mountains north of Chiang Mai to the fabled magical wonderland of Pai (pronounced bye). I had heard so much about this town – people always “meant to go for five days, but somehow I stayed for three months…” Hmm. “So what did you do there?” I'd ask. “Do there? Yeah, I don’t know. I can’t remember for the life of me what I did there.” Pai is known for its surrounding countryside full of 
though was so much more.After a very winding 4-hour climb up into the mountains – made so much more enjoyable by long chats with a fabulous Kiwi couple who were traveling through
gray of an incoming rain storm. I was only able to stay there for one night, sadly, so I figured I’d splurge a little. Pai is a pretty small town with a few main streets and a river that runs along one side. I decided to head towards the river to see if I could find a little bungalow. And bungalows I found…thatched huts all along the water’s edge with swinging rope and wood bridges traversing the thick, tan muddy water. I found a lovely place to stay tucked back behind a few riverside huts. My little one-room hut smelled of fresh, clean sheets and deep, dark wood. I was completely surrounded by the largest tropical flowers I’d ever encountered – red, orange, purple, thick, lush. My little hut even had its own little porch. I dumped my stuff and decided to take stroll and get a feel for the town.Before I came to Pai, my very dear friends, Jen and Michael, couldn’t say enough about a few little places they had discovered on their trip to the town. I was told that I must find Na’s Kitchen and Crazy Kitchen – that I couldn’t possibly go through my life without eating this food. Now, this town is full of the best little bars, cafes, and restaurants. And try as I might, I walked in every direction and couldn’t find either of the places I was told to go. It was blistering hot, so I thought I’d duck into an internet café to see if I couldn’t pull something up online. Asked the guy next to me, did he know where these places
were? Blank stare. No. Definitely not. Sigh. So, I sent Jen and Michael an email – did they happen to remember where they were? Long shot to get a pinpoint on a place in a town with such a floating sense of being. Could be long gone by now, I thought. I walked out of the internet café into the heat of the day. Walked up to the top of the street, and stopped. I just have this feeling, I thought. It’s got to be on this street. I walked back past the internet café, and wouldn’t you know it? Na’s was *right* next to the very place I sat down to get my bearings. Right next door. Ah, everything in Pai is so very meant to be.Na’s. How to describe my experience there. No, wait, experiences. (I ended up back for dinner, but that comes later in this tale.) The food was absolutely amazing. Open-air kitchen run by
these wonderfully kind and beautiful women. The food so fresh and bursting with flavor. I ordered way too much food for lunch – spring rolls, spicy lath nah and ginger iced tea. Since I was fully embracing the decadence of life in Pai, I decided to make my way through the iced tea menu which was blowing my mind – jasmine green iced tea, lemongrass iced tea, more ginger iced tea. I read and ate and drank for a couple of hours. When finally it was time to move on, I thanked my generous hosts and found a pay phone where I called a Korean woman named Cindy whose name I got from my friend Suah in Gwangju. Suah had met Cindy on her travels to 
I had hours before dinner, so I continued my wanderings around town. I found galleries and lovely cafes. I also stumbled on a great little artsy shop selling super funky postcards, t-shirts and bags called
Mitthai in Pai. Great artistic and crafty stuff, retro and super fun. I just kept walking down this one road, partly in search of a spa whose sign I had seen throughout town and partly mesmerized by the incredible sky that loomed ahead of and above me. The clouds shimmered in front of the sun that had begun to sink towards the horizon. The sky had darkened and turned a gray purple that I had never seen before. The jungle seemed to swell with sound around me.I found the turn off into the boutique hotel that housed the spa. Very swanky grounds. Spacious, dark teak wood and whitewashed buildings. As I approached the open air lobby, I saw a half dozen staff members standing beneath a great lychee tree. One young woman stood upon a bench holding a bamboo stick in her hands. She was thrusting one end of the bamboo into the
tree to knock free the fruit to the ground. The others around her were catching the falling fruit in their skirts and hats. When I walked up, they grabbed a branch and handed it to me, smiling and wai-ing to me as I graciously accepted the gift. So very thoughtful and sweet. I took one from the branch, twisted it open and popped it in my mouth, the juices running down through my fingers and along my wrists. The taste was so sweet, sticky, refreshing. “Oh, no” said the woman escorting me back to the spa. “We think they’re far too sour.” “Ah,” I said, “but where I have been, in 
lining the pool that acted as the centerpiece of the space. German couples and some other European men with their Thai girlfriends lolled around the pool or on their porches. Couples on their honeymoon, older people on vacation, men on fantasy adventures. Fascinating. I approached the blue house in the back which was the spa. As I entered, I came upon a lovely woman playing with a young girl. I was in such luck – everything was 30% off for some reason – so, I went all out. For three hours I think I paid $40. The woman took me back to an open air room surrounded by giant banana trees. The storm threatened in the distance, tropical winds blowing the curtains and the smell of jasmine across the room. The massage therapist was wonderful, the experience surreal. I had hoped the rain would come, but only dark clouds and thunder echoed through the room, a truly magnificent and surreal backdrop to the afternoon.As I was walking along the road, watching the deep gray and black clouds roll across the valley, a woman passed me along the path walking the opposite direction. She was tall, beautiful, relaxed. Though, she didn’t look Thai. She actually looked Korean to me, something that was a little odd
It was great to see Cindy and rather surprising, really. Her hippy appearance certainly was incongruent with my experience of Korea. She pulled up on her motorbike, and suggested we walk down the street to, wouldn’t you guess, Na’s Kitchen, for dinner. Ah, again! So wonderful. I can’t even tell you how incredible this food was. We had a great time at dinner sharing lots of funny stories about
Suah, learning about Cindy’s life in After filling our bellies with delicious treats, she suggested we go to a party with her friends.
