allaboutpai.com → Introduction

Introduction to Pai

Last Update: February 2009.

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 (and some of those people say they simply do not trust their own country's infrastructure to put out a big forest fire, so they take matters into their own hands). Some people say they burn the forests for fun. Who knows. It is best to come to Pai before this madness begins, which is typically in late February. It ends with the first few rainstorms, typically in April, which instantly wash all the smoke out of the air and stimulate an amazing burst of growth which makes the hills green again within days.

In 2007, this problem reached critical levels all over northern Thailand. Levels of dangerous particulates reached 300ppm in nearby Mae Hong Son, three times even the Thai safety level. Hundreds of cases of lung and eye irritation streamed through Pai hospital. Things were mysteriously better in 2008, but as of late February 2009, things are looking to be worse than ever, and many long-term expats here have already left the province for cleaner air until the rain begins.

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 minivan 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), followed by 3 more similar Higer vehicles.

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

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 these bamboo 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, including both bamboo huts and "durable" concrete structures. I have created a separate page devoted entirely to that subject.

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.

Fortunately, Mink is persistent, and out of the ashes rose a great new guesthouse, on higher ground (over the big bridge next to Pai school and up the hill a bit, next door to the new Paddy Fields and near Countryside Bungalows), known as both Yawning Fields and Ing Doi House (for the new wave of Thai visitors). This time, it consists of fancier wooden bungalows, though still with the teak leaf rooves and natural surroundings:

Ing Doi House / Yawning Fields: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Ing Doi House / Yawning Fields
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Interestingly, in 2005, the owners of the neighboring Rimtaling guesthouse moved their entire guesthouse up to the same hill about one month before the floods, renaming it to Paddy Fields. The Rimtaling / Paddy Fields owners will be applying for the position of town psychics.

Random Bamboo Art

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:

Kalo's Bamboo Entertainment Tower, 2003 Note Person at Bottom!: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Kalo's Bamboo Entertainment Tower, 2003
Note Person at Bottom!
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Kalo's Bamboo Entertainment Tower, 2003 Completed: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Kalo's Bamboo Entertainment Tower, 2003
Completed
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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 spur-of-the-moment times when you've just got to have a Pagan ritual. I believe The structure was taken down in 2004 (if not, the flood got it in 2005).

In 2009, Kalo built a cool indoor/outdoor bamboo cinema around the same location at PS Riverside. He shows movies on a big projection screen hanging off a bamboo wall, and people can lounge on mattresses or dangle their legs off a second story ledge to watch the movie, with a campfire in the middle of the building to keep folks warm in the chilly Pai winters! An interesting combination of old and new as the projection beam shoots through the smoke rising off a warm bamboo fire.

Seating of Kalo's Cinema, 2009: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Seating of Kalo's Cinema, 2009
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Kalo also built a floating bamboo raft and has many more projects in the works. At his continuing projects, he welcomes volunteers to come learn all about bamboo construction as they help him build the next cool thing. If you are coming to Pai, you can contact him at FootPrintkalo@gmail.com or call 089-855-6947 (international +66 89 855 6947).

Kalo's eventual dream is to build a bamboo academy in nearby Soppong as a way to keep alive the art and knowledge of bamboo construction techniques.

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 Chiang Mai road," etc. You used to be able to say "the bank road" but now every road has multiple banks. The "7-11 road" worked for a while, until the second 7-11 went in. Sigh.

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 municipal offices (this picture is from the old location on the Krung Thai bank street):

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 (behind the police statiion on the 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.

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.

Around 2007, police installed a series of at least five closed-circuit security cameras around town (this for a town with 2 signals and 5 streets total). No idea if anyone ever watched the pictures, but it was just another Orwellian step away from the formerly casual and friendly atmosphere.

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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In 2008, thanks to an apparent in-rush of funding, the structure above was razed in favor of a gigantic concrete tower. Who rewarded them?

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 body-covering hijabs (though only some of the Muslim families follow the dress code that strictly) and smart topis/kufis/turbans, and they are very good at business. Some have been in Pai for almost two generations. Many came here from Chiang Mai because they saw an opportunity to do well for themselves and build a community. Some of them came from China via Burma. They have no ethnic or historical connection with the Muslims in the southern three provinces of Thailand, where there is so much unrest.

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, giving birth to the most famous and recommended beverage: goat milk chai. Around 2006, the bakery part split off and moved down the street to a shop called "Muslim Home-Made," but the old location retains the chai tea and its peanut gallery of crotchety, long-term expats.

Electrical Power

Power, water, and telephone facilities here are still crude, even as of February 2009. 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. Feb 2009 Update: yes, years. They have made lots of progress in three years, but there are still clearly large segments yet to be built, perhaps 10% of the total distance.

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 incompetence. 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.

In 2008, CAT, Thailand's other major government telecom monopoly besides TOT, moved into Pai. CAT is about as slow and incompetent as TOT, but at least they brought new equipment with them, including new wiring, rather than using TOT's decades-old crispy telephone cables. As of February 2009, you can get CAT ADSL lines in downtown Pai (and some outlying towns) that are quite a bit more reliable than TOT's: you can get 1500kbps down reliably, at least until everyone moves over from TOT to CAT and the failures and slowness equalize out. You can get also get a wireless "3G" CDMA EV-DO Rev. A service from CAT that allows you to use a cellphone-like (8000 Baht) USB dongle anywhere in Pai (and anywhere in Thailand, except for Bangkok and Pattaya) to get service varying from 200kbps-1400kbps down, 300kbps up. As with all other services, failures are frequent.

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 (January 2009 update: tens of thousands 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 overpriced, not because of the flood!

The question this situation invites is, how can this beautiful area be protected from further destructive development? What can be done to ensure that it won't deteriorate the way the lower town did?

Assistant Professor Duangjai Lothonwanit of the Faculty of Arts at Thammasat University, who has done research on tourism at Pai under the effect of globalisation, has come to the conclusion that all of the town's problems have arisen from investors crowding in to look for business opportunities.

I would very much like to read this study. If anyone has access to it, please let me know.

She found that many investors bought land at a low price and held on to it. When others came from outside, the land was sold to them at a higher price. Then the original owner took the money and used it to buy more desirable land, which in turn was sold the same way.

Now the land in Pai, especially scenic property on the mountain slopes or on the bank of the river, belongs exclusively to owners in Chiang Mai or Bangkok. The purchase of some of the land by celebrities gave the properties a high-class aura that stimulated the local real estate business further. Services offered by restaurants and accommodations had to be adjusted to the expectations of city-dwellers who expected good food and comfortable lodging with all the latest conveniences.

An important factor contributing to the problem was that the government took no steps to control the ratio of outsiders to locals...

The buy-and-sell process the author describes here is how real estate works in any capitalist country of the world. Like it or not, it is not illegal. You'd even have a hard time convincing anyone that it's unethical. Any solution to the "development" problem has to work within the real-world constraints of a capitalist economy.

The author claims the land "exclusively" belongs to outsiders now. This is incorrect. There are local landowners cashing in on the tourism trade, and buying and selling their way up the property ladder, as well.

If Vieng Neuea were to try to limit land ownership to locals, then we'd just end up with the same number of hideous guesthouses and businesses, all owned by locals and leased to Chiang Mai or Bangkok Thais. This would not solve our "development" problem. If you don't believe me, just look at the number of Pai businesses that are leased to foreigners, who for years have been restricted from owning land. Restricting ownership just increases the amount of money given to lawyers and government offices; it does not slow development.

...and to protect the environment from trash, waste water and noise pollution. No attention was given to preserving the local architecture and arts and to implement planning operations.

In fact, during the period from 2002-2006, there was an awful lot of building-material-related regulation that came down from the Pai government. The problem was that the regulations were purposely vague and selectively enforced so that the government could weed out those they don't like and support their friends, in the process working more against conservation than for it.

For example, a previous Pai mayor declared that no future buildings could have leaf roofs. At certain points, it even seemed like all bamboo huts would be illegal, and only concrete buildings would be allowed.

The official reason was safety, but after a few years of selective enforcement it became clear that the real reason was graft and the desire to support high-end, high-dollar businesses at the detriment of small guesthouse operations. This banana-republic circus was exposed in a number of articles in Chiang Mai and Pai newspapers and magazines. It was an embarrassment for Pai and quietly faded away.

Then, later, came the "color wars." For a time, blue-colored roofs were illegal. Then, blue was okay but green was illegal. What is going on?

Any real solution to control development has to have some longevity, so developers have a chance of even knowing what is going on, and it has to have some teeth against those who misuse the regulatory power for graft. I have no idea how to accomplish that, but a good first step would be to make all building permits, complaints, and decisions a matter of public record which anyone can access free of charge, easily, and without prejudice.

Not only were these important aspects of local life and culture ignored, but development and change were pushed ahead at full speed through the construction of a small airport, which was shielded from the many restrictions imposed on commercial airports by designating it as a military facility. The reason it was built was to permit visitors to get to Pai faster, avoiding the long, road with its more than 100 curves and bends. A meeting was held between the private sector and the district at which it was agreed that 12-seater aircraft could land there easily. Even the airfare was agreed upon.

Objections were raised to this plan, but district officials countered that it was all for the good of the local people: If someone needed urgent medical attention they could quickly fly to Chiang Mai for treatment. This argument was ridiculous, because local people were highly unlikely to be able to afford the fare for the 12-seater plane.

