I took a minivan to Pai. It was full of youngsters on gap years in between university and getting a job. They were talkative and nice and dull. The minibus had no suspension and I worried about my bladder. It was a four hour journey, although I imagined the bus would stop somewhere along the way. It did. I sat in the bus with those young American and European and Canadian kids and I heard all about their eager dreams. Their chat and talk of university and planned journeys down the banana pancake trail. Their budgets. They nattered away like pregnant gerbils. They were nice kids, but I put on cattle decapitation through my AirPods instead. I stared at the blurred jungle out the window, as we swept past trees and foliage. Tired dogs sauntering along the road. There were some cows standing in the road a bit further up, tending to a sitting calf. Its little tail flicking away, a fly or two around its young nose. It knew not what direction was, or the path ahead. Nor did any of the kids in my minibus.
We arrived in Pai. The young men and women travelers, the old ones too, drove around on scooters and motorbikes; the overriding style, Easy Rider Mad Max 60s Rebel chic – that was the order of the day. Bandanas and tops off and tattoos and beards and goatees. While I sat on the bench of the 7-11 with a Smirnoff with ice. A man in his early 30s, handsome but with a strange vibe, with purple half sarong and long fingernails and sandals saw me sit down on the bench and approached me from across the road. He sat down on the bench. I’d only just got to Pai and was in no mood for harassment or direct approach. I was enjoying my drink, so I put on my sunglasses and headphones and drank and listened to Cattle Decapitation. He fiddled and crossed and re-crossed his legs trying to get my attention. He got out his phone next and started playing loud Thai music off it, dancing a bit too, but I was a hardened man who had just arrived in Pai and I wasn’t about to entertain whatever bullshit was on today’s menu. Our joust and fiddling went on for about 40 minutes. I finished my drink, then got up to get another one in the 7-11, and when I came out, the long finger-nailed man had disappeared. I walked up to a smelly market and there was a toilet in there but it was 3 baht to enter and there was a sign saying no tens, and I only had hundreds so I found a lot of land – red dusty land – hopped over a low stone wall and peed behind a yellow palm tree. The heavens opened after that, so I stood inside the overhang of a battery shop and waited out the squall. The battery man sat in the dark behind me, at a wooden table, doing his accounts, pencilling it all down, while I stood there waiting for the world to end. The rain subsided and I said thanks to the man. He grinned and my karma was corrected. There were edgy men with long dreadlocks out on the street, in beige and brown hemp clothing, women in bee hats. Mostly on motorbikes. Dogs rode with them. The misty mountains behind, rain still in the air. It was an odd place. It was like being in a Led Zeppelin song. A lady boy with an orange dress with tarantulas on it. A Japanese man with dreads. It was a mushroom town, you smelled it on the metal of their bikes and in the oil in the street water. It clung to the tiles and trees like a hopeless gibbon. It was a colorful spectacle with watching eyes. I would stick to booze and weed for now, I wouldn’t crack my head open into Pai just yet. There were western motorbike casualties too, walking around with arms in casts and plaster legs. Forlorn looking people, their aggression at bay. They all looked British. English. The English came off the bikes the most. Don’t fact check me on that.
Weekend trip to Pai from Chiang Mai
