Life in Pai

You might have noticed the blogs have stopped. Or you might not have ;-)

The reason is pretty simple- we have settled into life here in northern Thailand, as one might do when we actually decided to live here. We spend a fair bit of time in our beautiful little thai-style house, playing with the kids or trying to encourage them to play with each other. Some days are better than others, but we certainly have the feeling that the two are "growing into" each other. Oscar certainly loves following his brother, and finds some of his silliest actions extremely funny, as only brothers (or at least children, as opposed to their parents) can. Even though one of our goals with this year was to spend more time with the kids, seeing that comradery grow has been one of the unexpected bonuses of our time here. We were tossing up whether to put Niklas in the local private bilingual school here for the last two months before we leave Thailand, which would have a number of advantages in terms of our free time, preparation for real school, and play-friends his age, but ultimately decided we didn't want to give up the chance to spend this time with the kids, as stressful as that 24/7 engagement can be sometimes.

Therefore, this post won't be full of amazing images of Thailand, but more of what it's like for us to live here. I would actually like to do a "day in the life" post in the near future, to give people more of a palpable look at what it's like.

Let's start though with the parts that make Pai nice to live in. Although Pai is firmly entrenched on the tourist and backpacker trail in Thailand, it still has lots of elements of Thai rural life. Pai is situated in a valley, and once you're out of the town centre, you are surrounded by those mountains and surrounding vegetation- rice fields, occasional banana or mango orchards, or simply forest. There are also several rivers and waterfalls that feed into the valley. The rice fields are the most photogenic of those attractions, especially the ones with mountains in the background, and those are the ones where the tourists often stop and take a photo of what I'm guessing is their only brush with rural Thai life. Considering how attractive the nature is around Pai, it is somewhat surprising that there isn't more accommodation away from the centre, but that brings us to one of the other nice parts of living in Pai- the availability of market options. Not only do you have the local markets, which are on every day, but there is also the big Wednesday market, where villagers from the local hill tribes come to to sell their local wares (almost exclusively vegetables and other agricultural produce). It sounds banal, but this is a luxury you don't often get to experience as a tourist- whether you might be in the islands down south, or in one of the markets in the bigger cities. And these markets exist alongside a couple of supermarkets that cater to the extremely important and necessary wishes of a western tourist family- muesli, peanut butter, nutella, noodles, and the like. Very important for keeping the kids (and adults who get bored of stir-frys and curries) happy. In short, it's easy to find lots of things we want here- both discoveries and comforts.

So- the people. Life isn't "living" without people, and they become more important when you are travelling, and (for me) more important when travelling with kids. And the more you talk to people around Pai, the more it becomes apparent that that is what makes Pai special for so many long-term residents/travelers: the people and by extension the community. We might think we got lucky here in finding a way to get in touch with this community so quickly- at a place called Shekina Garden- but in retrospect our experience seemed to be "typical"- Pai has a reputation of being a very welcoming place whether it be to short-term visitors or long-term travelers. That is doesn't make a big distinction between the two might well be one of the reasons that makes Pai such a unique, beloved place or destination.
We have been able to build some valuable relationships for ourselves and the kids here, although it takes a bit of work- one of the things about being in a traveler's place is that with people constantly coming and going- being able to make adjustments and find new contacts becomes crucial. One can look at that in a negative way and say that you are *always* having to build new relationships, or one can look at it as the new "normal"- that's just the way things are, and in fact meeting new people is a great thing about travelling (and "life"- see above). As you might guess from the above, most of our contact with people is with westerners, either travelers or long-term residents. We just haven't made too many Thai friends, probably mostly due to our complete lack of learning any conversational Thai.

That leads somewhat nicely into, not the "bad" exactly, but what I think might be better here. Learning Thai, as I thought we might do before we came, was a pipe dream- we just haven't had the spare time to dedicate to it. To have made an attempt, we would have had to give up a fair bit of "non-kid" time- evenings and such- that we just weren't prepared to do. Time here in Pai without the kids has been at a bit of a premium given the lack of organised care- so we have had to organise our own. And we now have a relatively nice rhythm where we have a babysitter twice a week as well as someone one evening a week. And that's in addition to when we meet up with other families. Having only a limited amount of time to spend either alone or together as a pair has meant that pursuing any other serious projects (such as volunteering or similar) has been practically impossible. A bit of a shame, as it was also something I imagined before we came here. I have managed to continue my book editing work though, and we have managed to free up some hours together on a weekly basis, so I am not being overly critical here...

This blog is now at the maximum length I like to write, so- TO THE PHOTOS!