Pai (pronounced like bye)

Ashley, Jennifer, Randi & myself rented a Toyota Corolla and drove north out of Chiang Mai on Saturday morning after our massage school was finished. We were headed first to the Elephant Nature Park in the Mae Taeng valley, an area packed with elephant camps-tourist attractions where visitor activities range from watching elephants preform tricks to taking rides on them. Our camp was a little different. Randi had heard about it from a friend, but we hadn't really checked up on it. Ashley & I stopped in at a restaurant called Taste From Heaven, and besides having wonderful food-I mean REALLY wonderful food!-they also were affiliated with this park. The manager of the restaurant, an Englishman named Roy, filled us in on the details.

The park was the result of the work of a woman named "Lek", who rescued abused and abandoned elephants from all over Thailand and gave them refuge. They strive to teach and educate people-not just tourists, but other elephant owners and locals-about the proper ways to treat these giant creatures. With love and respect. You can click here to visit their site. Check out our flickr page for some photos of us bathing the hairy guys...and girls.

We spent the majority of the day there, leaving the park around 4:30 in the afternoon. Once we got back to the highway, we immediately saw a sign for Pai--104 kilometers, and thought that we would be there in less than two hours. We were wrong. 762 curves-and three and a half hours later-we rolled into Pai, and into the middle of a massive street market. There were people everywhere, and they had already taken all the rooms available. Apparently we had stumbled into the perfect storm of a holiday weekend, and the city was packed. So much for the quiet, hippie retreat in a tiny little mountain town....