went back to pai again with some friends, fun times!
a bunch of shots of the road to/from and surrounding mountains:
it’s still suuuuuper dry here, and the mountains are still on fire! i saw this same sight last time i came to pai, which means they’ve been on fire for a couple of weeks now. crazy!
we stayed at a friend’s super cute house a couple of minutes from downtown pai:
the friends i came with are in a jazz band called “alukomarai“, which is kind of a play on words – in thai, “alaiomaruk” (i think) means “i don’t know”. here’s them playing at this really awesome place called edible jazz:
edible jazz is a really cool little bar/cafe/venue situated on temple grounds. they serve excellent vegetarian food, i highly recommend checking it out! plus, you can rent some really cute bungalows that surround it. the view from edible jazz looking out from the inside during the daytime (you can see one of the bungalows on the right and part of the temple in the background):
we also went to this really great hot spring that wasn’t really well known, probably on account of being at the end of this long rough and winding road. here’s my friend navigating down a particularly steep and dusty section (you can get an idea about how incredibly dry it is here right now from how brown the foreground is, verses the green of the background where there’s a mountain stream):
here’s (another really shaky) video of some of the road to the hot spring:
the hot spring itself:
the water was amazingly clear, and the hot spring bed was made up of all these tiny smooth pebbles so even after swimming around it didn’t stir up any sediment. so nice!
taylor swimming in a river:
a spirit house surrounded by wheat grass at a cafe in pai (unfortunately i can’t remember the name of the cafe – the food there is delicious! lots of teas and fresh foods):
view from a temple on one of the mountains looking down onto the city:
a super shaky video of clips from the bike drive between chiang mai and pai. don’t watch full screen, it’ll probably make you want to barf. there’s some buffalo about halfway through.
a clip of a portion of downtown pai at night. music is the party by mirah and ginger takahashi from the album songs from the black mountain music project (a really, really good album):
went to pai for a few days with my friend fon. pai’s a small town about 3 or 4 hours north of chiang mai, through the mountains. it was a really nice little place, though overrun by even more farang than there are in chiang mai, hah. it was still really fun, and mostly everyone was really nice.
we rented a motorboke in chiang mai for 4 days, which cost 600 baht (it would’ve cost the same for both of us to buy bus tix to/from). i really enjoyed the ride, but it killed my butt. the scenery was breathtaking! vids later.
some shots from the top of one of the mountains:
there were small herds of buffalo grazing along the roadside:
stopping for food along the way:
some spirit houses on the road side:
a road:
some shots of the pai countryside:
a farm or something:
it’s the dry season here, which means it really really dry. we got into pai after dark, and once the sun set we could see long strips of fire running up and down the mountains and along the road. the flames weren’t huge, maybe 2 or 3 feet high, but it was still pretty crazy to see the jungle on fire. you can see how dry everything is here:
china town area in pai:
a 50s/60s rock band from bangkok at bebop bar:
some guy jammin on harmonica at bamboo bar:
guitar playing at bamboo bar:
can’t remember the name of this place that we ate at a couple of times, but it had really really delicious food, plus some really comfortable seating:
and i think this is all wheat grass or something (plus you can see a spirit house to the left in the picture):
