Sue And Graham's Excellent Adventure: Mud Pai

We continued north from Chiang Mai to the tiny little mountain town of Pai, where the hippy throwbacks of Thailand seem to congregate. The 4 hour local bus ride up the ridiculously curvy road cramped into a seat designed for two Thai people (= about 1 Graham sized American) was a little arduous, but well worth it.

We’d designated Pai as our Northern Thai adventure hub and booked a two day jungle trek as soon as we got into town. All the guiding business kept trying to push the white water rafting options instead, insisting it was a much better option during the monsoon season, but we finally found someone willing to take just the two of us.

The first day consisted of lots and lots of mud (as expected) mixed with some gorgeous mountain farm villages along with some thick bamboo jungles. We spent the night in an isolated village of about 800 people who spoke their own language. Our guide cooked a great meal in a family’s barrowed kitchen and we ate on the bamboo floor with them. The next day was followed by a little less mud but a whole lot of water and some very thick jungle. At one point our guide, a happy go lucky young Thai man, turned to us and said “I have something to tell you….I’m not exactly sure where we are” still smiling and then continued bouncing down the trail that was intermediately disappearing. Still not sure if he was joking, but he seemed pretty confident in the general direction at least. Then came the water. Our intended path had us walking along the banks of the river back toward town, however, being the rainy season, the river was swollen and the bank non-existent in many places. So we were forced to wade up river in waist/chest deep brown water trying very hard not to imagine the very large snakes we knew to inhabit the area while whacking HUGE water spiders off each other’s backs. I later asked our guide and he reassured us that the really big snakes (anacondas) didn’t usually hang out in this area during the colder wet season, but that some of the 5-8 METER snakes might still be around. Fortunately the only snake we saw was during the truck ride home, when an enormous king cobra crossed the road in front of us causing our truck to stop, the thing was seriously as long as our truck. Just glad we saw it on the way out and not before the hike. All in all it was a actually a really fun experience, though we’re not in any hurry to get back to the jungle or the waist deep water, any time soon.

We hung around Pai for another couple days, spending our time on slightly mellower adventures including an elephant ride in the river (different river). The elephant was trained to wade into the river, spray you and then shake you off into the river below. Turns out a wet elephant can be quite a struggle to climb back onto, but it was amazing to see just how gentle and intelligent the giants are.

Pai Valley

Day 1 of our hike was part radiant green fields part thick muddy mosquito jungle.

Graham’s shoes at the end of day 1, just a little muddy.

Our meals in the village were prepared in a hut on stilts by the local people. Our dinner was an amazing fish stew and fresh vegetables over rice.

The stone cooking surface where meals were prepared over hot coals and the smoke rose to dry the corn hanging from the ceiling.

Our guide looking onto to the big river we were about to wade into. At this point we put the camera away in a dry bag, so we don't have any pictures of the waist deep trudging.