We’ve just spent a few days in Pai relaxing and enjoying the more laid back atmosphere. Our hotel is a bunch of little grass huts near the river, and the huts have a nice porch for lounging near the restaurant that plays live music every night. It’s great.
Our first day here we did an elephant trip with what we understand to be one of the more reputable elephant camps, Thom’s Pai Elephant Camp. It was definitely a different experience than the Elephant Nature Park, but still a good one. The elephants don’t look mistreated at all there, it’s just a bit sad to see them chained up and being used for rides after seeing the elephants at the Nature Park. Anyway, what really stood out for me about this place was that you go to go swimming with the elephants, and ride them bareback instead of with one of those uncomfortable (for both people and elephants) saddle chairs. Geneveve road on Kim’s back, and Kim and I both rode on an elephant I think was named Pom Kep. The mahouts (elephant handlers) didn’t speak much English, so it was hard to get any good info on the elephants. Swimming with the elephants in the river was awesome. They sprayed us, dumped us off, flipped people into the water, and got a cool dip in the process. The trip also included a hot spring pool soak and a bamboo raft float, both of which were nice, but not nearly as unique or amazing as the elephant interactions.
Probably our most adventurous activity thus far was renting a motor scooter and driving to Tham Lod cave, about 2 hours from Pai. We’ve rented little scooters in foreign countries before, but this was our first time with a baby on board. It worked out very well actually. I drove, and Kim had Geneveve in a pack and sat behind me. There’s very little traffic on the windy mountain roads, so it was a pretty pleasant ride through the countryside. The trip was a bit longer than necessary because we missed the turn to the cave and ended up having to backtrack.
We got to the famous Cave Lodge about an hour before sunset and hurriedly checked in so that we could get to the cave in time to see the nightly bird and bat migration in an out of the cave. We got to the cave just in time to catch a guide to show us around in the caves before sunset. These caves are huge. I don’t have numbers in my head as I type, but they’re easy to look up. The formations are really cool, and you float on a raft down a small river through the cave to see them. One of the cooler parts of the cave though is that 100′s of thousands of bats leave the cave every night, while 100′s of thousands of birds enter the cave for the night. It’s impressive to see and here as they fill the air. The lodge itself is pretty cool too, with lots of good info in English since it’s run by an Australian guy who’s been there since 1984. It’s another place that we’d spend more time if we had it.
Today we motored back to Pai for another chill evening eating good food and hanging out. Tomorrow we’re taking an early bus back to Chiang Mai to catch a flight south for the beaches. Hopefully all the travel tomorrow will be shortly rewarded by a day lounging in the sun. We still haven’t decided exactly where to spent our beach time yet, but I’m sure wherever we end up it wll be nice. We fly into Phuket, but don’t plan to spend any time there.