These were some of the facts that Asst Prof Duangjai learned had taken place at Pai.

Very interesting.

I believe that regular airplane flights will transform Pai in a massive and irrevocable way that will make the development to date seem trivial. I hope I'm wrong.

It is obvious that Pai was taken over by outsiders. The trend was very vigorous and overwhelmed the town at great speed, but instead of trying to control it, the government welcomed the invading investors with open arms.

For the people of the lower town it is too late for anything to be done, but there may still be a way for the upper town to put the brakes on the kind of high-speed change that ruined the lower town, and it must be done by the town residents themselves.

They must construct armour to protect themselves. The first thing is to make sure that no service businesses are allowed to operate there. If absolutely necessary, guest houses might be allowed, but they would have to follow strict specifications as to size, architectural style, and distance from the road (taking into account the way the use of the road might change in the future). Refuse disposal, waste water and noise would also have to be closely monitored.

These guesthouses would have to render a "social tax", separate from the tax paid to the government, directly to the local community. This would take the form of supporting the maintenance of the road, keeping it clear and in proper condition, cutting down unwanted plants and weeds growing along the sidewalks, and placing rubbish bins along them at intervals.

They would also be asked to contribute money to support community activities.

The upper town community would have to see to it that any changes and extensions of buildings and residences there do not clash with the local architectural style. Building materials would also be restricted, with coloured tile roofs and metal fences banned.

All great ideas, and to varying extents they've been tried before in Vieng Dtaai. But the greed of developers (local and non-local alike) and government graft always got in the way of making the building regulations clear and consistently enforced. I don't see any reason why the same thing wouldn't happen in Vieng Neuea.

Perhaps if this relatively small community could get together and organize well enough so that anyone who tries to build a huge ugly illegal guesthouse gets publically embarrassed in front of the whole town, it might work. But that is not how things tend to work in Thai culture: the one breaking the law tends to be the mayor, policeman, or other village elder, and people will tend to defer to his higher social status by not confronting him.

For the record, there have been service businesses in Vieng Neuea for many years (more than five guesthouses and hotels), and one of them, Baan Krating, appears to have already rendered a "social tax" in terms of funding the post-flood shoring up of the major concrete bridge that leads to their resort (and to the rest of Vieng Neuea).

The author is writing exclusively with the honorable but ultimately academic goal of preserving local architecture, arts, and culture. The people of Vieng Neuea value this, but unlike the author, they also live in Vieng Neuea. They want a nicer house, a TV, a nice SUV, and other stuff too. They understand that opening a guesthouse or other tourist-oriented business can bring them these luxuries.

While some Vieng Neuea residents do look on Vieng Dtaai as a cultural toxic waste disaster area, and would support strong building regulation, others admire the "prosperity" of Vieng Dtaai and would wish to emulate it.

I wish I had a better answer, but the author's simple suggestion of "kick out the non-local invaders" won't work. The real enemy is not outsiders, it's greed. Locals have it just as much as Bangkok Thais or foreigners.

Local cultural traditions would also have to be preserved and protected. Forms of entertainment that were not native to the North would not be permitted as it is in the lower town, where Bangkok-style socially-conscious pop music and Isan-style maw ram are heard at temple fairs.

As mentioned above, the local Thais voluntarily inflicted Bangkok-style socially-conscious pop music and Isan-style maw ram on themselves (hmm, since when is socially-conscious a bad word)? It has nothing to do with Bangkok and Chiang Mai investors buying up land and starting businesses.

Put another way, if Pai were not a tourist haven, the kids would still be listening to the same music and dancing to the same annoying pop tunes at their temple festivals, just as kids do in completely tourist-free countryside towns of Isaan.

The changing tastes for music, art, and dance is a separate phenomonon from tourism construction and industry. I think the author is in safe territory when he talks about building regulation, but I think he's going out on a limb when he starts talking about regularing music, art, and dance. He is likely to alienate the locals, many of whom might object to more concrete guesthouses but who actually enjoy the din at their local temple festival. Regulating decibels of sound and hours of sound might work, but for sure the locals would make exceptions for the temple fairs.

These are just a few examples of the many things that might be done to protect the upper town. If the local people are motivated strongly enough by the sight of what has happened to the lower town to put such a plan into action, their community might still be spared the same kind of destruction, or at least it might be slowed down. With serious effort, the authentic character of the ancient upper town might still survive.

Brimming with Banks

In December 2003 this was the only bank in town:

Pai's one bank...In 2003!: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai's one bank...In 2003!
Click here if image does not load automatically.

However, the great steamroller of progress brought us an ATM in July 2004, a second full Nakhon Luang Branch in December 2005, three more ATMs and a Krung Sri branch in mid-2006, and a second and third Krung Sri branch in late-2006 (are people really so lazy that they can't walk across town?).

For the most part, these giant banks were built without any respect for the local beauty, without even the slightest awareness of what makes Pai special and what makes people want to open bank accounts in Pai! Don't they realize that the viability of the loans they give out, and the number of customers who will come pay for their exchange and account services, directly depends on the continuing aesthetic appeal of Pai to tourists?

Bangkok Bank, one of the largest in Thailand, knocked down a beautiful old teakwood house to build a towering concrete fortress whose facade is completely covered with colored fluorescent panel lighting. I can understand the need for concrete for security, but why turn your structure into a gleaming nightmare straight out of downtown Bangkok? Couldn't they use a little teak somewhere?

A beautiful restaurant right next door provides an excellent contrast. Would you rather see more of this? :

Laan Taung Restaurant: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Laan Taung Restaurant
Click here if image does not load automatically.

Or more of this? :

Bangkok Bank: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Bangkok Bank
Click here if image does not load automatically.

Pretty obvious choice; why couldn't the banks get it right?

Krung Sri Bank (aka Bank of Ayudhaya) built a lifeless, modern concrete structure for their bank, with 4-meter-wide gleaming yellow fluorescent panels covering every single inch of the bank's facade. In a token gesture to nature, really more of a taunt, they plastered over the large concrete pillars in front of their bank with a bark-like texture and painted them brown:

Krung Sri Bank&mdash;Ugly: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Krung Sri Bank—Ugly
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Why?

2007 Update: In late 2007, we got yet another bank on a major corner, knocking down one of the last Shan-style teak houses to build what has got to be one of the ugliest banks in all of Thailand. It is On Sin, and it is a giant pink plastic monstrosity so hideous that it defies photography.

7-11

Nearly every town in Thailand, down to the smallest rural outpost, has a 7-11. But, until very recently, not Pai. Instead, you will find the "9-7 minimart" (across from #30 on the map above), a private knockoff complete with a slightly altered non-fluorescent copy of 7-11's logo and decor, but with more "laid back" hours that are much more appropriate for Pai. The 9-7's products and their selection is better than 7-11's, and the owner lady also bakes amazing breads. The shop is actually run by 4-5 beautiful pedigree Siamese cats who strut up and down the aisles, eventually roosting on their throne next to the cash register. All in all, it is a pleasant experience to shop there.

Contrast this with the 7-11 that Pai got in August of 2004. A blindingly bright, plastic cookie-cutter 7-11 that's just like every other 7-11 in the country. They showed no attempt to blend in with the wooden look of Pai's main street. In fact, they even went out of their way to remove the wooden look, covering up an entire floor of beautiful old teak in the building they occupied with hideous green corrugated plastic:

Ugly 7-11: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Ugly 7-11
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Ugly 7-11 Facade: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Ugly 7-11 Facade
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To most of the foreigners who live in Pai, along with many Thais, the site of the 7-11 is both disheartening and depressing: it foretells of a coming "watering down" of Pai where Pai will lose all its uniqueness and become yet another butt-ugly Thai town with all concrete shop-apartments:

I would highly recommend that you not spend money in the Pai 7-11 and instead shop in the highly superior, locally owned Aoy bakery just down the street (near #3 on the map above), the 9-7 (across from #30 on the map above), Benjamart (near the bridge by #30 on the map above), or one of the many other locally-owned minimarts all across town.

I don't think that Pai's 7-11 will ever close, but you might as well put your money somewhere where it will stay in the local economy rather than being siphoned off instantly to a giant corporate headquarters in Bangkok, and in turn a worldwide corporate headquarters in Japan.

To most of the Thais who have lived in Pai for generations, the 7-11 is a wonderful sign of "development" and "progress" and "we're a real city now." God, if there were only some way to make the locals understand what kind of utter malaise, dissatisfaction, and regret comes to a town when the chains move in and destroy local businesses! But it's so hard to express that to someone who has been saturated with flashy Bangkok-produced TV images of "modernity" their whole life.

For example, even though 7-11's products are generally inferior, less healthy, and more expensive than things you have been able to buy in other shops in Pai for decades, many Thais are drawn to 7-11 just because they are brainwashed with its chiq. A handful of particularly nasty items, such as "smok-y-bite" mini hot dogs and Western-style Icee smoothies (which are inferior to home-made Thai smoothies in every way: health, quality, taste, and variety), seem to draw hordes of Thai kids. Basically, the local people are too honest and too innocent and they have not yet developed any brain defense against the cynical, deceptive marketing strategies of a modern corporation like 7-11.

As if this wasn't enough, in December 2006, Pai got another 7-11 attached to a gas station at the edge of town. Sigh.

