My Happy Place

Another awesome day. Pai is so chill. I rented a little no speed pedal bike with my Victoria buddy for 50B for 24h (that's about $1.50) and pedaled around town and out into the country. An hour and a half in my poor legs were done and I was starting to melt in the sun so I found a little lunch place that made me a pad Thai with no sauce (i'm getting better at this) and I'm sitting sitting at the table eating and someone goes "Christina?" and in walks Kaylee Price and her sister (I went to BCIT with Kaylee), they were in Chiang Mai the same time as me and came to Pai the same day but we had yet to run into each other. Small, small world. 5 minutes later I met two guys, one from Victoria and one from North Van, this place is teeming with Canadians! It's very BC-esk. Think Roberts Creek or Nelson mixed with a little of the island art scene like Saltspring. It's filled with hippies and people looking for a laid back place to do nothing. And the weather is cooler too, at night people wander around in toques! There are little red mailboxes, flower boxes and pedal bikes everywhere. Lanterns hang over the street and there are little pastel colored ice cream shops, coffee shops and boutiquey shops selling I <3 Pai merchandise, a mix of artsy and retro, think magical mystery tour, metal lunch boxes and rolling stones T-shirts. And hearts everywhere. And then there is the plethora of reggae merchandise mixed in with hill tribe clothing - a truly unique place, a little out of place in Thailand, made even more interesting with the Reggae Festival going on this weekend. Tomorrow I may get a little adventurous and rent a motorbike (having practiced driving on the wrong side of the road today with my pedal bike) and go to the reggae festival (it's been a few weeks since my late nights in Pi Pi, I can probably survive one night..) Today i'm content sitting in my hammock sipping my watermelon fruit shake :)