PAI 15TH-20TH NOVEMBER 2006

Pai ( pronouced like bye) is a small hippy town emanating very little Thainess at all. It is said to instead be 'a little corner of the worl that just happens to be in Thailand'. It attracts artists, musicians, and foodies and is in the middle of a gorgeous green valley with hot springs, rice fields and a lazy river. It is a very beautiful laid back place, with young puppies running in and out of most the bars but at the same time, can feel like every traverller with dred locks has flocked here and it is completely over run by foreigners and the many western 'long-term' visitors. Lewis just thinks its a sad hippy hang out and a gathering of western rejects!

Pai's attraction for us was its close proximety to Mae Hong Son and the 'long neck Karen hill tribe' which we wanted to visit and also as a place to chill and relax for a few days.

The range of accomidation in Pai is plentiful and overall very nice. We stayed in a wooden bungelow at ' Sunshine House' which was in a lovely garden setting and only 200B a night.

Pai was a three and a half bus journey from Chiang Mai, on some more, very windy roads. Pai has a live music scene and on our first night their was a large music festival in town. There was a swimming pool about 10 minutes walk from where we were staying which was really nice to have a lazy day around.

On the 18th we decided to go on a bit of a mission to find the long neck villagers. The long-neck women live in Pradung refugee villages, the biggest being Nai Soi which is 35km north west of Mae Hong Song. The women wear a continuous coil around their necks and sometimes their limbs, that can weigh up to 22kg but 5kg is most common. Nobody knows for sure how the custom got started, there are many tales from unattracting men from other tribes to fear of tigers carrying them off.

Nai Soi was quite a way from Pai on terribly hilly roads so Lewis suggested on something a little better than a mo-ped this time. We hired a Honda XR 250 (off road motorbike) for the day (500B/7pounds). We stopped off at a great view point and a fish cave on our way, and made it to the long neck village without getting lost once! The village people were very nice and chatty and enjoyed immproving their english. It was a great fun day and we covered 250km in all and our arses were sore through sitting on the tiny bike seat.