Morning Market

At least for the moment, Pai is free from tuk tuks, auto taxis, KFC, Burger King, Lotus/Tesco/Carrefour superstores, and Swensen's Ice Cream. However there are also rumors that the morning market in the center of town, which closed late 2004 and sold to a private owner for an outrageous sum, will become a mini Lotus Tesco. That is somewhat unlikely, but if it were to happen, it would decimate all of the minimarts and also some of the prepared-food stalls in town. Hundreds of people who are directly responsible for Pai having the eclectic character it does would lose their jobs and livelihoods instantly, and probably be forced to move out of town.

In 2006, they put up signs saying they were going to convert the former morning market space into a huge 2-story strip mall with condominiums in the back, complete with floor plans and a little cardboard mockup with little plastic trees. There were persistent rumors that Starbucks or McDonald's had rented the marquis slot in front. Fortunately, it appears that they failed to find enough takers and the space has again been boarded up with no indication as to its future.

Top Charoen

Around November of 2005, the Thai optical mega-chain Top Charoen opened a franchise in Pai, right on the main bank/market street. Like 7-11, they displayed their corporate arrogance and lack of consideration by following their exact corporate-cookie-cutter store design, complete with a blinding fluorescent- and halogen-lit display, a huge, ugly lighted fluorescent sign, and not even one square inch of natural wood or, for that matter, any plant matter.

Top Charoen&mdash;Enough Already: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Top Charoen—Enough Already
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As we watched the store being built, we noticed that every surface, every curve, and every corner of its modern look is just a veneer—painted micro-thin plywood sheets stapled to a rickety frame. The shop sticks out like some fat, hairy-bellied porpoise of a man who's just tried to run up on stage and join a kickline of beautiful lady dancers, flinging his flabby limbs about in an attempt to freeload off of their well-deserved fame, but in the process making the whole production into something crass, commercial, and valueless.

As my friends and I often drink goat milk chai across the street from Top Charoen in the afternoon, we are happy and able to report that the shop receives almost no business whatsoever. All the sunglasses and eyeglasses on display in the blaringly bright window cost 2000-5000 baht, which is an outrageous price for the locals who, unlike their bigger-city compatriots, have not yet all been brainwashed into thinking they need to sell their eldest sons in order to purchase fashionable eyewear. Every day, the lonely, unlucky employee stands at the crystal-clear glass door, longing for hours in his sparkling white dress shirt and corporate-logo-matching electric blue tie that someone—anyone—will drop by to look.

The thing is, I imagine Top Charoen knows their Pai franchise will lose money for years, but that they will be the first to profit when Pai has finally "developed" into the sort of high-priced, fake movie-set, checklist-item rich-tourist destination that they are hoping it will become. For now, if you need eyeglasses or sunglasses, I recommend the older optical shop near Wat Luang instead. At least there's a possibility that some of your money might go to Pai (or even Northern Thai) people instead of a Bangkok mega-chain. July 2006 Update: still no customers. January 2007 Update: still no customers. January 2008 Update: still no customers. February 2009 Update: still no customers.

Market Saturation? What's Market Saturation?

In January 2005, a group of local expats and Thais did a very thorough survey of businesses in Pai and found an astonishing 77 guesthouses and 41 restaurants. This survey included only the businesses which happened to be open on the day our surveyor visited, so the actual number was even more than that.

As I write this in June 2007, it is plainly obvious that there are now even more guesthouses and restaurants than there were back in 2005. The businesses have spread out of downtown Pai like some kind of fungus, eating up beautiful rice fields and beautiful old teak Shan-style houses and leaving only concrete and hideous Chinese-style shophouses in their path.

From talking to many guesthouse owners, it is clear that most of these places do not fill up, even in the high season, so one has to wonder whether or not the owners understand the concept of market saturation. Some businesses here are owned by bored, rich Thais who don't actually seem to need (or particularly want?) customers, but the net effect is to dilute the market for all businesses and I wonder how anybody can make a profit.

The New Town

Somebody clearly wants to "develop" Pai pretty badly. Next to town they have bulldozed a huge area, about half the size of the current town, and as of 2005 they were selling it off as commercial/residential space at real estate prices about double those of 2004, billing it as the "new town." It will be interesting to find out who owns the land now and ends up profiting big by this "development."

As of 2006, they have begin paving a complete series of roads and intersections in this area, even though there are only 1 or 2 businesses who have built on it!

As of June 2007, there are a few more businesses, and even a few residences, and they are starting to erect large, extremely ugly Chinese-style concrete shophouses in another corner of the "new town."

Adding to the excitement is that nearly all the development in the "new town" is being done in an area which was completely inundated by the Pai floods of 2005. And it's not like this fact isn't obvious either: the whole area is covered with a fine sand that comes from the flood waters of the Huay Meuang Gawn stream (which is only about 20 meters away). Right across the river from all the new buildings (also about 20 meters away from the stream!) we still see the sagging remains of 5-6 concrete bungalows which were yanked off their foundation and tossed into the mud during the flood.

What kind of blinders do you have to put on to build your house, or your business, in this location?

Shiny Plastic

Pai is just taking its first steps towards becoming a standard ugly Thai city. In addition to the ugly, blinding plastic ATMs and banks mentioned above, another business in July 2004 installed an ugly "Money Exchange" sign straight out of Khao San road in Bangkok, and the muslims recently knocked down a nice wood building and put up a row of ugly concrete shops with plastic signs. It's sad that the locals (or at least the Bangkok Thais who own businesses in Pai!) do not realize or care that they are taking away the one unique thing that Pai has which attracts so many tourists. Many Thais see the concrete as a sign of progress, but the net effect will be fewer tourists for sure: why go to Pai when you can get the same experience in ugly "resort" towns just outside of Chiang Mai?

Small positive update: around August 2005, the business with the butt-ugly, lighted money exchange sign replaced it with a nice teak sign.

Pai Airport

Perhaps the clearest indicator of the true massiveness of the Pai metropolis was Pai Airport, right on the edge of town (just past #33 on the map above):

Pai Airport in 2004: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai Airport in 2004
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Here's a November 2003 aerial shot of the same space-age facility, stolen from the Thai Flying Club:

Pai Airport in 2003: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai Airport in 2003
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In February 2005, everything started to change. Bulldozers came and widened, lengthened, and paved the runway. By July 2006, the whole facility was surrounded in a barbed wire fence (presumably to keep out the grazing cows):

Pai Airport in 2007: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai Airport in 2007
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Pai Airport in 2007: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai Airport in 2007
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Rumors circulated ever more widely and wildly that Pai was just about to be invaded by a swarm of new airplanes from Chiang Mai, and perhaps even Bangkok. However, for a full year, we saw no regular airplanes. I knew only a few people who had ever seen an airplane anywhere on the runway, though every few weeks I could hear a small plane land or take off. For sure, every day, you could see farangs on the runway practicing riding their newly rented motorbikes, speed-crazed local teenagers drag racing, and fitness-crazed locals going for their daily jog. All this despite the oddly-scribbled Thai-language sign on the gate, which reads "outsiders please refrain from coming in to exercise."

Now, that has all changed.

The small Thai carrier Siam General Aviation (SGA) now offers daily, 1500 B one way, 14-seater, 20 minute flights from Chiang Mai to Pai and back again. Originally scheduled to start on 15 January 2007, as seen in this Pai Post article, the flights did not really begin until 1 Feb 2007 when there was one flight a day. Before December 2007, they went to two (weekday) or three (weekend) daily flights, so airplanes someetimes buzzed over my house four to six times a day. For the 2007-8 high season, they introduced a schedule with up to five flights per day on weekends. Insanity!

The airport counter in Pai (and Chiang Mai) suggests that tickets are also available through Nok Airlines:

Pai Airport in 2007: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai Airport in 2007
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I personally believe that the debut of regular flights will have a chilling and irrevocable effect that will transform the face of Pai more rapidly than we have ever seen, as I explain below. For all our sakes, I hope I am wrong.

Interestingly, during the long wait for actual airplane service, Belle Villa, the posh "have to have been there" place that markets so heavily to Bangkok Thais to come live in mediocre wooden houses way outside of town for 4000 B/night ($100/night—outrageous) has now built another site called Bulunburi—right at the end of the runway. Brilliant.

Music and Nightlife

When I first arrived in Pai in 2003, two farang women, who make a living playing guitar and fiddle at bars 3 nights a week in Chiang Mai, were visiting Pai. Like many guests, they decided it would be cool to put on a concert and within a few hours they had arranged to play at their guesthouse! They posted some signs around town, built a little stage with a bamboo raft, the guesthouse owner sold food and beer, and lots of people showed up. I think they split the proceeds with the owner. Another guy visiting from Chiang Mai is an expert at the Djembe, a kind of bongo-ish drum. He brought 10 drums with him which he had made himself, and after blowing people away with his performance (he played along with the two women at the guesthouse), he offered drum lessons and also sold his drums.

These mostly unplanned performances layer on top of a set of more regular performances by artists who live in Pai, such as the Moon Village folks mentioned below or the amazing guitarist at Edible Jazz who played in 2003.

The requisite loud scene in town is the Bebop Cafe, where long-haired Thai musicians belt out blues, and other folks play rock and jazz, till the early hours. I don't go there too much :)

There's lots of bars to suit the typical binging backpacker traveller, offering everything from beer to hill tribe herbal whisky to a couple hits on a hookah.

