks, the menu expanded to include tahini and other items, and based on the continuing feedback she refined her preparation to such an extent that it seems no Israeli can possibly resist purchasing her falafel every night! Later she was joined by an enterprising, Thai ex-guesthouse-owner who calls himself Johnny Possible, who sells barbecued corn, potatoes, and other items at an adjacent stand called "Potato Possible."

Update: in eary 2005, Pii Sii upgraded from her cart to a full-on restaurant in town!

Strangely, in early January 2007, I happened across another upstart cart in exactly the same location as the above photograph:

KFG (Kentucky Fried gai): If image does not load automatically, click link below.
KFG (Kentucky Fried gai)
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It's called KFG, which (though it could be denied to any lawyer if necessary) stands for Kentucky Fried gai, a taunt using the Thai word for chicken. Thell sell fried chicken and fries. Who knows, could take off in the same way...

Wednesday Market

You can buy your housewares and long-lasting food supplies at a collection of 5-6 minimarts and bedware shops in town, or you can wait for the giant "Wednesday Market," where caravans of vendors from Chiang Mai arrive with their overstuffed pickup trucks of goods for a weekly tented cornucopia in a large dirt area of town (near the post office on map above):

Wednesday Market: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday Market
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Goods are amazingly cheap, so cheap that you wonder how anyone could make a profit off them. Above you see the "99" store, where giant signs sort the whole area into 5 (13 cent), 10 (26 cent), 19 (50 cent), 29 (76 cent), 39 ($1.02), and 99 baht ($2.60) items. All the goods are splayed out in plastic bins sitting on the ground, on cardboard on the ground, or occasionally on low tables:

Wednesday Market: bins: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday Market: bins
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The goods are basically anything and everything a Thai might need to set up and maintain a house in Pai. The vendors hover around their bins with chicken-feather dusters valiantly trying to keep the ever-present dust off of their wares.

Some of the goods are so cheap it's entertaining. Spoons and forks stamped out of almost-foil-thin aluminum, snazzy looking knives so dull they can't even cut butter, and piles and piles of used, bent, worn out hand tools (needle nose pliers that don't come together anymore, chipped-up wire cutters, worn down philips screwdrivers, etc.). But some of the goods, like bungy cords, a certain brand of knife, and about half the tupperware, are amazingly sturdy and are an amazing deal for the price. For the Thais here it is like a national sport figuring out which is which and getting the best price possible.

Here's a whole table with 19 B (50 cent) sandals of every size, shape, and color:

Wednesday Market: sandals: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday Market: sandals
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...except any sizes that I can wear. One little problem with living here is that there is no profit in selling farang-sized items, whether it be shoes, sandals, underwear, motorcycle helmets, or anything. For many items I have had to go to Chiang Mai, and shop at incredibly hard-to-find freak stores like "XL For Men" at the Chiang Mai Airport Plaza shopping mall. For some particularly important items I have had to order from the web or bother my mom to go to her local department store and send a care package to Thailand!

One thing that definitely sells well in a dusty rural area is soap. Ironically these tend to be some of the dustiest items at the market:

Wednesday Market: soap: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday Market: soap
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Anyone who has a house in Pai, even a completely clueless indoor-bound farang like me, will eventually have to buy a machete:

Machete: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Machete
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The locals use these machetes for everything from trimming the weeds to cutting and shaping bamboo for construction to cutting small planks of wood to (most importantly) cutting bananas and other fruits off of trees when they are ripe. Although I haven't a clue what I am doing, I must say it is fun to swing a big evil looking 12-inch blade through a 6-inch thick banana tree trunk and slice through the whole thing in one go without feeling any resistance from the tree.

They are available in large quantities for 70-100B ($1.82-$2.63) each:

Wednesday Market: machetes and VCDs: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday Market: machetes and VCDs
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and you will see little kids who can barely reach the pedals on their bicycles come up and buy them! Those kids not only can use the knife without hurting themselves (the ones who didn't figure that out on their own are dead), they also know how and when to cut each kind of fruit off the tree and a lot of other stuff I will never know at any age.

In the village of Mo Paeng, near a popular waterfall, there is a man who makes amazing, high-quality custom knives (with any shape you specify) with tough bamboo handles and beautiful teak sheathes. He cuts the blades out of used car springs, grinds them down and sharpens them to perfection using equipment on-site, stamping on his own symbol with great pride. When you see him work you become acutely aware that you in the presence of a dedicated expert. Most amazingly, he charges only about 350 B for a finished knife.

In the background of the picture above you can see the huge VCD store selling pirated Thai music, movies, and music videos.

