No, don’t worry, we’re not lost, although we’re in a quite remote region of Thailand: Pai, a little village in the mountains between Chiang Mai and the border to Myanmar.

You reach the beatiful valley after a three hour journey on a curvy road (officially 762 turns) on a 15 seat minivan squeezed in between chinese people. The van is driven up and down the mountains by the thai cousin of Sebastian Vettel… Judging by the number of other vehicles he overtook he must have won the Grand Prix: Congratulations! The best thing when you arrive, is that you already know you are going to have to take the same road back to civilization sooner or later… 

You get your wet backpack from the roof of the van and off you go through the main street – an (almost) closed to traffic little road filled by small street vendors and cafés and little restaurants around them. There’s quite some tourist wandering about or buying some food or little souvenirs, in particular, many Chinese. Further down the road you can find all sorts of motorbikes for rent, and evidently the rentals do not require their customers to be able to ride motorbikes. Hilarious scenes can be observed by just waiting a couple of minutes in front of the biggest rental around town: people of all ages and gender (in particular many Chinese) trying to do their first meters on a motorbike and the rental staff running after them. ? The not so funny part of it: after these few meters they are let alone in the thai traffic and through the walking street ?. 

It’s a very charming little town, although in the last years it’s getting fuller and fuller in particular of Chinese tourists all hoping to get lost in Thailand. 

Did I mention there are quite a few chinese people up here? ? Well, “Lost in Thailand” is a chinese movie from 2012 which, according to the locals, changed the atmosphere in Pai dramatically.

After the film came out in 2012, the number of visitors in this village and its surroundings  increased significantly. From a few hippies looking for a quiet and remote place every now and then, it went to some hundreds of (mostly chinese) people a day being “delivered” at the central bus station, and causing panic on the few roads in the region. But still, we really enjoyed the landscape, the green sourroundings (it’s rainy season), the “trek” through the rain forest and the good food – as always in Thailand. It was definitely worth the trouble!

We recommend you watch the movie trailer first, though…?…