Moon Village

On one night in 2003, there happened to be a lot of Japanese in town, and so a local cafe owner put on a whole show of Japanese music. I think he maybe distributed 20 flyers but about 70 people showed up. A jolly Japanese woman played simple but engaging traditional music on a 3-string banjo-like instrument. A group of Japanese hippies (something I never considered was even possible: their dreads, if unwound, would probably reach their thighs. I wonder if they would even be allowed back in their home country :) played a variety of music on the flute, mandolin, and this strange twangy soundboard thing called a kalimba (or karimba?). The players used their limited English to shamelessly plug their homemade CDs and make bad jokes. If their English was good it would have been crass, but instead it was charming and kept the audience engaged. One musician, a charismatic 3-year resident of Pai named Toron,

Toron (Source: Holly Mann): If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Toron (Source: Holly Mann)
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explained that on his way back to Japan from a 10 year stay at a famous hippie utopia in India, he stopped off in Pai, and 3 years later, hasn't managed to leave. Young girls, the daughters of several of the musicians who've obviously spent their whole life "on the road," sat at the foot of the stage and watched their parents play. Some of the music was more like new age or "tribal" stuff, some was traditional. Later they started mixing in other farang musicians playing western flutes, and even a guy on didgeridoo (which, it seems, is a required instrument in Pai).

Toron created a place just outside town called Moon Village, a set of beautiful structures in the middle of a rice field where you can find an ever-changing cast of mostly Japanese artists, musicians, and other eccentric types. They built a huge hexagonal central hut:

Moon Village central hut: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Moon Village central hut
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And this stove and oven which they use every day:

Moon Village ovens: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Moon Village ovens
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It's always interesting talking to Toron because although his English is almost nonexistent, he has such a strong and positive spirit and complete patience for communication that he always eventually gets his point across (or some other point that's just as good!).

Toron previously helped organized many festivals in Japan. In mid-2004 he told me of his idea to hold a 7-week-long art/music festival in Pai on 07/07/2007. I find it amusing that anyone would try to organize anything in Pai 3 years in the future, but Toron has such an ability to inspire people that he might just pull it off. I took his flier and created a website for him, which you can find at:

(archive of soul-love-fusion.com)
[2008 note: the festival long over, the site has now expired, and is archived locally for historical purposes!]

Check it out. And no, I have no idea what any of it means, not even the English. I just copied his flier. But after working with computer musicians and other computer artists in previous jobs/classes, and after a few years of attending Burning Man and checking out the people who go there, I have come to notice that this sort of odd non sequitur sometimes actually does bring together some very interesting folks who make music and art that even I can enjoy!

In 2008, Moon Village moved to a location further outside of town, along a dirt road that heads right off the main road between Vieng Neuea village and Tan Jet Ton village; the same road as Wat Praphuttabat but several kilometers further. The new location is beautiful and natural with water on all sides and very high potential for successful crops.

Follow the Bird (Bird's Eye View)

One of the coolest places in Pai does not appear on any tourist map. It's a little cafe hidden at the end of a dirt trail on a hill below Mae Yen temple overlooking Pai. It's just a simple, clumsy wooden and bamboo structure with hammocks and low tables, and it's also the house of the a Thai man and some farang ladies who run the place. Up until about 2006 they served a wide variety of teas and beers and also made crepes in the high season. As of 2006-7 it seemed to be a guesthouse rather than a restaurant, but anyway things are always changing there!

Follow the Bird panorama: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Follow the Bird panorama
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Follow the bird is the place to go to catch the sunset, especially on the night after a rainstorm:

Sunset at Follow the Bird: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Sunset at Follow the Bird
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In general it is a great place to relax and remind yourself that whatever is stressing you out can wait till tomorrow!

Sunset and Dream Catcher: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Sunset and Dream Catcher
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Mae Yen Temple

There are several small temples in the Pai area. This one is located high up on the hill above Follow the Bird:

Mae Yen Temple: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Mae Yen Temple
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Mae Yen Temple: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Mae Yen Temple
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My House in Vieng Neuea Village

Search for Quiet

I arrived in Pai on December 21st, 2003 and lived in Pai in the Sky guesthouse while I conducted a seemingly endless search for a long-term rental house. I was looking for a place which is quiet and which also has a phone line so I can connect to the internet. It was fairly hard finding a place with a phone line, but surprisingly it was the "quiet" criterion that really drew out the search.

It turns out that the Thais here have a completely, totally different etiquette about what constitutes being a "good neighbor." And it's not just me: this is the unanimous experience which shocks every farang who has sought housing here in Pai, no matter what country they come from. It works like this: If you wake up at 5am, there is absolutely no problem yelling with your housemates at full volume through your paper-thin bamboo walls, playing your stereo, going outside and vomiting or coughing up a lung, anything. Your neighbors will not yell at you. Your neighbors will not even bat an eye or show any sign of anger, if indeed they notice you at all. The Thais here either have the ability to block out any unwanted sound, including horrible broken stereo speakers blaring distorted, unintelligible noise at airplane-engine volume, or they have absolutely no custom that homeowners need to keep quiet in consideration of their neighbors. Either way, it is an aggravating experience for the farang who is used to having at least some leverage with their neighbors as concerns noise.

You would think that in the quiet Pai countryside, everything would be spread out and it wouldn't matter. Not so. The Thais here are sociable types and are afraid of being alone. They would never build a house that is far from family members or other people (some local Thais are actually afraid of such houses, saying they contain bad ghosts or spirits). Therefore it is almost impossible to find any place to live that doesn't have at least two Thai neighbors (the flood plain on which the first incarnation of the Yawning Field was built being a notable exception), and your neighbors always include at least one family member who has convinced the family to buy a stereo and/or karaoke system. In fact, when a family is rich enough to afford such noisemakers, it is a point of pride for them to play them as loud as possible (always, and I mean always turned up to distorted volume levels so that the music itself sounds horrible and the act is purely a show of ego, volume, and power) for the entire village to hear. The other villagers simply look on in wonder, never even considering the possibility that this might be classified as rude and inconsiderate.

To add to this, every village around Pai has an aging system of tree-mounted loudspeakers that look like something out of M*A*S*H. Since many local people cannot or do not want to buy radios or newspapers, this is the way they broadcast the local news. Most mornings around 7am, and most evenings around 6pm, the local village headman plays a little music and then talks to the village for a while, sometimes up to an hour. Because the speakers are so awful, I can't understand a word of it, and I think the locals have a hard time too, but it seems much of the chatter is about the harvest, how the water supply will be divided amongst fields, upcoming festivals, elections, village committee meeting schedules, and who donated how much at the local temple (including a complete list of those who donated 5 baht). In downtown Pai, you get the same public address speakers, plus chanting coming even earlier in the morning from the mosque and several wats, plus yet another soundtrack provided to you at no charge by the local high school.

The House

Finally, on January 26th, 2004, I found this palace:

My rental house in Vieng Neuea (Source: David Giacolone): If image does not load automatically, click link below.
My rental house in Vieng Neuea (Source: David Giacolone)
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It's in a small, mostly Shan (Thai Yai) village called Vieng Neuea about 4km from the Pai city center. The house is at the end of a side street occupied by old school teachers and their ancient parents. The only sounds (other than the aforementioned public address loudspeakers) are tweeting birds, roosters (pretty much continuous throughout the day anywhere in the countryside) and, at first, the pounding sledgehammer of the workman I hired to replace my squat toilet with the sit variety!

The house is an old concrete and wood 1-story 2-bedroom 1-bathroom. The bedrooms and the large living room have creaky but comfortable wood floors. The bathroom has a hot shower via the usual electric water heater attached to the wall next to the shower. The kitchen is just a room with a bunch of tables and a gas stove. I bought some pipe and brought running water and drain into the kitchen so that I could wash my dishes without baring my body to the mosquitos outside. I also paid about $84 to have workmen build and install hinged mosquito screens over 16 of the house's many old wooden windows.

The house has free, electric-pumped well water for washing and cleaning, and a regular drive-by service operates in the village to exchange large and small bottles of drinking water. There is a yard varying between 10 and 20 feet around the house, and being completely clueless about all things garden-related, I just let it grow wild. Every once and a while, my landlords hire someone to clean out the yard so that it doesn't become a snake zoo. Here's a movie of the man they hired for 200 B ($5.26) to clean out the yard for 5 hours. The movie shows you the true value of labor in Thailand compared with the price of time-saving machines. Just call him the human weed whacker:

Human Weed WhackerClick to view 30 second movie of the human weed whacker (1.4MB).

Also, in my "garden" I apparently have bananas, mangos, mint, tomatoes, and lychees. Periodically my Thai friends show up and implore me to pick those fruits which have ripened as if it is the most important thing in their lives. It's amazing how strong the "picking instinct" is in folks here, even Bangkok Thais.

There is a small orchard of banana trees on one side of me, a disused barn on another, an old man on another, and 2 houses with Thai families and 1 farang renting a house across the street. This was a very quiet spot for a while, but unfortunately, one of my neighbors purchased stereo equipment using the money they got selling land to a Bangkok Thai, and they frequently use the stereo to ruin the surrounding neighborhood. My house does not have a view, but the street I am on leads in about 20 meters to a fish pond and a huge rice field:

Path to fields near my house in Vieng Neuea (Source: David Giacolone): If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Path to fields near my house in Vieng Neuea (Source: David Giacolone)
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and farm workers pass by on foot and motorbike continuously, looking like a row of pokemons with their full-head ski masks with holes for the eyes (wouldn't want to get tan now—then they'd look unfashionable).

