Pai — Mi Mundo es Tu Mundo

Pai is a small town in Northwestern Thailand less than 100 miles from the Burmese border. It’s located on the Pai River and surround by the most beautiful, rolling green hills. Known as a sort of hippy town, Pai attracts young tourists looking for relaxed vibes and beautiful scenery.

Pai is about a 6 hour car ride from Chiang Mai. There is no airport in Pai, so the best way to get there is by van or motorbike. Vans stop once or twice along the way at rest stops and/or small restaurants for snacks, so don’t worry about bringing things with you for the ride. However, I would bring something to help with nausea because the road is super windy and hilly the entire time.

While in Pai, we stayed at the Green Hostel and Skate Park for 2 nights and Nadia House for the last night because Green Hostel had been fully booked in advance. Hostels in Pai fill up quickly, so my advice would be to book well in advance! We had less than 10 options since we booked so last minute. Green Hostel was fine for us, a little hot at night if you have a top bunk, but otherwise fine. However, I can’t say the same about Nadia House. Cristina and I felt really uncomfortable there. The hostel room was full of mosquitos, smelled awful, and had minimal security. I would stay there as a complete last resort.

Food:

Pai has A LOT of tasty food, all within about a mile, and everything has an English menu. At night, the main drag of the town turns into a market with one side having mainly dinner and bites while the other side has the usual tourist trinkets plus a few more hippy items. Cristina, Pieter, and I explored the markets for the 3 nights we were there as it’s one of the main things to do at night and isn’t far from the bars or hangout spots. The very first night, we stopped and ate at a place on a corner marked on Maps.me as “Really good Pad Thai cart.” Here’s to confirming, the Pad Thai & really any of the noodles are REALLY good! The spices she used are really hot though, so we picked up a couple Chang beers at the 7-Eleven across the street to help balance out the heat.

That night we headed towards the end of the market into the bar area. After meeting a couple folks also walking that way, we joined them at Boom Boom Bar. It’s a loud, eclectic place that has room for all types of people. There is a billiards area, a beer pong area, an upstairs more chill lounge, and a dance floor with electronic music. Although it was fun, it was hard to keep up with the craziness of the first floor. The 3 of us split a bucket and then had to leave to go sleep to recover from the long travel day.

One of the downsides of the Green Hostel was that they didn’t provide a free breakfast, so Cristina and I had to search for breakfast the days we were in Pai. After surviving on ham and cheese toasties every day of the previous week in Chiang Mai, we were ready to change up breakfast options. Luckily, we came across a breakfast burrito place! Definitely wasn’t anything compared to a Texas breakfast burrito, but it still hit the spot! The cafe was called the PuriPai Cafe. Per the photo, you can see that the ENTIRE menu is in English - there’s not even a trace of Thai on the board behind us. Like I said before, Pai is pretty touristy.

After breakfast, we went on a mission to get our laundry done. Near our hostel, there is a line of washers for about 50 Baht a load ($1.70 USD). They didn’t have a drier unfortunately, so once the laundry was done, we took it back to the hostel to hang up to dry. While the laundry was running, we decided to treat ourselves to a foot massage at the nearest massage place - Donluedee massage. The massage was so/so, but the A/C felt amazing, and the ladies inside were hilarious. Cracking jokes in broken English and laughing the whole time - I can’t even recall about what. The sign outside was also comical lol.

For dinner, we headed back to the market and between the 3 of us, we split appetizers the whole time. There are a bunch of little fried/egg roll type bites, mini portions of noodles, dumplings, etc. This is the way to go. Save full meals for during the day, and at night it’s fun to try more things and walk around the market. Pieter bought some of the pricier octopus from a man grilling seafood - that was easily some of the best octopus I’ve ever had. He grills it on the spot and gives you some chili dipping sauces for it. Highly recommend!

