As I said in my last post, we’re going to start with the end of day 6 as the start of todays post! So let’s get into Pai!

We rolled into Pai earlier than the bus ticket said we would! If I remember correctly, I think we arrived at the van stop at 9pm in the main city center road! It was drizzling when we arrived but the night life was bustling!

There were so many shops and food stands open, so we decided to wander around with our back packs on which I thought was really fun! Really felt like we were finally backpacking!

We stopped at a few food stands to grab some snacks before trying to figure out how we were going to get to our bungalow for the night! We got 6 Gyozo and 6 Takoyaki like 100 Baht total and they were both reallllly good!

We then made our way to a 7-11 to get more snacks for when we got to our home for the night. We of course had to get more cheese toasties, but we also got a few other snacks like wasabi broad beans and some chocolates!

While we were leaving 7-11, we tried to order a Grab/Bolt and realized that they didn’t exist. So we had to wander the streets to hopefully find a taxi willing to take us to our hostel! We eventually found this taxi stand that was willing to do the drive for 150 Baht and we asked how long it would take for the taxi to come and the guy said right now. He gets up and walks down an alley way, so we follow and he ends up just driving us to our hostel and leaves his stand unattended 😂

After a quick drive, we were dropped off in the dark so we couldn’t get a great view of the hostel, but what we could see was really cool!

We were a little confused trying to find out how to check in, but all we had to do was knock on one of the doors and they had our key all ready for us! Our bungalow was the furthest one from the entrance but it was directly next to a rice field which was surrounded by mountains!

We ended up sitting outside for a few hours chatting and enjoying the sounds of the bugs and frogs, watched a lot of bats fly by, and just soak in and appreciate where we were at! Even at night it was breath taking. However this was cut a little short when a stray dog came barreling up to our porch, so we hopped inside real quick just in case it wasn’t friendly (we think it was but we thought it’d be best to just be careful).

But this is the views we woke up to this morning

We ended up hanging at the hostel for a little bit and figured out what our next plan was. Our other friends from Chiang Mai had booked an extra night there so they were coming to Pai today. So we needed to figure out what our next hostel was going to be to regroup! We all decided to stay in the “Revolution” hostel so we called a cab and left to go into the city center of Pai! (We didn’t realize that it was a very short walk to this new hostel and the cab driver kind of laughed at us when he dropped us off 😂).

After dropping off our bags at the hostel, we went to wander around the town during the day! We ended up stumbling onto a restaurant that was really good and I ended up getting another Thai Basil meal (it’s one of my favorites now)!

We then sat at the restaurant for a while because of the rain, which is a pretty common trend in Thailand currently since it’s rainy season. After the rain stopped we wandered around some more and then eventually made it back to our hostel where it was finally time to check in!

By this time our friends had finally shown up too! We hung out at the hostel for a bit and played pool, but eventually the newcomers wanted to explore so we trekked out again to walk around!

Pai is a very beautiful and tropical town. It’s very high up in the mountains which brings for a lot of amazing views! It’s also has a very beach town vibe to it which I like a lot already!

One of the really cool things about this hostel is that it provides a free dinner… which I forgot to take a picture of! Honestly impressed I haven’t missed more. But they made some Thai Green Curry which was very good and I ate a lot of it 😂

Since it’s currently Buddha Days, no bars can serve alcohol and no where was selling it. So the night ended up being very chill! The hostel put on a pool tournament, where my friend Lucy and I won our first game and lost the second. And we sat around and chatted while people played card games! There’s also a ton of dogs in Pai and there’s some at the hostel and they were being super cute!

I’m excited to explore Pai more tomorrow! I believe as long as it’s not too rainy we’ll be caravaning mopeds to all of the touristy spots which sounds like a ton of fun! So fingers crossed!

– Elie