For info on the rent and cost of living in Pai, see below.

2008 Update

The giant rice fields behind my house, which used to be at the edge of town, have been completely bought out by rich, arrogant condo developers from Chiang Mai who hauled in piles of teakwood to begin what became months and months of bulldozer digging and construction for a new resort. This noise, along with similar noise from a growing number of neighbors around my house, has finally been enough for me and I have moved further out into the boonies!

Interestingly, right after I moved out, the rich condo developer was hit by a gigantic military raid, involving giant army trucks and helicopters, where the soldiers swooped right past the illegal teakwood in all of my neighbor's houses and seized the illegal teakwood belonging to the condo developer. Apparently, he did something to cause a local to lose face or failed to pay the protection money that is required when an outsider wants to do construction in a new location. The owners disappeared for a little while and they are back, with new (licenesed?) wood, building their resort just like before.

If the full power of the Thai military can't stop condo developers, who can?

The House That Got Away

As a side note, here's a house I was looking at about 8km away from Pai:

House that got away: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
House that got away
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This modern house had a stunning view and was located on a 23 rai (9 acre) property with only one neighbor and open fields for hundreds of meters in every direction. It was going for 4000 B/month ($100/mo), had well water and public water, and even had a phone line!

Unfortunately, while I was looking to rent the property, some farang bought it for somewhere between 2 million ($52,600) and 5 million ($131,578) baht. This roughly matched the going price of 200,000 baht per rai ($13,300 per acre) at the time, which was up by at least 2x since the year before. Land speculation is wild right now in Pai. All the Thai families who have owned land here for decades are selling out to farangs and rich Bangkok land speculators. Guess the buyers are all counting on that airport to change everything...

Scenes in Vieng Neuea Village

Most of Vieng Neuea looks like this:

Vieng Neuea: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Vieng Neuea
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Kids, roosters, and dogs running around concrete streets. The deep gutters on the side of the road, covered in red grates, carry water from the local hills down to fields at lower elevations than the town itself. The locals, especially the kids, are always pulling up the grates and using the water for various tasks or rescuing chicks that have fallen through.

On the fence you can see two election signs. The local elections here happen in March and April and they proudly post the vote counts and tallied results (reaching two digits, and on rare occasions, three digits) on a big wooden sign in the center of town. The locals really seem to look forward to the elections. It seems like a warm, honest, down-home type of democracy where your vote really counts. The type of representative government that Americans can only dream about. Until you realize that one reason the locals are so excited is that campaigners flood to their doors with free "gifts" in exchange for their vote. It's not clear how many locals know or care about the candidates' positions on local issues. In many towns the locals looked forward to election day as a free binge at the local bar on the campaigners' tab, after which they would stumble off to the voting place to return the favor. This particular form of vote-buying became so prevalent that the Thai government decided to close all bars on all election days nationwide!

Vieng Neuea is kind of a middle to upper class place. The houses range from the simple wood types:

Simple house in Vieng Neuea: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Simple house in Vieng Neuea
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to concrete palaces like this one, owned by a big mucketymuck school teacher:

Big teacher's house in Vieng Neuea: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Big teacher's house in Vieng Neuea
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All over town you can see these garlic/onion storage sheds:

Garlic storage shed in Vieng Neuea: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Garlic storage shed in Vieng Neuea
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During the January-February harvest, before the rainy season, the local farmers hire poor (often Burmese) workers by the hundreds to pick the vegetables and tie them in bundles of 20 or so plants. The workers then bundle the bundles together in giant 15 foot overflowing pickup truck loads, and drive the loads (all the while spewing forth garlic onto unsuspecting motorbike drivers) to these sheds. The vegetables hang in the sheds, safe from the rain and the flood. Dry vegetables are worth much more in the market and the storage facilities give the locals a way to spread their profit and risk over the next several months.

Novice Monk Initiation Ceremony in Vieng Neuea

All over Thailand it is traditional for boys to become novice monks at least once during their life, for anywhere from a few weeks to a few years. April is a particularly popular time to do this because kids are just getting off school for summer vacation. In northern Thailand there are a lot of people of the Shan (Thai Yai) minority and they have a particularly beautiful ceremony. A family may spend upwards of 30,000 baht ($800) and a month of their time preparing for the huge event. Everything must go just right in order to assure good fortune for the family.

During the 4-5 days leading up to the novice's entrance into the temple, the family and a few hundred of their well-dressed, closest friends parade the novices all around town in a day-long, noisy, happy celebration with clanging gongs, drums, and firecrackers. One such parade passed right by my house:

Novice Monk Initiation: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Novice Monk Initiation
Click here if image does not load automatically.

Novice Monk Initiation: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Novice Monk Initiation
Click here if image does not load automatically.

Every opportunity is taken to stop, dance around, drink, and be merry. Onlookers on the side of the road toss jasmine flower petals at the novices and join in.

You can get a rough idea of the celebration from these short movies, especially the first one where the novices themselves are gettin' down to the groove along with their carriers and the other Thais:

Novice monks gettin' downClick to view 30 second movie of novice monks and their family gettin' down (1.5MB).

Parade passing byClick to view 30 second movie of parade passing by (1.5MB).

Walking in paradeClick to view 30 second movie of walking in parade (1.5MB).

The novices themselves are dressed up in extremely elaborate costumes with flower hats and face paint:

Novice Monk Initiation: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Novice Monk Initiation
Click here if image does not load automatically.

Novice Monk Initiation: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Novice Monk Initiation
Click here if image does not load automatically.

To the locals, the costumes make the novices look like little Kings, and indeed the novices are raised up above everyone else, on the shoulders of their fathers or close relatives, and others shade them with auspicious looking umbrellas.

It must be a truly amazing and overwhelming experience for the novice. Thais have such an intense system of social rank, titles, and deference. The kids have spent their entire lives at the very bottom of the social ladder, calling themselves "mouse" and rushing to get things for the convenience of their older siblings and parents. Now, all of a sudden, they are at the top of the world! Everyone is looking up to them and they are at the center of attention. One novice rushed up to me all excited after the final evening of the event and announced in English "I'm a monk!" It would be easy to conclude that they are the benefactors of this event. But, if you ask any of the Thais, they will say that the kids are becoming novices to honor their parents and assure good face for them now and good fortune (karma or however you like to analyze it) for the whole family in the future.

It's around 90-95 degrees during these parades and the novices are boiling hot in their costumes:

Novice Monk Initiation: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Novice Monk Initiation
Click here if image does not load automatically.

Fortunately the novices get to return to the main party house and relax in the shade and the fan for a few hours before they go back out again:

Novice Monk Initiation: Hot Monk!: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Novice Monk Initiation: Hot Monk!
Click here if image does not load automatically.

After the parades each day, there are huge, loud parties with Thai pop music, stages, lights, food vendors, and lots and lots of dancing. I saw 60-70 year old Thais dancing out in the streets until 2 or 3 in the morning, several nights in a row!

During the days of the celebrations there are various ceremonies, where the monks get their head shaven and receive their monks' robes.

At the end of the third day is the most important ceremony, because it's time to tam bun (make merit). The novices parade around one more time to the temple, but this time the procession is carrying rows and rows and rows of meticulously wrapped gifts, bowls, school supplies, utensils, and meter-wide money trees whose leaves are 20, 50, and 100 baht bills. It's like Alexander marching his phalanx of troops into new territories to intimidate his enemy, but instead of shields, swords, and catapults, they're carrying gloriously adorned donations! It seems like the longer and more elaborate the presentation, the more merit is made for the family. The family has spent the last weeks purchasing and arranging all the items into elaborate woven sheets and packages that hang from 3 meter bamboo poles, and from the side of brightly-colored 3-meter tall towers, carried on the shoulders of the paraders. Also, a few hours before the tam bun parade begins, the family brings empty money trees out in a pickup truck to every corner of the village, with loud gongs and drums announcing their presence, offering anyone in the village the opportunity to donate money (to tam bun themselves) and thus share in the merit resulting from this important ceremony. The procession circles the temple three times and then all enter to observe a ritual where the kids are initiated as novice monks. The novices then stay in the temple until they're ready to become normal humans again. The goods and cash, as far as I can tell, stay in the temple and are used for temple events and used to pay for maintenance and development of the temple.

In another Shan novice initiation I saw in a nearby village, they paraded the monks about 1km down the village's main street, and around the temple once, then one of the monks fainted from heat exhaustion (and a curse be on their family, I suppose)! They improvised by bringing the monks into the temple until the heat subsided then parading around the temple another two times at about sunset.

