Pai Travel Guide

Pai is a valley town of a few thousand people that has been absorbing travellers who meant to stay two nights since the 1990s. It is small enough to walk across in ten minutes, high enough to be cool after dark, and organised almost entirely around the idea that you have nowhere to be.

The road

Route 1095 from Chiang Mai has 762 curves in it and takes about three hours by minivan. It is beautiful and it makes a lot of people ill; if you are prone to that, sit at the front, take something before you leave rather than halfway, and do not eat first. There is also a twenty-five minute flight, which some people book purely to avoid the return journey.

What there is to do, which is the wrong question

Pai’s attractions are modest and everybody sees them: the canyon at sunset, a waterfall or two, the hot springs, a viewpoint with a Chinese village attached, and a white Buddha on a hill above the town with a long staircase. None of them is remarkable on its own and most people rent a scooter and do them all in a day and a half.

What Pai is actually for is the rest of the time. The night market fills the main street after dark, the bars have live music and no volume, and a great many people find that four nights has become nine.

Pai Canyon

The one that is genuinely worth timing. Narrow eroded ridges of red earth with drops on both sides, twenty minutes south of town, and it is at its best in the last hour of light. The paths along the ridges have no railings and the edges crumble; people have been badly hurt here and it is not a place to be casual near the drop or to walk out on after dark.

When to go

November to February, and the cool season is the point: Pai is at about five hundred metres and mornings in December are properly cold by Thai standards, with mist in the valley that burns off by nine.

The burning season from February to April is worse here than in Chiang Mai, because the valley traps the smoke. In March the mountains you came for are frequently invisible. The rains from June to October make the road harder and the valley very green, and this is when the town is at its emptiest.

Scooters

Nearly everyone rents one and the roads around Pai are the reason. They are also the reason the town has a small industry in bandaging tourists: the mountain roads are steep, loose at the edges, and unforgiving of people who learned to ride that morning. If you have never ridden, Pai is a poor place to start.

Licences, insurance and what the numbers actually are

How long to give it

Three nights to see it. Longer if the point is not to see it, which for most people here it is not.