While in Chiang Mai for a few days, we decided to head up north for a day, and take a minibus service to the popular backpacker destination known as Pai. Be careful what you eat before making the three-hour drive to Pai. The only way to get there is an 80-mile stretch of road with a total of 762 bends! Yes, someone counted every single one. Even with all the sharp curves and bends, the drive-up was worth it!
With so little time in Pai you have two options; rent a motorbike or take a full-day tour. We decided to go on the tour. A motorbike is also a great option, but we were not very experienced riders at the time. A few of the places to visit in Pai are over an hour’s drive from the city center. In Thailand, if you don’t have much experience on a motorbike, don’t even think about making a long drive like that. Cars will be flying by you on narrow roads going 60 MPH… not fun.
The tour got started first thing in the morning. After looking at a few different companies, we decided to go with Pai Expert Travel. If not traveling on a budget, a private tour is also a great option. That allows you to pick and choose the locations of the tour. The difference though is 4500 Baht for the private tour vs 300 each for the guided tour. We decided the guided tour would be better for us, even if it meant skipping a couple of destinations, we were interested in. Each guided tour has a different set of destinations. There were at least 5 different tours to choose from, but we decided to go with Trip C. The destinations include White Buddha, Thum Lod Cave, Land Split, a waterfall, and Pai Canyon.
A great feature of the tour was the hotel pickup. We were instructed to go out to the front of the hotel at 9 AM, and they were there right on time. After picking up the other three groups from their hotels, we were off to our first destination, White Buddha. It is a large statue located on the side of a small mountain just outside of Pai. We walked up a tall set of stairs with detailed dragon railings to get to the giant White Buddha. Make sure to dress appropriately if you want to make the climb up.
The second stop was the main reason why we chose this tour, and where we spent most of our day. Thum Lod Cave. Our tour guide handed us over to our new guide who take us through the cave using an old gas lantern. We crossed multiple bamboo bridges and went up and down an extremely steep set of stairs to check out the amazing sandstone rock formations. After exploring the first half of the cave, we reached the water and arrived at a row of bamboo rafts. The rafts hold three people and two guides. The guides used long pieces of bamboo to move the raft through the water. They pushed the bamboo into the water and pushed off the floor of the cave. There were so many fish in the water! Some as big as three feet. There was a small stretch in the cave where it was complete darkness except for the small gas lantern. Soon after, we were greeted by a large stream of sunlight. A second entrance to the cave. After a couple of pics, our guide took us back out the way we came in and we were on our way to the waterfall.
The waterfall was a nice pit stop on our way back to Pai. It wasn’t the biggest waterfall, but we still enjoyed the short hike down to the falls. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to go to both Land Split and Pai Canyon, so our guides drove us straight to Pai Canyon to watch the sunset. Even though it gets very crowded, we still recommend seeing at least one sunset from Pai Canyon when in the area.
Even though we could have used a little bit more than 24 hours, we still made the best of the time we had. I would say 3 days would be the best amount of time to spend in Pai. It is a bit more laid back than the other cities we’ve been to, and it would’ve been nice to spend more time relaxing and enjoying the food.