At the market you can find lots of cool spices:

Wednesday Market: spices: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday Market: spices
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And it's easy to tell when you are within 50 feet of the stinky, dried, preserved fish (blaa kem) that Thais (and perhaps all Asians) like so much but which I find thoroughly vile:

Wednesday Market: stinky preserved fish: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday Market: stinky preserved fish
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As in almost everywhere in Thailand, meat is sold by plopping the cuts and guts right out on a piece of newspaper or a rotten wooden cutting board. Here's two customers gleefully running their fingers through the merchandise:

Wednesday Market: yummy meat: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday Market: yummy meat
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The meat sits there all morning and afternoon in the warm air and flies gather by the hundreds. Some vendors, for a reason I have never understood, make a token gesture to hygiene by shooing the flies away for 1 second with a handkerchief tied to the end of a 3 foot bamboo stick. The flies come back in the next second but the vendors only flick the stick when a customer approaches ("oh, let me push away this swarm of vermin for a second so you can decide which of my fine filets of meat is most delicious!") and they are feeling energetic. One very clever vendor tore apart his electric desk fan, ripped off the wings of the fan, and replaced them with little bamboo sticks with little hankies at the end. Voila! He had an automatic fly shooer. A few places in the country, mostly in big cities, now sell plastic-wrapped meat out of refrigerated cabinets. There is one such place in Pai and that is where I buy my chicken meat.

At the Wednesday market they also sell fresh foods cheap. Today when I took the picture, lychees and rambutans (a Dr. Seuss like round fruit with bright red, spiraly, curly hair and lychee-like sweet flesh inside) had just hit the market at 15-20 baht per kilo so everyone was excited, including the man in the skirt:

Wednesday Market: get fruit: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Wednesday Market: get fruit
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Tourist Town

Pai has lots of quaint stores to attract tourists who actually like shopping (unlike me):

Tourist shop: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Tourist shop
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There's postcards, antiques, tribal handicrafts, and there's even a few art gallery coffee shops where local painters display and sell their work.

Nearly everyone who comes to Pai rents a motorbike, even if they have never driven one before. Actually it's a little scary. Fortunately Pai inspires people to take it slow, and the rental places are used to bikes being returned with broken-off side mirrors, so it all works out somehow. One motorbike place stands out from the rest:

AYA motorcyle rental shop: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
AYA motorcyle rental shop
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With its incredibly audacious facade, complete with hardwood paneling and a lighted goldfish tank wrapped around one of the gold-leaf-covered principal pillars, and the largest supply of rental bikes, Aya looks like it means business. Unfortunately this seems in part because Aya is very good at misleading its customers about the price, whether or not insurance is included, what that insurance includes, and "repairs" needed on return. I have heard so many direct accounts of problems and had problems myself, so if you come to Pai I would highly recommend that you rent a motorbike elsewhere.

There are many farang restaurants in the Pai area. One with character was the Shark Bar, which was in town in 2003 and moved to a nearby village of Mae Khong in 2004. The Shark Bar was run by an Austrian gentleman named Marc who is very, very proud of his Schnitzel. The place has whacky decor, with old jazz LPs covering the walls, odd images of Austria and other places, and old fashioned beer signs. The menu was full of jokes and childish stick figure diagrams, but when I chuckled upon reading about Schnitzel and French Fries for sale in Thailand he assured me "Zees is a very fine dish, ya? Ven you order zis dish ve have two challenges, ya? You see we must do zee french fries crispy on zee outside and varm on zee inside just correct, and zee schniztel ve must also prepare zee correct vay. Order I sink you will like, ya?" With a speech like that I just had to order it. It was good, I guess, but I have a hard time getting excited over breaded pounded meat. "Not zo bad," he said, "for farang food in thailand, ya?" As I went more and more I found myself addicted to the incredibly welcoming atmosphere that Marc created, and eventually to the Shnitzel itself.

Marc used to be in marketing and in 2004 he managed to fill his bar many days even though it is a confusing 10-15 minute motorbike ride out of town. He advertised by placing little cups of free cigars in internet cafes and other locations all over town. The cigars were wrapped in maps and info about the Shark Bar. The new location was in the middle of a quiet garlic field next to a river. There was a small dam and you could swim in the pool or float around in a little rowboat. Marc's customers seemed to be mostly older German or French guys visiting Thailand with their hired consorts, or living here with Thai wives. One time when I arrived alone to get some lunch, Marc brought over some French and American "gentleman's" magazines to entertain me while I waited for my food. After living in the comparatively hippie-ish feel of downtown Pai for months, it was a refreshing change to go to such a politically incorrect place. On the other hand, the Shark Bar was also a favorite stop for many hippie types, local Thai women, and others.

Tragically, the Shark Bar closed in mid-2006 so that Marc could spend more time with his family. But there is a small chance that in a few years it might open again.

An excellent farang-oriented restaurant that continues to move around different places in Pai is Amido's Pizza Garden:

Amido's Pizza Garden: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Amido's Pizza Garden
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which was started by a charismatic Belgian-Algerian man who really knows how to make good dough and pizza, in any state of sobriety. It is difficult to break even on any kind of farang food in Thailand, and Amido charges 140-200 baht for a large personal pie, but his pizzas are good enough that people keep coming back.

