Motorbiking Pai: Mountains Beyond Mountains

We spent a few days in Pai doing next to nothing. The place seems to encourage it. It's really the land of the lotus eaters; sitting in one of the many, many bars there you hear the same conversation: "So how long are you planning to stay in Pai?"  "Well, I was planning to be here four days. But so far I've been here for two weeks." (repeat, with varying increments of time).

Anyway, we explored the town on foot. I got a tattoo. We got massages. We went to the pool. We did a really disappointing morning of yoga and decided not to go back, because the only cool thing about it was the studio:

And we got mojitos in the evening and ended up at the rasta bar.

But after three days, we finally got into gear. Kait and I rented motorbikes and started out to explore the valley.

There's one road that passes through Pai from Chiang Mai on its way to Mae Hong Son. It skirts the west end of the valley, so we took that one first in the direction of Chiang Mai, passing some adorable coffeeshops:

 And some beautiful, not-at-all Thai houses:

And this little house, which I've decided I will live in:

all of them with spectacular views of the farmland and the mountains.

We found our way to the Pai Canyon, which was pretty impressive, actually.

More views.

 Railings? We don't need no railings! And that's an intentional double negative- I'm pretty sure they should have railings.

Yeah, railings would be good. 

But, you know, whatever. Also, it might be hard to put up railings, seeing as that's a path Kait's standing on. In. Whatever.

Wisely, we went there about noon. By the time we finished hiking a bit we were drenched with sweat, so we backtracked towards town and then down a country road to find this waterfall:

Which was heavenly. The water was cold and deep and when I swam under the falls it tumbled down the sheer rock and thundered almost bruisingly hard on my head and shoulders.  Floating on my back and breathing in the smell of water and jungle and porous rock, I thought that this must be one of the great pleasures of the world.

This little guy agrees.

When our hands and feet were wrinkled from too much swimming, we climbed back on our bikes and went back towards the canyon and past it to the World War II Memorial Bridge.

When I was taught about WWII in school, it was very much from a western perspective. I've only learned since coming here that the Japanese invaded Thailand with their sights set on Burma, which was under British rule at the time. The Japanese supply lines were impeded by the Pai River, so they pressed the Pai villagers into slavery and had them build a wooden bridge, which the Japanese burnt when they departed. 

This sort of sucked for the villagers, who had gotten used to being able to bring goods back and forth over the bridge, so they rebuilt it, but it was swept away by flood in the early 1970s.  So they asked for a bridge that was being taken apart in Chiang Mai to be brought to Pai in pieces, and it still stands there now: 

Clearly due to the quality of the steel.

although there's a modern cement one right next to it for actual traffic. 

From there we got back on our bikes and took a smaller road that skirts the east side of the valley through farmland, then loops north of the town and finally reconnects with the main road.

The scenery was, again, stunning. It's a little frustrating posting these photos, because while my camera is decent and it's what I could afford, I wish I was Ansel Adams, or that I had his camera, or that he had come to Pai. So I'll just post the one.

And further out of town there were little bungalows for rent for vacationers who don't mind being a little ways away.

And then we went back to town for a nap, and then a mojito.

It was a good day.