Quotes of the Day

Pai?" that's the quizzical response many Thais give when foreigners ask for information about this quaint, little burg set in a pastoral mountain valley 135 kilometers northwest of Chiang Mai. "You mean Phrae?" they ask. No. The savvy foreigners mean Pai, which, until recently, was one of northern Thailand's better-kept secrets.

Pai was a cloistered region until the Japanese carved out a dirt transportation trail from Chiang Mai to Burma during World War II. Back then, the journey Pai-ward from Chiang Mai took three to seven days by elephant or on horseback. That was the route taken by former Kuomintang soldiers and their families who fled China after the communist takeover in 1949. The immigrants now own many of the charming teakwood houses and businesses in the four-road town; local Thais disparagingly call them jiin ha (galloping Chinese).

To this day, getting to Pai demands initiative. The Thai government widened and paved the endless series of hairpin bends in 1980, but the stomach-churning journey from Chiang Mai still takes two to three hours by private van. Adventurous budget travelers were the first foreigners attracted to Pai's idyllic isolation, burbling streams, cylindrical haystacks and manicured fields of garlic and soybeans. If you overlook the thatched-roof bamboo huts, Muslim mosque—some of the KMT were Muslim Chinese—and Buddhist temples, the place looks almost like a Monet painting.

Maybe that accounts for the disproportionately high number of local businesses with a French ambiance. Restaurants Chez Swan and Lek's Pause-Café, the Élite Galerie, and Latino Swimming Pool—a funky pool-and-nightclub complex just outside town—all have a Francophone presence behind the scenes. For tips on the hottest food and entertainment venues, ask resident expats. They wear berets and hang out smoking cigarettes in cafés.

There isn't a lot to do in Pai, which is part of its allure. You can rent bicycles, motorbikes or jeeps and explore the several temples, waterfalls and hot springs scattered throughout the valley. Or you can just hang out. "The distractions here are the ones you make for yourself," says Daniel Eiland, a twentysomething Thai-American musician at Latino Swimming Pool who moved to Pai from Chiang Mai several years ago. A wander through the daily afternoon market on Rungsiyanon Road offers a great window on Pai-style multiculturalism. Wizened Karen hill-tribe grandmas with dark turbans wrapped around their heads sell hand-embroidered crafts on the sidewalk. Teenage Lisu girls in their traditional vivid tunics and black trousers—accessorized with frilly pink socks and plastic sandals—use their motorcycles as shopping carts for the fresh produce sold by Shan and northern Thai curbside vendors. A robed and skull-capped young man peddles authentic chocolate croissants under a hand-lettered "Muslim Homemade" banner. His cousin, who presides over the adjacent gun-and-tackle shop—which also sells herbal tea—is barely visible behind her black chador.

Wearing Thai fisherman's pants, midriff-exposing tops, dreadlocks and piercings, international budget travelers fit right into Pai's colorful ethnic potpourri. But Pai is now also making its way into the itineraries of mid-range tourists. They'll be hard-pressed to spend much. Restaurants are universally cheap and even so-called expensive accommodation is amazingly affordable. A top-of-the-line riverside bungalow—a large tree house on stilts set amid lush gardens—at the long-running and slightly mildewed Rim Pai Cottages goes for about $27 a night.

Pai is the flavor-of-the-moment in Thai travel and lifestyle magazines and is being hailed as the "Ubud of Thailand" in similar travel publications overseas. So far, Pai is retaining its charm. The 3,000 local inhabitants still display the unconditional warmth and friendliness toward strangers that were once the hallmark of Thai hospitality everywhere. Motorbikes have replaced elephants as the primary mode of transport, but the panniers hanging from the backs of those Honda Dreams are still made of woven bamboo. And as you stroll through the outskirts of town in the late afternoon, the only sounds you hear besides the 5:15 p.m. call to prayer at the mosque are birdsong.

• JENNIFER GAMPELL
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