Lots of farangs come to Pai to open their dream business, most often a restaurant, bar, or crafts shop (leather and silver seem to be especially popular). Most ventures like these never make it much past opening day anywhere in the world, but it's especially tricky in Thailand because of the added language and cultural barriers. A farang is forbidden by law from owning land or a controlling interest in any business in Thailand. For certain nationalities and situations there are exceptions, but they are poorly specified and the farang must walk on eggshells and avoid offending anyone to keep their rights. Most farangs must therefore bankroll their business but hand official control over to a Thai spouse, loved one, or friend, and this obviously leads to problems in many situations. Even when the partners are trustworthy, the farang hits other, hidden cultural barriers. Even obtaining building permits, or the right to sell goods in what is supposed to be a public space, suddenly become issues when the presumed-to-be-rich farang is involved. Here's one intrepid expat building his shop. You can see the anguish in his face :) We wish him luck in his ventures. If you go to Pai, check out the area marked with a red star on the map above to find out what he built.

Farang Restaurant in Progress: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Farang Restaurant in Progress
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The Police of People—Really?

Before around 2001, the Pai police were a pretty much invisible and mysterious force who only interacted with foreign tourists when they launched the occasional motorbike helmet fine campaigns to pad their pockets.

However, I am sad to report that starting in 2001 and growing much more serious since 2003-4, the whole atmosphere of Pai has darkened (and soured for many potential tourists, Thai and foreign alike) as nearly everyone in it has, in some way, become wary of the police here.

Those affected include both short-term tourists, who are seeing an increase in questionable drug searches, and long-term expats and local Thais, who are seeing other disturbing phenomena. This passage from the wiki page on Pai sums it up pretty well:

Controversy over Police Conduct

Although it is a sleepy town in the mountains, Pai has over the past decade generated an unusual amount of controversy (even for Thailand) concerning the conduct of its local police, as well as the conduct of Thai drug enforcement police operating there. This is partially due to the proximity of Pai to drug routes from the Shan State in Burma, however given the post-2000 rise in incidents involving foreign tourists, it is evident that other factors are also at work. Some examples of this clear long-term trend in Pai include:

So far there are no signs of this situation improving as we have already gone through several police chiefs during this period. However, I believe that the more people are aware of this situation (including both tourists and business owners), the less the police will be able to get away with.

The Pai police inhabit this imposing building. The sign says "Police Station: for the People" in Thai and then "The Police of People" in English. Um, yeah:

Pai police station: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai police station
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Muslims

In downtown Pai, there are several Thai wats with their ringing bells, a Christian Church built by local ethnic minorities with gospel song every Sunday, and a mosque whose speakers fill the town with prayer several times a day. There are Muslims living all over the downtown area, walking around with their shawls and turbans, and they are very good at business. Many of them have lived in Thailand for a long time and came here from Chiang Mai because they saw an opportunity to do well for themselves and build a community. Some of them come from China.

This place, known simply as "the Muslim shop," is truly amazing:

The Muslim shop: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
The Muslim shop
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In this relatively small corner lot they have stuffed everything you could possibly imagine that you might want or need for your house. They have hardware, stoves, bedware, soap, plastic goods, fans, stereos, ant spray, mosquito nets, florescent fixtures, brooms, rugs, furniture and even hammocks. The prices quoted are pretty high and the cloaked ladies in charge, especially the older ones, bargain relentlessly, but they've got what you want!

Then there's the "Muslim bakery:"

The Muslim Bakery: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
The Muslim Bakery
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where the Muslims bake chocolate-filled croissants, apple strudel, and other confections every day. The Muslim bakery, like Aoy bakery, is a daily hangout for many local expats. You can sit and eat a pastry while you drink chai tea, a thick, somewhat sweet, milky tea which is very popular in Pai. The Muslim Bakery also offers a selection of odd organic items such as goat's milk from local farms.

Electrical Power

Power, water, and telephone facilities here are still crude. Whenever there's the slightest bit of rain or wind, you will hear the Thais say "dap dap dit dit," referring to the fact that the power, apparently carried all the way from Chiang Mai or Mae Hong Son along fragile poles, goes off and on all day. Sometimes, when there is a rainstorm (only likely in April-November) the power is out for more than 24 hours. It's amazing how quickly and casually the business owners here can switch their operations to candle-power mode in mid sentence as if nothing special is happening. In most places outside the very center of the town, people have sealed wells with electric pumps, so no power means no water too. Outages provide an opportunity for socializing as you fill your buckets and/or shower in the nearest river or irrigation canal. Drinking water is provided by cheap services which drop by cooler jugs and trays of small sealed bottles on a "regular" basis, so fortunately it is not affected that much by power failures.

According to a chart at the Pai power station, the months with the worst failure rate are April (with 1,410 minutes of failure in April 2005) and May (with an unbelievable 2,140 minutes of failure in May 2005). In 2006 they installed a trailer-sized diesel backup generator downtown but it only serves the hospital and some street lights.

Here, people take it for granted that whenever you purchase a desktop PC, you must always purchase a UPS too!

As of late 2006 we can see that they are laying newer, much sturdier power poles from Mae Dteng/Mai Malai (the nearest large freeway) all the way up to Pai. So perhaps things will be less fragile in a few years.

Telephone and Internet

Voice telephone lines work fairly well here (thanks to their diesel power backup system!). In Pai it takes months to get a phone line of one's own, plus the obligatory bribe to the right municipal employee. To avoid the wait I am renting (sharing) a phone line with the local school teacher's 90 year old father who lives next door. We strung a cable across the fence and through the window in typical Thai style. I cannot receive calls because the teacher doesn't want me to, and because grandpa will hear the phone ring and pick it up anyway.

