After a 2 ½ year absence, I returned to Pai in northern Thailand this past November. It is still the hippyish, international tourist enclave that I visited in 2005, only now it has become more popular and consequently it has grown a bit larger and noisier. Many new guesthouses, restaurants and hotels (albeit small hotels) and bungalow resorts have sprouted up - including the upscale Pai River Corner Resort and The Sanctuary, a relatively fancy vegetarian and seafood restaurant which overlooks the Pai River. More importantly, there are an increasing number of Thai tourists vacationing in Pai. I understand that this surge in domestic visitors is a result of a major Tourism promotion, which featured a documentary of Pai on a major Thai TV Channel. Again, I stayed at Pairadise located about 1000 meters from downtown Pai. Still a delightful place - since the last time I was there they added a couple of new deluxe bungalows. Rooms are simply furnished but well set up. Priced at 600 baht per night and up, Pairadise is an excellent value and represents the higher end of budget accommodations in Pai.

On my last day in Pai, I visited the uniquely named PURA VIDA , one of the newer upmarket bungalow resorts. In Costa Rica, Pura Vida is a popular idiomatic expression that is used to greet or say farewell to somebody. Translated literally from Spanish, it means Pure Life. More on Pura Vida in the next installment of Calypso Island Chronicles.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 11:57 am and is filed under Thailand, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.