Days 7 - 8: A Brief Visit to Pai

I am incredibly behind on my journal entries, so I might try to start doing abbreviated versions. For those reading this, you might be saying “thank god...”, but a large part of my journal goal was to have it for myself to look back and remember *everything*. In truth, capturing almost every detail is quite time consuming, and so I haven’t been able to keep up with it. With this being the case, I’m going to try and only capture the highlights - wish me luck!

We woke up early in order to eat breakfast and get on the road for our trip to Pai. Unfortunately, the hostel we were staying at - Counting Sheep’s - did not return our laundry the night before as promised, so we had to wait until it was ready, and sadly, that wasn’t until nearly 11 am! While we waited, we picked up our scooters for our ride and packed everything else up. Once the laundry was (finally) ready, we hit the road.

We didn’t even make it out of the Old City limits until both Benji and I were pulled over by the cops. Apparently, we needed to have international drivers licenses. This was completely unbeknownst to us, since I’ve had friends that have rented sans IDL’s in the past (ahem Becky and Brandon) and the scooter rental shop told us nothing of the sort. Unfortunately, we each had to pay 500 baht, but Benji read after the fact that the “ticket” could actually get us out of subsequent fines (maybe..). Once we paid our fines, we were on our merry way.

Not too long after we exited downtown Chiang Mai, we approached another ticket trap with cops again wanting to fine us for not having our ILD’s. Since I didn’t know our ticket would potentially get us out of another fine, and I didn’t want another 500 baht down the drain, I told Benji to follow me as I skirted the police. They were all on foot, and I don’t think they took it too seriously - it mostly just seemed like a ploy to take tourists’ money. We easily got away, and scooted off with a long road ahead of us to Pai. About 1.5 - 2 hours in, we stopped for a bathroom break at a small cafe. Benji also got himself a ham and cheese sandwich, and I got an iced coffee. I’m not sure if that coffee is what did it, but something hit me later that night that nearly put me out of commission (details to follow), and that coffee is one of the top suspects. Anyways, after our quick break, we hit the road with what would be the hardest part of the trip left.

Although google maps suggested Pai was only about three hours away, it doesn’t tell you how terrifying it is to drive the 762 turns to get there, and how that three hours can easily turn into six when you are on a scooter. I’m glad that we had rented scooters a few days before when we did some sight seeing around Chiang Mai, but I don’t think that adequately prepared us for the hairpin turns along Route 1095. The speed limit may have been around 60 km/hour, but I think we were maxing out at about 45. What this means, unfortunately, is that you constantly have cars trying to pass you, regardless of whether or not they have a clear view of the oncoming traffic again - which more often than not they didn’t because of the crazy turns! This made it stressful, but Benji and I were doing a pretty ok job, that is until Benji fell...

I had imagined it not long before it happened - I daydreamed (or daynightmared?) that I looked in my side mirror and saw him wipe out. Then, not long thereafter, I heard a strange noise (at first I thought I had hit something!), and saw Benji horizontal with the bike on top of him on the road in my mirror. I very quickly parked, jumped off my bike, and ran over to him. I started asking him quickly if he was alright, and he was able to stand off and walk around a bit. This was helpful to see, although I could see on his leg that he had gotten quite the scrape. Before we could tend to his wounds, I told him to quickly move his bike out of the road. I am INCREDIBLY thankful that no one was right behind him at the time. I can’t even imagine what would have happened... We took some time to assess his wounds and to decide whether or not he was OK enough to keep going. He said he just went into the turn too fast, and his back break didn’t slow him enough so he impulsively hit the front break too hard. He then drank some water and assured me he was fine and we should keep going. We got back on the road and I took our speed down considerably. I knew that we would be getting to Pai later than I had planned, but this unexpected turn of events slowed us down drastically. I was terrified of anything else happening, so we basically crawled the rest of the way. 

After a gas stop, and what felt like 20,000 turns later, we arrived in Pai. We drove straight to our hotel, the Phu Pai Art Resort, and checked in. Benji took a shower to clean out his wounds, and I relaxed and tried to wind down. I was so incredibly stressed - both from the ride itself, and then the additional stress that came from Benji’s accident. I realized I hadn’t eaten or had much water since leaving Chiang Mai, and I wasn’t feeling too well. 

We took the free shuttle into downtown Pai around 5 PM, and started walking down a street that said it would be shut down at 6 and only open to foot traffic - cool! In the meantime, we just strolled around hoping to find a good spot for a drink and some food. We found a beautiful spot on the river, with views of the mountains in the background. The view was perfect. 