Internet is even more fragile than the power. Until the life-changing date of July 2005, Pai had no ADSL service and we all connected (...and reconnected, and reconnected) by 56kbps dialup modem over a noisy long-distance telephone number to Mae Hong Son. In town, people were lucky to get 48kbps. Out in the countryside I could only get 9kpbs (yes, 9kbps, the same speed that modems in America used in 1975). Now people in town can get as much as 400kbps down with 600 baht/month ADSL service (100-200kbps during the day when usage is high). In the countryside I can get as much as 200kbps down with 600 baht/month service, and 80kbps during the day when usage is high. ADSL service is 600B, 800B, or 1100B per month for the three levels of service (where the second-highest and highest tier seem to give you the same quality of service).

As in nearly all locations in Thailand, ADSL reliability is incredibly bad compared with Western countries, with almost hourly failures of different types, sometimes lasting for hours. During high-season afternoon hours, the service in Pai can be nearly unusable due to overload. At the start of the rainy season, when all the brittle cracks baked into telephone cables during the hot season get exposed to water, the network grinds to a halt for many weeks.

The Thai phone and ADSL providers (mostly large government monopolies) have a bureacracy that is almost as staggering as their incompetance. Calls to the phone company are either ignored or met with "we are aware of the problem and will work on it as soon as possible" with no useful followup. From postings on thaivisa.com, it is clear that the problem is country-wide: either the network infrastructure of Thailand is woefully overloaded, the network admin staff has gotten in woefully over their head, or both.

It is also possible to get dialup-modem-speed internet access in Pai via a cellphone and GPRS, or DSL-speed (but high latency) internet access via a satellite dish. Both of these options are significantly more expensive than ADSL and suffer from similar reliability issues. But in more remote Pai locations, they may be your only choice.

If you want to host an internet server or day trade, don't come to Pai. On the other hand, once you take a look at the rat's nest of 50-year old wiring that makes up the phone system, you will realize what a miracle it is that any of it ever works, and you will slow down to Pai time where it all don't seem so bad.

Vehicles

Almost all vehicles on the road are motorbikes, and often you will see whole families on one bike, as in other places in Thailand. The next most common vehicle in this rural farming area is a pickup truck, and those who have one seem to automatically take on a public duty of transporting huge groups of villagers, too poor to afford any vehicle, to and from town. Beyond that you see few other vehicles, except rich Thai tourists arriving from Bangkok or Chiang Mai in their SUVs. Each year, on the January 1st holiday, literally hundreds of rich Thais swarm and overwhelm the sites, guesthouses, and narrow streets of Pai with their gigantic air-conditioned vehicles. Apparently the district did a little too much advertising and visiting Pai became something of a status item for these bored city slickers. Pai has also featured in a number of blockbuster Thai films with famous actors and actresses.

The demanding, spoiled Thai big-city tourists drive the local guesthouse owners crazy, even more than farang tourists, and many owners turn away the Bangkokians telling them "sorry, we're all full tonight!"

Around August 2004, Pai also got its first two sets of traffic signals. Before that, the four-way intersections of Pai were unmarked, "gentleman's intersections" where everyone except for the yabba-tweaked teenage gangsters and the Red-Bull-powered huge cargo truck drivers would slow down and look before crossing. Now, we have two fully modern intersections complete with a digital countdown timer for the red light.

Most people don't know what to do with it. Some people still slow down and drive right through as if the signal were not there. The teenagers and truck drivers speed through as before. One time, a Thai man scowled at me as I crossed straight through an intersection at the green light, and he was turning right: he thought that the green light gave him permission to go any way he wanted. A few people stop an extra-long time and won't even turn left on a red light. Most people who end up at the front of the pack, facing a red light, just sort of look around in confusion and go when the oncoming lane of traffic goes.

"Development"

Pai is rapidly transforming from a quiet countryside town into a fully "developed" city. Sadly, in the process, it is losing much of what made it so attractive to visitors.

A few years ago, nearly every new farang and Thai visitor I met would tell me that they got "stuck" in Pai for days or weeks longer than they expected, because it was such a natural, relaxing place.

Now, more and more, visitors are telling me how disappointed they are by the traffic, by the commercialism and fakeness of our new "walking street" market, which is essentially an exact copy of Chiang Mai's tourist-oriented Sunday Market, and by the ever-increasing difficuly of finding nice scenery, as more and more rice fields and old teak houses are torn down to make way for concrete guesthouses and shophouses. Nowadays, many visitors actually tell me that they are leaving sooner than expected because Pai wasn't anything like they had heard.

Quite a change in just a few years. Here are some viewpoints on that.

Bangkok Post / Pai Post Article

Pai was featured in an English-language article called "Paying the Price of Development" by Suthon Sukphisit, published in the Bangkok Post on 21 October 2006, and re-published (without change, but with a new Thai translation) in the December 2006 Pai Post.

While the author's heart is definitely in the right place, and while this article makes a number of good points and suggestions, there are a significant number of factual errors and oversimplifications which I think give a skewed view of the "development" problem and which could hinder our ability to find a workable solution.

