Pai

Hello everybody

I’ve been neglecting the blog for some time now… I’m sorry

I’ve have spent all this time in a place called Pai, it’s in northern Thailand, a few hours drive from Chiang Mai.
But first, some photos from the south…

Another amazing sunset…

My lovely family, enjoying the sunset

Some stuff you can make from sand

Another impressive view from the beach…

North thailand turned out to feel alot better, the vibe is less resorty, the prices are more reasonable and the people are much nicer.
Here are some of these nice people…

Pai is a cute little town, a little bit overrun by tourists, most of them thai… but very cute.
Everything is small, everything is quite close… there’s a general laid-back feeling about this place…

After a few days, I realized there’s no way to enjoy pai and the stuff around it without a motorcycle.
So I learned to ride a bike! It’s quite easy and most enjoyable… you get everywhere super-fast.
You can just go out riding aimlessly around… and it’s fun
As Mr. Pirsig said in his book… driving around in closed cars, looking at the world through a window,
is not much different than looking at yet another show on TV… have your world boxed down for you.
Riding a bike does feel like you’re really present at the place, there is no emotional distance between you and the road… or the buildings or mountains or rivers that are around you

Bike traveling around Pai and friends…
Featuring: Liam, Charlotte, Reut and Phii-Khaa the Dragonfly.

Yesterday I had breakfast in Myanmar(Burma) – I went up to the border to renew my Thai visa and ended up spending a few hours walking around the city of Tachileik…
It’s amazing how the vibe changes at the moment you cross the border, the myanmar side seemed so much more real… Finally things stopped being annoyingly tidy, the stones that make up the roads and sidewalks were crooked just the right way.
It looked a lot more like a city people actually live in.

Thailand gives a very fake feeling in compare to that, everything is so clean and tidy, it feels fake.
Most of Thailand is indeed new, development is very fast here and most of the roads and vehicles you will stumble upon are indeed from the last 2 decades or so.
It just looks like somebody lifted the Thai people in the air, switched the country under and put them back. I guess some of the magic was lost in this process… it is quite shameful, but true.

So, how should one take this in a positive way? I think the challenge of traveling in Thailand is exactly this – to see beyond…
Some people have trouble seeing beauty beyond the shit piles of India,
other people apparently have trouble seeing the beauty beyond the tidiness of Thailand…
The best of travelers would see both.

Currently I am waiting for a dear friend to join me, after that I plan to go to Laos.
I hope Laos is going to be beautiful and a nice break off the huge-two-floor-alien-looking-too-much-pink-light-emitting buses that park everywhere around Thailand…

Take care everybody… I love you all to bits!
me.