Bpang Dtong Karen Village

Jay, co-founder of the Yawning Fields, is a very interesting character. It seems to be some kind of soul searching that led him away from Bangkok university/city life out to the countryside. He built the Yawning Fields in search of a sustainable lifestyle that was quiet. After a year or so, he decided that not even Pai was quiet enough for him, so he found Mink to take care of the guesthouse and searched the countryside for the place he 'really' wants to be. He eventually found the tiny Karen hill tribe of Bpang Dtong, and he has now more or less adopted the village. The place has no electricity except for battery-powered flashlights and a few appliances which charge by government-provided solar panels during the day. He stays there as much as he can, up to 6 days a week. They've even built a hut for him, just the way he wants—a much, much more primitive hut than the other villagers have, right at the edge of the village where it is most quiet. He teaches English to the villagers and is currently trying to improve their low economic level by introducing tourism there. He has no wife or girlfriend but is a father figure for the village's 30 small children, who run to him when he pulls into town. Usually some of the kids stay with "Pii Jay" in his hut at night.

He's clearly concerned about the effect foreigners and their money could have on the village's customs, but shows it in a strange an uneven way. He takes groups of foreigners to stay at the village and does not charge the foreigners. Instead, he has the foreigners purchase and bring certain foods that are useful to the village. But in 2003 he brought trinkets from the Chiang Mai tourist night bazaar to the village, telling the villagers (who currently do not make any clothes, bags, spoons, or other trinkets) that if they can figure out how to make those goods, they can sell them to the foreigners! In 2004 he abandoned this route and instead did all the work to package up and market something the village has made for a long time—natural, chemical-free, organic whole-grain rice. He printed 10,000 nice bags extolling the natural virtues and secured transport of the goods to markets in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, selling it for many times the price of regular rice. His goal is still to find a way to make the village self-sufficient and we wish him luck in this economic venture.

Jay seems to keep the kids happy by always bringing along some modern lure for them. If he's going to teach, he brings along a sweet green soymilk concentrate, and before each lesson the villagers cook up the dessert in a giant vat and distribute it to the kids, one bamboo cup at a time. After the kids' lesson, they generally get to watch a movie, which Jay plays from his portable VCD player on the village's battery-powered TV set. When I was there Jay had chosen Blade 2, which has got to be one of the most disgusting, senselessly violent kung-fu snap-their-necks-2-at-a-time cut-open-see-the-moving-guts gratuitous-vampire movie Hollywood ever made. Why he chooses films like this is beyond me; the kids of this village had likely never seen a movie, let alone a movie that makes Americans question the integrity of their own culture. With their eyes glued to the tube for 2 hours of horrors, the kids didn't quite know what to think, so they mostly laughed. Many of them were scared to even walk home that night and they had nightmares. When I first arrived I saw that all the boys, when they played outside, played at shooting kung fu fighting with each other. Another villager told me they never did this before Jay arrived and played shoot 'em up movies for the kids. I suggested to Jay that maybe this was doing more cultural damage than any number of farang visitors could ever do; he just said that he was careful to tell the kids that it was "just a movie; not real." I don't know, maybe a boy growing up in a Thai hill tribe regularly experiences things so horrible compared to my sheltered suburban upbringing that a few extra Hollywood trash movies can't hurt.

Jay often has the foreigners teach English too, either to the kids or the adults. When I showed up, since I could speak some Thai, he had me teach a very enthusiastic group of 6 or 7 adults. They all carried notebooks in which they diligently wrote every phrase and pronunciation they had learned, including some good ones from previous foreigners such as "I have a big hangover." Since I could write some Thai, Jay had me write sentences in English and in English with Thai letters for pronunciation, and attempt to give them explanations in Thai. I asked Jay what would be the most useful subject to teach, and not surprisingly we ended up doing "Would you like to go trekking?", "Would you like to visit a hill tribe?", "Would you like to visit a waterfall?", etc. It turns out that, after Jay's description of the outside world, these adult villagers were very excited about learning how to be trekking guides!

When I first met Jay at the Yawning Fields, he told me I could visit Bpang Dtong on motorbike in 40 minutes, so I included it in my "day trip" one day to the hot springs and canyon. I drove down the road on his map about 40 minutes, then 1 hour, then 2 hours, as it became clear to me that the entire "road" was going to be a steep up and down, narrow, treacherous dirt switchback which forded rivers and rickety bamboo bridges. I think maybe Jay chose this village because it will be the last one to see modernity; it is literally the last thing on the road and it is far from any public infrastructure. 3 hours after leaving, shaking and amazed I was still alive, I pulled into Bpang Dtong on my 100cc automatic bike and there was no way in hell I was going to try to get back the same day. So I ended up staying overnight and discovering all the stuff above. I couldn't help but wonder if Jay had understated the trip difficulty on purpose, but at any rate I came to peace with it after I had a chance to shower, cool off and calm down. It turns out that Jay, and (as usual) the 10-20 year old kids of the village actually can bike to and from Pai in 40 minutes, but if you're like me and have some sense of mortality, that is simply not possible.

This village was full of odd surprises. In addition to its modest Buddhist wat, it has a little Christian church too. Some of the villagers had been converted a while back, but everyone I asked clearly didn't want to talk about it. When I helped Jay return the TV to the school storeroom, I discovered that Bpang Dtong's tiny, mostly open-air school has a huge language lab, complete with 16 stations, speaker/microphone headsets, and all the gear! But there are no teachers (left?) who know how to operate it. Bpang Dtong also has two computers, but again nobody who knows how to use them. Jay told me this in such a matter-of-fact way; he seems to be unaware of, or indifferent to, the tragic waste of resources going on here. Perhaps, I guessed, the missionaries came to Bpang Dtong with generous gifts, but then got kicked out? The truth is likely to be even more scandalous, intertwined, and interesting :)

Living in Pai

How Much Does It Cost?

If any of you were wondering how much it costs to live in the Thai countryside (prices and exchange rate as of October 2005: 2008 update below),

  Baht       Dollars        Item
  Per Month  Per Month

  2500 B      $ 62.50       Rent 2br+1bath+kitchen+living room house+well water
  400 B       $ 10.00       A lot of electricity
  600 B       $ 15.00       unlimited ADSL service
  400 B       $ 10.00       lots of mobile phone calls
  400 B       $ 10.00       Maid to clean house weekly
  200 B       $  5.00       Service to wash/dry/iron clothes every 2 days
  100 B       $  2.50       Lots of bottled drinking water
  50 B        $  1.25       Lots of gas for stove

  4650 B      $126.25       Total
Plus about $400-$500 one-time purchase of stuff needed to stock the kitchen, big blankets for the bed, etc., most of which I should be able to sell at perhaps half off when/if I don't want it anymore.

Transportation costs:

  Baht       Dollars        Item
  Per Month  Per Month

  2500 B      $62.50        Honda Dream 125cc clutchless motorbike rental
  350 B       $ 8.75        Motorbike fuel

  2850 B      $71.25        Total
The most expensive way to eat is to drive to town and eat at restaurants every day. That costs about 100 B/day ($2.50) or $75/mo.

Or you can buy enough rice for weeks for 170 B, and buy fresh-picked vegetables and other cooking ingredients at the market for totals that rarely exceed 40 B/day ($1.00/day), not including any farang staples like milk at Aoy Bakery.

My mix of restaurant and home-cooked food costs about $50.00/month.

As a farang I have to pay approximately 1000 B ($25.00) per month to renew my visa, and on certain of these occasions I will have to travel to a border with Burma, Cambodia, or Malaysia.

So for me that's about $292.50 a month in total ongoing expenses, plus mad money, money for fun trips around, and the occasional purchase of new housewares or computer supplies. Pretty good compared to the tiny shack I was renting out of someone's garage in the San Francisco area for $1000.00/mo (not to mention any other expenses)!

Almost everything I need I can buy in Pai somewhere. The 3 hour bus ride to the nearest big city, Chiang Mai, where they have every conceivable thing I might need to buy including computer hardware/software and farang-sized clothing, costs 68 B ($1.70).

January 2008 Update

Well, thanks to Mr. Bush, you can multiply all the dollar figures above by 1.3 since the Baht has appreciated from 40 to 33 per dollar, and will likely continue to do so.

Also, during this time, the rental market prices in my village have shot up about double even though the houses are the same. Prices of food supplies (Thai and farang) have also incresed about 150% in the last few years. I'm not sure exactly what has caused this overall cost of living increase, but nobody will deny it has occurred!

Town of Stories

Short-term travellers arrive in Pai to find a beautiful town which has some eccentric but interesting folks and places. They lie in hammocks, take a trek, visit the hot springs, and occasionally catch wind of some weird stories that simply add color to the place. The travellers go home and tell their stories to distant friends, and there's no long-term effect on anyone involved in the stories.

If you live longer in Pai, people start to recognize you and include you in the scene of long-term expatriate foreigners living in the town. The short-term and long-term groups are kind of separate for many reasons, not the least of which is that it gets tiring to explain, many times a day, how it is you came to live in Pai and how you can live here for so long without running out of money, to people who will only be around for a few days. You will probably wean yourself from guesthouses and rent a house quickly for the same reason.

There are perhaps a few hundred farang living in the area long-term at any given time, and everyone knows or has heard of almost everyone else. As in Thai society itself, there is almost no concept of "personal matters:" no matter what you do, the community will know! This closeness actually scares some potential expat residents back to the relative anonymity of Chiang Mai or another big city.

As you start to hang out with the slowly changing community of expats and local Thais, amazing stories begin to reveal themselves slowly like a jigsaw puzzle, one piece at a time and each piece from a different person. You hear there was a monk from this temple who slept with that woman. Then you hear that she was a prostitute before. Someone else tells you that her boss who runs such and such guesthouse used to pay the police until one day he had a knockdown drag-out fight with that other guy, who, by the way, according to someone's friend, lied about all a bunch of things he said in public the other time and stole money. It is very intoxicating. As you gaze in wonderment at the deep, twisted circumstances slowly revealing themselves, the allure of "getting a story" and passing on more rumors is irresistible. You feel you're being granted access to the "real Pai" and you determine to get to the bottom of it.