I should note that while I have lived in Pai since December 2003, I do not own or run any local business here. I have no love for development (as should be clear from my journal), yet I still believe there is something amiss in the author's analysis.

Here is the complete article with some annotations to help set the record straight.

Paying the Price of Development
By Suthon Sukphisit

Thirty years ago, Pai in Mae Hong Son province was a little village made up of wooden houses with banana leaf or galvanised steel roofs.

Not a promising start. Banana leaves decay to nothing in a few months. The only people I know who made banana-leaf roofs were the formerly nomadic Mabri (or Mlabri) tribe of Nan and Phrae province! Local leaf roofs here are made from ตองตึง (dtong dteung, also called พลวง (pluang) or dipterocarpus tuberculatus), which looks almost identical to a teak leaf but nothing like a banana leaf.

This is a minor point, but it's one that a real Pai local would never get wrong. It calls out a theme that I see throughout this article: the author seems to be relying too heavily on secondary sources (including, possibly, my journal) and I'm not sure if he spent that much time actually visiting Pai himself.

Fences of woven bamboo, overgrown with climbing vines surrounded each household. The road connecting Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai ran through the town, and running along each side of it were rows of single-storey wooden shophouses, about 20 in all.

Every once in a while a car would pass along the road, but it was used primarily by cattle and water buffalo and their owners, moving from one grassy meadow to another. The local people called the part of town that the road passed through the "lower town". There was also an "upper town", set on a hill not far from the lower town. The only thing separating them was the Pai River.

I'm not sure why the author chose to use these obscure names (bad translation? a futile hope of obscuring their location from land speculators?) but the "lower" and "upper" towns in question are Vieng Dtaai (เวียงใต้, downtown Pai) and Vieng Neuea (เวียงเหนือ), the supposedly unspoiled town where I have lived for more than 3 years.

It seems evident that the upper town is very old. It is surrounded by a wall made of earth as well as a moat, both of which are characteristics of ancient settlements.

It is true that Vieng Neuea is much older than Viang Dtaai. According to local historian Thomas Kasper (who also runs a restaurant in town: don't assume that all non-local business people are here to exploit and destroy the local culture!), Vieng Neuea was founded in 1251 AD by Shan immigrants from modern-day Burma, whereas Vieng Dtaai wasn't established until the late 1800s.

Throughout much of its history, Vieng Neuea consisted of a Shan "side" and a Lanna Thai "side," whose residents didn't get along. The wall actually separated the two halves of town. It is symbolic of a important economic split that exists today, a split which the author of this article ignores: nowadays in Vieng Neuea you will find established upper-middle-class families who will call themselves Thai or Thai Yai (ไทยใหญ่, indicating distant Shan heritage), and then you will find hundreds of extremely poor recent immigrants from the Shan State of Burma (refugees, really) who the locals refer to as Thai Nook (ไทยนอก, where Nook means "outside").

There are hundreds of thousands of Thai Nook in Thailand, many of them in Mae Hong Son province. The Thai Nook provide a cheap labor force for farming and construction. Some of them are here illegally, and some of them have local sponsors and limited papers from the Thai government that essentially make them indentured servants who cannot own land, vote, switch employers (except once a year, if they can find a new sponsor), or even leave Pai District!

It is the Thai Nook who will first feel the effects of "development" in Pai because they are the ones who are most sensitive to the prices of everything. Ironically, they are also the ones who farm our rice and garlic, and they are the ones who build our guesthouses and restaurants.

Many of the Thai and Thai Yai, on the other hand, are the business owners and landlords who have profited big-time on Pai's "development." It is completely inaccurate to say that all of Pai's new fortunes go to Chiang Mai or Bangkok Thais. More on this below.

Until recently it was a small community centring around a temple, quieter and more peaceful than the lower town, perhaps because it was purely residential and surrounded by fields and orchards, with no commerce.

Vieng Neuea is quieter than Viang Dtaai, but both places have temples and surrounding fields and orchards, and both places have commerce. In addition to the local Vieng Neuea market, which has existed for longer than Vieng Dtaai itself (and which, by the way, was converted into a concrete minimart in January 2007), there are at least 5 other housefront grocery stores and 2 small-scale noodle shops where locals eat, and the locals here make and sell beautiful traditional teak furniture using a combination of modern tools and traditional methods. For sure, Vieng Dtaai has a lot more commerce, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that Vieng Neuea is some kind of residential paradise.

Both the lower and upper towns encompassed a wide variety of lifestyles. The population included hill tribespeople, ethnic Tai Yai, Chinese, Muslims and Northern Thais living together in harmony. Both were also governed by the administration of the District of Pai, which was located in the lower town. The area around the main communities is cultivated land which is surrounded by mountains so that Pai takes the form of a basin with rugged peaks all around it.

With so many attractive qualities—natural beauty, a history extending back to ancient times, and a diverse, colourful population—it isn't surprising that travellers passing through the community might fall under the spell of the local atmosphere and might want to get out of their cars and stay for a while.

As a result, over the past 20 years, a period in which Mae Hong Son has experienced a boom in tourism, visitors to the region, especially Westerners, have been showing up in Pai in growing numbers. Many found it even more impressive than Mae Hong Son because of the comparatively unspoiled natural environment.