We ordered a couple of beers and I continued to try calming down. I was a little upset that our drive took us literally all day, and I was even more stressed out about the fact we would have to do it all again the next day. Unfortunately, we had already booked our flights from Chiang Mai to Surat Thani (en route to Koh Tao) for two days later, so we didn’t really have much flexibility to try to take more time in Pai. I wasn’t sure if it was the stress, the lack of water, or the lack of food, but my stomach was feeling off. We left the bar in search of a better spot for food, but I had to take a detour to the bathroom to vomit. Sadly, this was not the only vomit of the night. 

We walked around a bit more, but suddenly food did not sound like a good idea to me. We sat down in a bar that served Singha on tap, and I asked Benji to find me some plain white rice to see if that would help. He went off in search, and I sat and tried to convince myself that I was going to be ok. When he got back with my 10 baht serving of white rice (a HUGE portion for 30 cents), I tried eating a bit. Soon after, I felt a wave of nausea and unsuccessfully tried to make it to the bathroom. 😑 Oof. It didn’t look like food was going to stick that night. So instead, I went in search of some sort of ginger or other stomach settling remedy. We had tried earlier to find tums (and band aids and antiseptic ointment for Benji’s wounds), but the pharmacy’s version of tums didn’t do the trick. I found a shop with ginger beer, so I asked for a cup and sat down to try and feel better. I wanted to leave Benji alone as well so that he could at least try to enjoy Pai a little bit. I felt bad that my stomach was ruining our only night there. 

I tried having as much ginger beer as I could stomach before I got up and headed back to Benji. I told him I needed to go back to the hotel, and he decided to come back with me as well. We caught a taxi, pulled over once for me to puke again, convinced the taxi driver that I did not in fact have to go to the hospital, got back to the hotel, and immediately went to bed. 😅

The next morning, I woke up feeling depleted but generally okay. We went to our complimentary breakfast, and I made myself fake Gatorade - Tang with salt mixed in. It surprisingly wasn’t terrible, and I hoped that I could keep it down so that I could make sure my electrolytes wouldn’t be too out of whack. I was also able to keep down a piece of toast. I was hopeful that the worst was behind me.

After breakfast, we packed up and hit the road so we could do some sight seeing in Pai before heading back to Chiang Mai. First stop - the hot springs! Benji felt a lot better that day, so I asked if he could lead us. Once we started driving, I realized I felt a lot more comfortable with him setting the speed, rather than me constantly looking behind my shoulder and worrying about him falling again. The ride was immediately more enjoyable as I followed him up the road to the hot spring. 

The springs were beautiful, and so hot! The hottest ones were off limits, but the temperature of the water was around boiling. You could go into the the pools that were a little downstream of them. Since we didn’t have the luxury of time, Benji and I just soaked out feet for a little while before hitting the road again. 

Next step - Pai Canyon. We didn’t totally know what to expect, but it was a super cool view. It reminded us a lot of Arizona with the reddish dirt, and interesting rock formations. We had fun gallivanting a bit (although my stomach felt like it might start taking a turn again..) before getting back on our bikes. 

About 1.5 hours into the very enjoyable ride, we pulled off towards Mok Fa Waterfall. We both agreed that the ride from Pai to Chiang Mai seemed so much easier than the reverse. Whatever the reason was, we were thankful and happy.

Mok Fa is a huge waterfall! The water seems to fall from a cliff from 100 feet in the air. We took our time enjoying the grandness of it, took a quick hike to a nearby cave, and then booked it to our bikes to get out of the bugs!

We snacked on some banana chips from a shop along the road, and then made our way back to Chiang Mai. Luckily, the same license traps from the day before were all gone. I wondered if the cops just set up shop on certain days. It was nearly the end of the month, so maybe they needed some extra cash from fines. Who knows!

We safely returned the bikes, and made our way back to Counting Sheep for one more night. We had asked them to hold our large backpacks while we scooted to Pai, and luckily, the bags were still in the storage closet upon our return.

After a quick shower and rest, we headed back to Cooking Love for one more delicious meal with them. After that, Benji coerced me into going to a Muay Thai fight. In spite of the violence, it was actually really interesting to see how it played out. There are a lot more rules than I expected to make sure the fight was fought fairly, and no one got seriously injured. A couple of the younger kids (one boy and one girl) in the lower weight classes got knocked out hard, but I was happy to see no blood or merciless punching. It was all played pretty cleanly! Watching “fights” are not really my thing, but I actually think going to a Muay Thai fight is a worthwhile experience. After the fights, we headed home for some much needed sleep.