Eventually you find out, often too late, that most of the sensational stories and factoids turn out to be wrong, or at least adorned or "improved" by the unstoppable telephone-game of the rumor mill and the difficulties of translating whispers back and forth between English, Thai, Shan, Akha, Lisu, Lahu, German, and French. You may find that someone—perhaps yourself—has been affected by rumors that are untrue. Perhaps that person's business lost customers and they had to close down. Perhaps people simply ostracize him or her. One guy here even received some bad, false news about his fiancee from the rumor mill on the day before his wedding! So it is that you reach a third stage, where your awe over "the story" gets replaced by skepticism and where you learn to confirm any rumors that may affect you right at the source.

Groovies

In Pai, there's a quite visible presence of what is often categorized by "mainstream Americans" as "hippie culture:" yoga, reiki, cleansings (that means fasting plus enemas, by the way!), tarot cards, shiatsu, acupuncture, etc. Perhaps half of the expat residents here, and many of the local Thais, practice one or more of these techniques. Some expats and local Thais make a living "healing" others with these techniques, telling people's fortunes, or offering elaborate multi-day classes. I'd say maybe 1 out of every 20 shops in downtown Pai falls into this category. Pai is a place where folks are tolerant and respectful of others' beliefs, even if they don't believe themselves. People will say "I don't really understand/believe it myself but I've met a few people that say Reiki has helped them." Not once did I hear any long-term resident say "That's a pile of hippie crap" or "He's just cashing in on this new-age tot" in private or in public. Furthermore, most of the people who run the shops or otherwise practice the techniques do not solicit or preach them at all. In many cases you will be surprised to find that the gruff guy drinking at a local bar with the teenage motorbikers is also a yoga teacher or tattoo artist!

However, some aspects of the Pai environment freak out some long-term visitors. There are so many people here who believe in these techniques and speak of them glowingly that you may come to feel you are amidst a clique of "groovies" (to steal a term from my friend back in the US). It is human nature to want to feel included in a community, and here there is a community of people who practice spiritual healing techniques, like to talk about fixing the environment, sustainable agriculture, etc., more or less free from intellectual counter-attacks or criticism by the "mainstream" folks with whom many of them grew up at home.

You might mention some lingering worry or ache you have and suddenly hear your otherwise down-to-earth friend say "Oh yes, I can feel the energy caught up at your purple chakra; some reiki therapy and an herbal compress will definitely get you balanced again," or "You've taken the first step to realizing the frailty of our human existence, which after all is just suffering. This is something the ancients have known since the beginning. As so-and-so said in the diamond sutra,...." You look around the room and nobody is smirking or questioning this odd statement at all. In fact, people are trying to be positive and supportive. You almost wish that someone in the room would acknowledge that this is the sort of statement you don't hear every day in the West. You might be turned off by the definitive tone of the statement, as if it's obvious that the philosophy behind it is true and effective. You may feel as if the philosophy is not open for debate or skepticism, or that by criticizing (and in particular by questioning the effectiveness of the associated "healing" techniques) you are somehow breaking an unwritten social law of the clique.

It doesn't help when you notice that many people sing, dance, or quote Indian philosophy who have never been to India. Or sing the praises of alternative cooking, farming, or house-building techniques they have only read about in books. Or that whenever there is a vipassana Buddhist meditation event or some similar event dealing with Asian culture or philosophy, very few Thais ever show up! You begin to get a sinking feeling in your stomach that something here isn't adding up, but nobody's willing to talk about it. It might be the same sort of feeling Dennis Hopper's character gets in Easy Rider when he visits the dreamy, seemingly utopian hippie commune in the Utah desert, but then realizes that the dream is fractured when he hears that more than half of the commune members ("city kids" all of them) died in the previous winter because they didn't really know the details of how to live off the land! With such an unease you begin to wonder whether the "healing" techniques even work for the groovies. Perhaps it is some sort of sham for money. Or perhaps the groovies have managed to convince each other that they're healing and making progress even though an outsider can see that there is none. Or, perhaps the groovies, outcasts in their home lives, have finally found a place where they belong and it gives them some small pleasure to make it clear that you are not part of the group.

These sorts of feelings and fears grow easily in someone who has begun to feel uncomfortable with the environment in Pai. It becomes very easy to group together everyone in the groovy category and begin to see patterns. Some people are drawn away from Pai, or avoid moving here, for this reason.

Personally it doesn't bother me. I don't mind going to a music event listening to a song full of hearsay mysticism as long as the music is beautiful or the musicians are fun, and that is most often the case here in Pai. Last week, I listened to a few hours of sitar and drum music overlaid with tribal chanting of the names of Ganesh, Shiva, and Brahma, but then the musicians weaved in the lyrics to "Happy Birthday" as a joke for their friend! One musician also used a Navajo flute he had ordered from the US and it sounded quite beautiful. The folks who live in Pai defy simple categorization as "groovies" because each of them has their own level of down-to-earthness, their own way of talking about their spiritual beliefs, and their own degree to which they take themselves seriously and are willing to laugh at themselves or discuss the weaknesses of their beliefs.

Pai Drugs

Pai is quite close to the Burmese border (Pai is the green star):

Pai in Thailand: If image does not load automatically, click link below.
Pai in Thailand
Click here if image does not load automatically.

and that means it is close to the drug lords of Burma (Myanmar) and endless opium poppy fields just across the border.

As near any border in Thailand, there are lots of immigration checkpoints where police and/or soldiers stop cars and the bus along the road, inspect cargo, and ask everyone "Burmese-looking" for their Thai identity card. Occasionally we see the number of soldiers at the nearby army base increase, and perhaps also flocks of helicopters overhead, and then we hear of another big drug smuggler arrested in Mae Hong Son province. So far this all goes on without seeming to affect tourism in any way.

Pai also used to be a drug user's mecca of northern Thailand. As recently as early 2003, it used to be normal to find bongs, hash, and other substances just lying on the tables of some of the guesthouses. However, in 2003 the Prime Minister announced his "War on Drugs," which turned out to be a much different affair than the American campaign. The Thai government published a blacklist of suspected drug criminals and made it a point (possibly even involving quotas and/or bonuses) for police throughout the country to track down and "apprehend" these men. When, after a year or so, it was found that large numbers of the blacklisted individuals had "disappeared" or met with sudden unexpected "accidents," there was an uproar from human rights groups around the world and vehement denials by the government. The campaign included numerous, frequent sweeps of guesthouses and bars in Pai where many Thais and farangs were arrested and jailed. The net effect of the frequent inspections and the looming threat of extrajudicial killing (whether it's real or not) is that the campaign has been almost 100% effective. As of March 2003, every single guesthouse in town had a large "No Drugs" sign and many proprietors make it a point to lecture each new guest. One sign at a restaurant reads "No Drugs: We go to jail together." People can still find ganja and other drugs but they have to search and confine themselves to shadows.

Between 2003-2008, the Pai Police continued to ratchet up their draconian and completely unnecessary fear tactics towards foreign visitors and locals alike, as we explain above.

Pai Gangs

One night in 2004, I saw a very ugly underside part of peaceful Pai that I'd never seen before. Apparently the neighboring town (a Kuo Min Dong Chinese village which usually keeps to itself) is full of extremely rich, bored teenagers, and sometimes they speed around the district on their expensive motorbikes, totally drunk and/or wired on yabba (concentrated, addictive methamphetamine pills), and engage in gang warfare in the streets of Pai. A rival gang apparently comes from my own village of Vieng Neuea. At about 10pm we saw 9 teenagers come and try to beat the crap out of 2 other teenagers right in the main late-night food market area with 6-7 shops still open and their owners staring incredulously. The teenagers were so wired that nearly every swing they took was a total miss; all they were interested in was a gorilla-like show of pure male ego, complete with invective in Thai and English. The bullies and the picked-on kids spent most of their time strutting about like cocks and walking around their opponent, afraid to actually engage. They also toppled each other's motorbikes, and in a show of complete stupidity, tried to damage each other's motorbikes by kicking them with their leather shoes or ramming them with the tire from their motorbike.

It was an amazing demonstration of pure tragic youth aggression, probably enhanced by stimulant drugs. Many folks believe that these teenagers are rich because they are the ones who sell ganja to the farangs in Pai (peace and love forever man!) and probably (perhaps more significantly) because they sell harder stuff to other buyers.

Another theory is that the little brats are actually a bit older than teenagers, and have recently returned to their home town of Pai from colleges and universities where their somewhat rich parents proudly sent them. Without a strong financial need to work, they get bored and become gangsters rather than getting a job or starting businesses.

These miscreants have started showing up at the late-night hours of temple festivals and concerts all over the valley, where they can often be seen throwing bottles at each other and generally ruining the atmosphere. At a major yearly Pai festival in 2005, the police department drove their paddy wagon (jail car) into a very conspicuous, central location and labeled it with a huge Thai-language sign saying "gangster hotel."