The first group of Western tourists to begin arriving in Pai for extended visits were the backpackers. Some homes in the lower town were converted into inexpensive guesthouses to accommodate them.

Soon word about the town began to spread.

Its popularity expanded, with a constant stream of tourists pouring in year-round. Thai tourists began arriving, too, and the media discovered the town, with coverage in both domestic and foreign publications and television programmes. Articles appeared under headlines like, "Pai, an Earthly Paradise", "Sleep in Pai and See Heaven", "Heaven Really Does Exist—in Pai", and "If You Haven't Visited Pai, Your Life is Incomplete".

This is accurate. It's important to note that the tourist demographics are rapidly changing. Starting in the 2006 high season, until at least January 2007, I have seen a marked increase in the percentage of Thai tourists. My guess is that foreign tourists are being scared off by some combination of:

There is another important fact here which the author doesn't mention. The different groups of tourists who come to Pai have very different tastes, and affect the culture, architecture, and environment of Pai in very different ways.

Generally speaking, the budget backpackers who have been coming to Pai since the 1970s like Pai the way it is. They are happy staying in bamboo or wood places. They happily eat the local food and like to interact with the locals. Perhaps the largest degree to which their presence twists the local economy is the increased availability of weed and banana pancakes. These tourists do not create a pressure for concrete mega-resorts, loud parties, or hard drugs like yabba or heroin.

A more recent tourist trend is young school-aged island-ravers from the US (spring-break), Isreal (post-military-service-walkabout), and other places. After the tsunami we saw a lot more of these folks, who like to party with loud music and will buy lots of beer and other substances at such events.

Finally, and most significantly for the environment, we have the recent wave of Thai tourists and high-end foreign tourists (which I expect to become an all-consuming torrent now that regular airplane service has begun). These consumers demand high-end wood or concrete rooms with bathroom inside and trigger the most environmentally-damaging construction.

This kind of attention didn't go unnoticed by investors from outside, who saw the town as the key to a bright future. They came in from Chiang Mai and Bangkok to buy up and rent land, upon which they put up guesthouses and hotels.

While there are lots of Chiang Mai and Bangkok business owners here, there are still plenty of Pai locals who have gotten rich off the tourism industry as well. Don't forget that many of the businesses rent their land from locals. The Pai local who sold out, er, I mean, rented his teak shop out so that it could be destroyed and turned into the city-wide blight known as 7-11 rides around town every day with a huge smile on his face.

It is not productive to blame all the development on outsiders, because that implies that if you could just kick out all the outsiders, Pai would return to its pristine past. But money corrupts locals just as easily as it does Bangkok Thais.

The lower town changed very quickly. Musicians set up restaurants and pubs where they played and sang for tourists. Artists opened shops to sell their work.

Those who could neither play nor paint tried their luck at operating food shops which they decorated in eye-catching, trendy styles.

Most people, even the locals, seem to appreciate the eclectic local art and music (which often combines Western, Japanese, Thai, and other styles), as long as it doesn't get to the point of blasting from speakers until 2am (see below). The presence of non-local art and music does not seem to be one of Pai's "development" problems, as the author suggests later in his article.

Most Pai locals have, at some point, had a problem with tourists (mostly foreign) who walk around barefoot or bare-chested, who scream and yell rather than staying calm, or who kiss in public. To that end, Pai publishes a list of "Pai Ways" in the Pai Post, in a the biweekly events planner, on the walls of many guesthouses, at the hot springs, and at other locations. Most of the offenders are short-term tourists, not the expats or locals who bring the music or art.

Some of the shops built by both local and non-local owners are extremely beautiful teak or bamboo structures that use ancient building materials and techniques native to this area. Some are ugly concrete chinese-style shophouses as seen all over Thailand (and many of these blights were built by locals who have lived in Pai for generations). Some shops are horrible fluorescent day-glo monstrosities that, in my humble opinion, should be knocked down and moved to Bangkok. There is not a strong correlation between whether the shop owner is a local and whether their building follows local ancient tradition. It appears that the author is trying to suggest otherwise.

Visitors with a taste for risky sports were courted with rented motorcycles upon which they were taken on jungle tours.

This statement is extremely confused, and it indicates that the author needs to spend more time actually seeing what happens in Pai: some tourists go on jungle tours to hill tribes on foot or by boat. They are not interested in the "risk" factor: they want to see remote hill tribes and their customs.

Some tourists rent off-road motorbikes to go on day trips tearing around the local hills, but these are hardly jungle tours. Very few tourists, perhaps none, do both at the same time. Tourists have enough sense to know not to tear up walking trails that villagers use to transport their goods to market.

I am really wondering if the author might have based this statement on a misunderstanding of the harrowing account of my motorbike trip to Bpang Tong village that appers in my own journal website.

Let me set the record straight: the journey was harrowing for me because I was an inexperienced motorbike driver. I did not go there to seek out "risky sport" and to this day I still haven't returned because, even though I now have years of experience and even though I'd like to meet the people there again, I still don't like the road. However, then and now, the local kids do this same trip every day, 3-on-a-bike, on much older and weaker motorbikes than I had, as part of their normal life needs to go to school and/or market.