For breakfast the next day, we all met at Joy Cafe - on the opposite side of town, but just as far of a walk from our hostel. Joy Cafe is a small cafe on the main street but in a stand alone house. Because it’s not in the city center, it’s not crowded at all - we only saw locals eating there (which means it’s good!). They have a bunch of different types of fresh juice, and the wide noodles are probably the best I had in Thailand. The grilled tomato was also heavenly. This place made enough of an impression on us, that on the last day, we came here again for breakfast, and got all the same things 🤪

After a slow brunch, we headed to rent scooters to ride around Pai. I can’t remember exactly where, but it was a very crowded rental place on the main road with all types of scooters. At this point in the trip, I was still nervous to drive one myself, so Cici and Pieter rented bikes and I went on the back of Pieter’s. We started off by heading to where a rice paddy area was supposed to be, but we found out once we arrived that the rice paddies had dried up for the season.

There are a number of waterfalls near Pai, so after doing a little research we set out to find one about 20 minutes away called the Pam Bok waterfall. There is scooter parking at the bottom and seeing the fall itself requires a super short, but very muddy hike up the river. Once at the waterfall, there are some sandy banks on both sides of the river to ditch your stuff, and there’s plenty of shallow areas to swim and hang out.

We spent about half an hour at the falls before heading back towards town and our next destination. About 5 minutes back on the road, we pulled over to check out Pai’s Land Split. The split is basically a beautiful plot of land where a couple earthquakes in recent years have created deep splits in the land, resulting in small canyons that you can walk through. When you arrive at the Land Split, the owner has a stand at the front where you can donate money rather than pay an entrance fee and buy some local fruits grown on the land. There is a loop trail that goes up and over the land split. On the way up, we walked to the left up through the farmer’s garden passing a variety of plants labeled by the fruit they grow. A little less than midway through the trail, we split off to the right to check out the cracks in the earth. Although small, walking through them was really beautiful. Once at the top of the trail, midway through, the views of the surrounding pastures and mountains is stunning. Green in every direction! We even stumbled across a charcoal water treatment area.

Aerial view of the Land Split

The very last stop of our day trip was to the famous Pai Canyon. Our plan was to get there in plenty of time for sunset, but we arrived a little late, so we didn’t have time to explore the whole canyon. The canyon is a series of windy, warm colored cliffs through a lush jungle. It’s a landscape unlike any I’ve ever seen, and I can only wish we had more time to explore it. We hung out at one of the main outcroppings to watch the sunset beyond the mountains.

For dinner, we headed to the most popular meal truck we had seen the night before - a vegetarian-friendly spot blasting classic rock tunes complete with a guy cooking from a stool in the truck’s bed and surrounded by a group of hungry tourists. It only had 5 main items on the menu, so we knew it had to be good. We ordered one at a time, and he individually cooks each dish in the order that you paid. So each order takes about 10-15 minutes to be completed. Across the street is a spot to get some beers, so we drank a few while waiting for our food. It was very much so worth it! The food came out boiling, and despite being made with vegetarian ingredients and brown rice, was very flavorful! I would go back to this guy’s for dinner in a heartbeat.

The next day, we wanted to do something more chill as it was our last day in Pai. We spent the morning wandering the city, avoiding a monsoon like rain storm, then having lunch. When the weather cleared up, we headed to the other side of the river to check out Sunset Bar - recommended by some folks in our hostel. Less bar, more a countryside spot filled with cabanas, hammocks, and games for an afternoon of relaxing with friends. The walk there was beautiful, and finally we found some rice paddy fields! You also pass by the very random Fred Flinstone statue right before you hit the river. After watching the sunset at Sunset Bar, we bar hopped our way back to town and finally ended our last night again with a short stop at Boom Bar.

Cici and I were headed back to Chiang Mai after Pai, so the next morning, we headed to the bus station on the main drag of Pai to buy our van tickets and head off. Try to get there a little early because once vans fill up, there’s no more tickets to be bought for that hour.