Sure, a party sounds great. So, we hopped on her moped and headed out of town on the same road I had been on earlier that day. We arrived at her friend’s house – a former cinema converted into living space. What I found was not so much a party as it was two people hanging out on a porch with beer. And when I got closer, I realized that the beautiful woman who I had seen on the street would be my host for the evening. She was, in fact, Korean, and she was living in Pai with her husband. They’d been there for maybe 2 years. Doing what? I asked. Nothing, they replied. Absolutely nothing. The night was warm and quiet. The sounds of the jungle reverberated around us. We lounged on pyramid Thai pillows and drank Chang beer. Some Korean snacks were spread around the table. I suddenly felt more at ease and comfortable and safe than I had in the 5 days I had been in 
around me, the food, the company – I felt at home, strangely enough. We listened to this great, wacked out Korean music. We chatted as much as we could in English. And at a certain point, the man looked at me and asked, “You mind I smoke?” Huh? No. Of course not. Whatever. I certainly didn’t expect what came next. Out of his little can he started to pull small dried leaves which he then packed in to a glass bowl he pulled from his pocket. I almost died. Pot? You – a Korean – is about to smoke pot? Having lived in 
As the night wore on, and we grew more and more tired, Cindy drove me back to my riverside bungalow. After a tearful goodbye, I walked the path to my place with so much gratitude and lightness in my heart. I was asleep nearly the moment my head hit the pillow, lulled by the crickets and the soft sounds of chickens wandering the grounds.
I awoke the next morning ready for a new day. I had found myself at different times spontaneously breaking into tears throughout the past several days. Today, I felt bolstered by the night before, ready to explore the town a little more and find some space to heal a little more. I found a lovely spot for breakfast – some hippie rasta wheatgrass juice joint where I had a delightful organic meal and excellent coffee. I wandered down the street half looking for a Thai massage school and half exploring. I found the stretch of bars with Buffalo Exchange at the end. I discovered the natural store and restaurant right at the bridge across the river. It was this location that a tragedy had taken place nearly six months earlier. An farang girl (foreigner in Thai) was walking with her Canadian friend near the bridge. The rumor is that a drunk, off-duty police officer came out of a nearby bar, got into an argument with the two of them, and for reasons unknown, the officer shot the boyfriend and wounded the woman. You can read more about it here: http://www.andrew-drummond.com/my-work/investigations/death-in-pai/
I had missed the massage school by a few doors. I discovered the rather hidden entrance and walked along a gravel driveway up to a small yard just off the main road. Here, I was greeted by the most joyful, kind woman I had ever met. Her smile sent rays of warmth through me. She would be my massage therapist. She took me to a small room and began to work on me. It was my first traditional Thai massage, and it was super intense. The emotional release grew stronger as the work progressed. As she moved my limbs and stretched muscles and tendons, the sadness and pain that I had been so overwhelmed by for so long just started to pour out of me. Tears ran down my face and the safety of comfort of this kind Thai woman allowed me the space to release and let go of what I didn’t need anymore. When she was finished, she directed me to the steam room outside where I could stay for as long as I wanted.
In Thailand, steam rooms are usually small concrete or brick structures in which dozens of
different Thai herbs are packed into a space that is pumped full of steam. The aromatherapy experience within this space ranges from pleasantly mild to pungent and sinus-clearingly strong. I had that space all to myself. She wrapped me in a sarong and escorted me inside. I took a seat on the bench and began to allow the benefits of what I had just experienced in my body wash over me. Almost immediately, I was transported into a stream of memories, taking me on a journey all the way back to the first night I met Jim. It was an opening of a floodgate of emotions. I felt so very overwhelmed by what was happening. And as it was happening, I began to compose a letter in my mind, one that I would later write with more passion and intensity than anything I had composed before or since. The immediacy of the experience and the urgency with which I felt I needed to convey the journey was overpowering. Once the letter had been composed in my mind’s eye, I found some grounding in the steam room and emerged with some better understanding of the past two years.I said my goodbyes to my massage therapist. There was some profound change that took place there. This catharsis had given me new ground upon which to take the next step. With a little more than an hour before my bus back to Chiang Mai, I decided to continue to explore a little while before settling in to put to paper the words I had composed in my head. While walking up another street, I noticed a Thai woman sitting in a doorway, hand-embroidering
white shirts. Inside her shop were lots of peasant shirts and beautiful handmade goods. Not wanting to spend any more money, I nearly passed it by, but something in the jewelry case caught my eye. When I approached the counter and started a conversation with the woman and her partner, I noticed that her partner had on him dozens of pieces of Native American jewelry, items or turquoise and silver, with animal spirits and clearly Navajo roots. We engaged in a conversation about the pieces, and though I can’t possibly tell you where or why he had these pieces, I can tell you that they were beautiful people with a deep appreciation for the jewelry and its significance. In his case he had a number of black cuffs with turquoise embedded in them. I had never seen anything like them. Black coral, he said, from the depths of the Thai sea. It protects you, just as the turquoise does. One in particular caught my eye. And having emerged from my earlier experience with such a profound sense of self, I decided it was important to mark the experience with an object that held meaning and significance to me. I chose the black coral cuff that had first held my attention.As I left the store and made one last loop around the town before jumping on my bus back to Chiang Mai, I was truly awestruck by the past 48 hours. My emotions were running in overdrive. I was up and down so quickly that before I knew it, I was back again in yet another cycle. This town, though, had given me all that it possibly could. It gave me some space to let these emotions swirl around me. It gave me some time to savor the sweetness of new experiences and new understanding.
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