Then there were the prostitutes, who had nothing to invest but their physical charms, who flocked in to troll for foreign customers.

As one local here likes to say, this sentence is complete bollocks.

This sentence is pure sensationalism, nothing more. The author should be ashamed. It is inaccurate in every possible respect, and strongly suggests that the author has not actually been to Pai.

First of all, as someone who has traveled in Thailand for 7 years and then settled down in Pai for 3 years, I can tell you with certainty that this place has the lowest amount of foreign-customer-oriented prostitution I have seen for any tourist town in Thailand. It is why I like Pai, and one of the main reasons why I chose to live here.

Chiang Mai and Bangkok are full of "girl bars" where scantily-clad females grab at foreign tourists on the sidewalk and drag them in. Many smaller, countryside towns I've visited in Isaan and northern Thailand have fairly obvious places (typically bars or karaoke joints) where some of the staff are clearly "available" to both Thais and foreigners for take-away. But, at least as of January 2007, Pai has no obvious places like this, and I consider this one of the most amazing hallmarks of the place. It is one of the things that I believe will change instantly with the debut of regular airplane flights, lowering the barrier to a new, annoying type of tourist who will seek out and pay for "extra services."

I have heard only unsubstantiated rumors of prostitution in Pai, nearly all involving local girls. Most of the rumors I have heard I know to be false: Pai is a small town and the local chatty vendors at the market like to make up stories to keep life interesting. In Pai, merely seeing a woman on the back of a guy's motorbike is enough to start a rumor that she is a prostitute. I've no idea where these prostitutes the author speaks of might have "flocked in" from or to.

Perhaps the author is confusing foreign-oriented prostitution with Thai-oriented prostitution. It is an unspoken but universally known fact that the farang-customer-oriented prostitution industry is dwarfed in size and age by the Thai-customer-oriented prostitution industry. Even in the smallest countryside towns in Thailand, local men (yes, even the local officials) can find "comfort" in well-hidden local hovels, where foreigners are not welcome. Pai is no exception to this.

Or, perhaps the author is confusing prostitution with relationships that aren't just short-term exchanges of sex for money. Years back, I had a Thai girlfriend and we used to travel around the country. We both personally experienced the stigma attached to any Thai-Western couple: Thais would see us and instantly assume that my girlfriend was a prostitute and that I was her customer. One old man in Bangkok even asked my girlfriend "how much did you get for him?", assuming I couldn't understand.

As my Thai co-author and I were doing research for our book Thailand Fever, which is about Thai-Western romantic relationships, we discovered that many Thai-Western couples experience the same stigma, and that that stigma still exists today. The author, or someone who the author used as a secondary source for his article, probably assumed that any woman seen with more than one man in Pai must be a prostitute. The author needs to use a larger grain of salt when listening to the incessant Pai rumor mill.

In actual fact, there are lots of Thais in relationships with foreigners here. This includes not ony Thai women but Thai men as well. Some of the Thais were born here, some are from nearby hill tribes, and some came from Chiang Mai and Bangkok to work. Many of them are long-term and/or married with children. Many own businesses together.

Some (but not many) of the Thais involved with foreigners here do seem to go through a lot of partners. Some of these Thais are desperately looking for a foreigner who they hope will help them break out of their current social class and provide comfortable living for their family. Some of these Thais have a modern view that sex does not need to be attached to marriage. Does that make these Thais immoral? Perhaps, according to the traditional views of older Thais in Pai. Does that make them prostitutes? No.

The people of Pai got almost nothing from all of this tourism. The fresh and dried ingredients used by the restaurants and food shops were brought in from Chiang Mai, as were construction materials used to build all the new structures. The few who did find work served as janitors and cleaning personnel at restaurants and hotels, or as waiters and waitresses.

Again the author is over-simplifying.

There are still plenty of rice, garlic, onion, cabbage, orange and other crops made in Pai District and Bpang Ma Pha district on sale in the local markets, and the local restaurants do buy them and use them. However, for many fruits and vegetables, there is simply no way that local growers can produce them and make a profit, because they are competing with large growers in Chiang Mai who don't have to pay as much packing and transportation costs to get their goods to the largest markets. Those items have to be imported to Pai. This would be the case even if there were no "development" in Pai (either that, or the locals would have to do without them).

As far as construction materials, where does the author expect us to get them from? How exactly have "the people of Pai" missed out on the construction material business? As far as I know, nobody local has either the knowledge or desire to manufacture nails or tools, and other than bamboo, all possible building materials like teak have already been exhausted. It is illegal to cut teak, and those who do it illegally now have to hike days into the jungle just to find some usably large trees! People here are now almost universally buying old teak structures and re-using the wood, or else using eucalyptus tree poles (from Chiang Mai) as a replacement for teak poles. Isn't that a good thing?

Furthermore, the author is over-simplifying "the people of Pai." He makes it sound like everyone who was born in Pai is now cleaning toilets.

