a place called Pai

SO...I know I haven't written in a while. The truth is I have started to "live" here. Chiang Mai was a place that I was going to visit for 2 weeks. Tomorrow will be my 5th week and this morning I went to the Immigration office to extend my visa. I am not quite sure I can possibly describe what is happening to me out here. I am blessed with what I have and those around me and that gives me a freedom to reconsider EVERYTHING in my life and consider ANYTHING from here on after.

Well, before I get too philosophical, (which I will, but not in this post cause I haven't got much time) I will tell you about a place called "Pai". It used to be a stopover town in the hills north of Thailand on the Mae Hong Song Loop for those heading to trek. It has now become the chill out and hippie hangout that one visits and wants to stay in. The town lives from the hand made jewellery and hill tribe garments for sale on the streets. The town is full of cool haunts where you can find anything from banana pancake, thai rum, coconut and pineapple shakes to a good old thai green curry or the odd variety of deep fried insects! Then of course, you may get invited to the back of some bar to sit on the floor around a home bonfire, to smoke some home grown ganga, eat roasted corn cobs and listen to the world view of your rasta host. I guess in many ways it is the typical hippie town that may seem like a bad imitation of what hippie towns must've been like in the 60's and 70's, filled with young foreigners trying to live in consonance with nature, but there aren't as many posers as one would think and people just wanna hang out like we did, surrounded and enjoying the nature, watching time and life pass by hanging on a hammock, atop a bamboo hut, while you watch the sunset or the sunrise.

I am glad we ended up staying one more night than we had expected and hanging at the Ting Tong Bar where I bought one of my favourite pieces of jewellery made by the owner. It's a Ting Tong Leaf wrapped in leather. You'll see it in the picture below. We went white water rafting (and our raft capsized!!! ...it was the BEST part of the decscent!) and soaked in natural hot springs. But by far what I most enjoyed was seeing the locals re-build Pai which was badly flooded 2 months ago. We experienced the building of a bamboo foot bridge over the Pai river and enjoyed contributing to the welfare of our guest house owner who was re-building every single one of her huts which had been swept away by the waters. I will be loading pics of this and more tomorrow. In the meantime I leave you with a few images.