Most of the long-term merchants told me they'd never seen anything like this, but I could tell they had because they were totally uninterested in calling the police. One new vendor did and the police showed up 20 minutes later, after the kids had scattered, not even stopping to ask questions. The kids continued to speed around town and I saw a pair of motorbikes hurl around a corner right in front of the cops—who did not pursue.

There are lots of other rumors about these teenagers, that they've ganged up on police before or that their parents are influential in the police or government, though it's hard to tell what the deal is. I wonder what will happen as the hundreds of happy pre-teens here grow up and enter their age group...

Pai Police

Surprisingly, it turns out that the Pai police have caused more problems for both torurists and locals than all the gangs put together. For more on this unfortunate situation, see this section.

The Future of Pai

I believe Pai will undergo massive and rapid change (even more than now!) as soon as there is some easy way to get here.

There is a newer, slightly less curvy road under construction from Chiang Mai through Samoeng and Wat Chan that may be able to carry real aircon buses, but that is not yet finished.

More ominous is the airport. It was paved, striped, and fenced as of 11 October 2005, and as of 1 February 2007, regular flights have begun. As of December 2007, service has expanded from one to two (weekday) or three (weekend) flights per day.

I believe that regular airplane flights will transform Pai in the most significant and irrevocable way it has seen since the road to Pai was paved. Remember, the airplane changes a harrowing, vomit-inducing 3-4 hour bus ride from Chiang Mai into a 20-minute blink of an eye with beautiful views. It brings Pai within only 90 minutes of Bangkok. That's less time than it takes to board the tour bus from Bangkok to the floating market or the Bridge over the River Kwai.

Suddenly, guesthouse owners will see that there is a whole new type of tourist who is willing to pay 4000 B or more per night, rather than the 80-250 B a backpacker will pay. Even better, this type of tourist loves to advance-book overpriced package tours from Bangkok or their home country, including lodging, food, air transport, and tours, increasing the profit to embarrassing levels. To this kind of tourist, the 1500 B airplane fare is insignificant. The "just two flights a day" we started with in late January 2007 will continue to swell past its current level into a deafening roar of "dream vacation hopper flights" from multiple carriers.

Guesthouse owners will be motivated to tear down their 40 natural-looking wood or bamboo huts to build 4 concrete, air-conditioned, view-blocking monstrosities and expect to make twice as much money. Restaurants will go upscale, and probably further and further away from local Thai cuisine, until the final death knell sounds with the arrival of baby arugula.

And lots and lots of businesses will do this. If there's one thing I've learned living full-time in Thailand for 3 years, it's that once a single Thai business succeeds at anything, all local business owners will swarm in and ferociously copy that idea, even it means hopelessly saturating the market so that none of them succeeds.

This probable outcome is sad for several reasons. First, the new aircon resort construction will further erode the beauty of Pai valley. Second, everything will become more expensive to the point that nearly all locals, including not only the thousands of Burmese immigrant workers who farm all our food and build all our buildings, but also many Thai families who have lived here for generations, will be forced to move further and further away from downtown Pai. Third, at the end of the process, all we will have will be a lot of empty hotel rooms and bankrupt Thais (it's great for the hardware store, though). Fourth, and perhaps worst of all for me, is the kind of tourist who tends to book those package tours...

In my experience of travelling Thailand for 7 years, I can say that high-end package tourists tend to be the most un-inspring and un-creative people on the planet. They do not play music, write, sing, or create anything and they share nothing with those in the places they visit. They arrive at a place with stiff preconceptions ("Where are the long-necked people?" "What kind of costume do the Karens wear?") and their goal is to consume something that matches those preconceptions. Their crass tour operators carefully route them from one artificial, profit-optimized, completely spiceless and tasteless Khan Toke dinner-dance to another. Rarely do they ever interact with real locals who are not somehow paying or receiving a commission. These folks spend thousands of dollars to see a place and somehow manage to completely miss it.

In fact, by the sheer dumb force of their cash, these tourists often end up twisting a place to meet their preconceptions. Just look at what has happened to "hill tribe treks" to "tribal villages" out of Chiang Mai (hint: there are no long-necked people anywhere near Pai, and the Karens in the Pai area haven't worn tribal costumes for decades except in rare private ceremonies. They are real-life human beings, not zoo animals for the government and tour operators to exploit, and they have chosen to integrate into Thai society in this way).

When something unexpected happens, like a power or vehicle failure, high-end package tourists bitch and whine rather than taking this ideal opportunity to observe real local culture at its most inventive and amazing. They curl in fear away from the delicious and rare local delicacies they see at the market—one of the freshest, most sensual treats of real local culture—in favor of the Continental Breakfasts and "safe" Thai food cooked by their Bangkok-run hotel. When restaurant or hotel service is not up to the standards they're used to from the Holiday Inn, they get rude and arrogantly superior with the staff, behaving in a way they never would with anyone at home.

Hippie backpackers may smell a little funny sometimes, but for the most part they treat the locals with respect, they fearlessly explore the food, art, and adventures of actual locals, and, as it should be clear from the rest of this website, they interact with the locals in wild and creative ways to make the place even more interesting for all. Package tourists and their cash have a chilling, almost anesthetizing, effect on this interaction because they quickly price out both the locals and the backpackers. This is the main reason I am sad about the future of Pai. It is ironic that many of the package tourists will be sold, in part, on the "whimsical and ecletic" nature of Pai. Too bad that, by the time they get here, it will be gone.

Why hasn't this happened yet? The current, dodgy transportation options to Pai are filtering most of those people out. But the airport will change of all that.

I hope I am wrong.

Pai Floods of 2005

In August and September 2005, there were massive floods along the Pai river, Khong river, and Mae Gawn stream (between Muu Baan Nam Huu and the Wednesday Market area of Pai) which caused more damage than has been seen in decades.

I have created a special page with pictures and information about the floods, which you can find here.

Projects from Other Pai Citizens

The Thais and Westerners who live in Pai are a creative bunch, and some of them help make ends meet with a variety of internet projects ranging from tourism to yoga to tea! Here is a list of just some of the sites started by Pai citizens.

Outside LinksHere are some sites created by Pai citizens. These sites are not mine (not even the ones that are hosted on allaboutpai.com) and I do not take any credit or responsibility for stuff that appears on these sites!
pittalew art
A site showcasing the amazing art of Sa-Art Nilkong, (nickname "Art"), who runs a little art gallery and guesthouse called Baan Pittalew, nestled in a corner of Mae Hee village a few kilometers outside of Pai. Art also has cool monthly parties where there is music and fire dancing, and where I sometimes bring my MEZ video screen for people to play with. Website created and managed by another Pai local at thai-eye.com.
fune art
Site featuring the spirited art of Fune, a young local Thai artist whose work and manner form part of the texture that makes Pai such an interesting place. This site also created by thai-eye.com.
silrat art
A third site by thai-eye.com, featuring the work of local Thai artist Pom Silrat, who also owns the Come Pai shop in town.
64 bit jungle
Who says you can't be high-tech in the boonies? A Pai local hosts a technical blog about Linux. He's busy with many projects, including Thrift Seek, a price search engine for eBay and Amazon.

thai hermit yoga
On this site, some Pai locals offer periodic, 3/7 day yoga/massage health retreats in the Pai area. Check the website for retreat details.
lisu hilltribe experience
The website of the Lisu Hill Tribe Homestay and Cultural Immersion Experience, offering stays, cultural introduction, jewelry making, massage, and detox in a Lisu village nearby Pai.
thai language course: book and cd
A complete, beginner-level Thai Language course (book and CDs) written by a Pai local. Provides Thai script and transliteration for every word. Provides both normal and word-for-word translations of every Thai sentence, to help you learn Thai grammar.
buti's akha store
Buti is an Akha hill tribe lady who has a small shop in Pai where she is always furiously working on traditional Akha clothes, hats, belts, and other items. She also sells jewelry, purses, and lots of other gear. Her husband and some of the local expats who hang out at this colorful place conspired to make this swell website for her.
the healing company
A website belonging to a local practitioner of Reiki and Reflexology. Pai is a very popular place for alternative healing techniques.
moon village
A little community of mostly Japanese hippies in Pai, run by a fun guy named Toron. I mention Toron and Moon Village in my Pai intro, but here is a site all about Moon Village that Toron and Shlomi Rafaeli created in 2004.
seven color connection
A page by Kaoru Inoue, who created a movie about Pai called Pai Time in 2004-5, and who created a video log (vlog) and another movie about 2007 Pai and the 7/7/2007 soul-love-fusion festival. Check out the wacky Japaneseness of it all!
www.paithailand.info
A commercial portal for attractions and businesses in Pai. www.paithailand.info includes advertisements for businesses of many types, property listings, and a forum for classified ads and other discussions.
yellowpai.com
Another commercial portal for attractions and businesses in Pai. yellowpai.com has a lot of different categories where people can add their business listings. There is also a companion website paiproperty.com with housing/land sale and rental listings.
paitown.com
A pretty, non-commerical site about Pai created by Thai resident ApRiL. paitown.com is in both Thai and English and includes some very detailed and hard-to-find info about the history and traditions of Pai. There are also descriptions of guesthouses, restaurants, shopping, and other businesses with an interesting and distinctly Thai bent. There are (Thai-language) forums where people can list events, post articles, and share photos.

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CopyrightAll text and images copyright 1999-2009 Chris Pirazzi unless otherwise indicated.