"The people of Pai" includes the Thai and Thai Yai landowners who clean up on ever-increasing rents from (local and non-local) business owners. "The people of Pai" includes the locals who now run booming food and construction supply import businesses, the hardware stores, and guesthouses. "The people of Pai" includes the local government, which is fat and happy on taxes and fees.

"The people of Pai" also includes many poorer folks who do work as janitors or unskilled laborers. Many of these workers are Thai Nook or hill tribe folks. Perhaps the authors' comments apply most directly to them.

The waiter and receptionist jobs, on the other hand, tend to go to the kids of upper-middle-class locals, or even more often, young folks from Chiang Mai and Bangkok, who come pre-equipped with the required minimal English skills.

This is a shame because it effectively blocks the poorer locals from learning English, which might give them serious new opportunities for work and money in the future. If someone out there wants to really help the locals, then come set up a stable, long-term, free or low-cost English school that doesn't exclude (or even caters to) these people.

One thing that "development" has brought to Pai that is probably net-positive is good internet service. Locals now have access to information, news, and market data that they did not before. But again the poor Thais have been locked out of this by their lack of money and English skills. So, in your language school, please offer free internet access too!

In addition to being shut out of the tourism-related prosperity, the local people of the lower town had to endure the racket from music that was completely alien to them blasted out from loudspeakers until two in the morning.

Another oversimplification that makes the locals look like angels, and seeks to place all the blame for noise on tourists.

It's definitely true that many tourist business owners have blasted horrific music, ranging from plucky, empty-headed modern Thai teeny-bopper pop tunes to techno trance rave music, to ridiculously late hours of the morning. Nobody likes them: not the locals and not even the tourists or expat residents. One particularly insensitive business, which tried to introduce a Ko-Phangan-style rave to the quiet Pai valley, ended up with a molotov cocktail in their bar a few days later!

But guess what: some of these businesses are owned by locals! They're chasing the money, just like the other business owners.

Aren't the police supposed to answer calls about noise? Where were they? Why do some parties get shut down after just a few minutes of noise but some go on all night? Perhaps the biggest problem isn't the noise. It's the willingness of police all around Thailand to ignore such transgressions, for a fee.

And this ridiculous noise phenomenon is not limited to tourist venues. About once every two months during the dry seasons, the locals in my untouched, pristine village of Vieng Neuea hold a temple festival. These festivals are not announced to tourists and at the peak there will typically be 200-800 Thais and maybe 10 tourists (you'll see the same ratio in temple festivals all around the valley—everywhere except Viang Dtaai).

At these festivals, the locals blast folk music and Isaan-style maw ram, often until 1 or 2 in the morning. At many festivals you will also have the "dancing girls," wearing very, very short skirts and dancing on makeshift stages for hours and hours.

Is this an effect of "development?" No. These are locals doing this to themselves. They are not doing this to attract foreigners or investment. For some reason, they like the cacophony (personally, I can't stand it) and they don't stand to earn any money from it.

Young people who had been used to a quiet life began to speak admiringly to the parents about the long-haired musicians who were playing in town, and young girls remarked that the women who came in from outside and who were never seen with the same man twice were lucky, because they got to go abroad with foreigners.

This presents a simplistic, rosy picture of innocent locals being corrupted by non-local invaders, as if keeping the tourists and non-local investors out of Vieng Neuea would somehow keep it pure.

However, life is not so simple. Many of the locals are taking on these "evil outside ideas" by other paths that are not related to the tourist influx. Television is a big one, but there is also the bizarre occasional phenomenon of Pai Gangs, in which young, bored upper-middle-class boys with expensive motorbikes engage in petty and pointless gang warefare on the streets of Pai, and fight during the late-night hours after temple festivals, because they have nothing better to do. One of these contingents of wannabe gangsters comes from my own home town, the sweet, innocent Vieng Neuea.

Were these boys imitating the local tourists or long-haired musicians? Definitely not.

Is tourism money and development to blame for their behavior? It might have been a factor (or was it drug money from the yaabaa trade?), but aren't the kids' parents somehow accountable for how they raise their kids as well? Furthermore, didn't that money also benefit them by giving them access to education and leisure time?

All of these things happened within a short time in the lower town, and once they had taken place it was almost impossible for things to return to the way they had been decades earlier.

Yay! Finally a sentence where I am in complete agreement with the author!

But the town's misfortunes didn't stop there.

A flash flood from the Pai River drowned the lower town and did so much damage that the investors began looking for a more congenial place to put their money. Of course, the obvious choice was the upper town. Not only were land prices cheaper, but the view from the high ground was better.

Again, this really makes me wonder if the author has actually ever been to Pai.

Land speculation in Vieng Neuea began many years before the flood. Most of Vieng Neuea and Vieng Dtaai are on flat land that has no view. The two towns have approximately equal areas of land with a nice view (assuming you count the land on the nearest hill overlooking Vieng Dtaai as Vieng Dtaai; technically it is in neighboring dtambon Mae Yen). Furthermore, there was flood damage in both Vieng Dtaai and Vieng Neuea (for example, the high-end resorts Baan Krating and Sipsongpanna were both devastated, and they are in Vieng Neuea).

It is true that nowadays, investors are buying more land outside of Vieng Dtaai. But that is because all the land in town is now taken, or overpric