12.
I have my first Thai class with Meena from her hometown a couple days later.
Thalia has taken the bike to go to the beach and I’m at home when Meena sends me a text on Messenger.
She apologizes for the short notice but she’s in a spot in the village that has especially strong Wi-Fi.
Am I available for a lesson now? Well, it’s the middle of the work day, and you know what a workaholic I am, so I immediately say yes.
She video calls me and I open it. She’s sitting outside somewhere under a canopy, green and lush behind her, the light coming through in patches. I can hear what sounds like chickens in the background.
“Sawadee ka, Khun Mike!” she greets me, waving.
She’s wearing a tank top that shows off plenty of cleavage, especially when she tilts the phone down to check something, probably by accident.
“Sawadee krap, Kru Meena,” I answer. “So good to see you!”
And I mean it. I’m surprised by how nourishing it is just to see her face, especially smiling.
I ask about her mother. She’s doing well. She sleeps a lot but yesterday she was able to get up and move around the house.
I ask about village life. She tells me in Thai that it’s much cooler in her village than Phuket but that next month will be the rainy season. She tells me I should visit as soon as possible, because otherwise the roads won’t be passable for months.
“Really? I can come stay with you?”
“Yes, of course,” she says. “But you should understand the village here is quite simple. You won’t have many things which are normal for you. No electric. Only solar panel.”
“That’s alright,” I say. “I think I can manage.”
“Will your girlfriend be comfortable?” Meena asks.
“She’s remarkably adaptable,” I say.
“In Thai, please?”
“She’s uh, brap dua,” I say.
“Mee kwam brap dua, chai mai?”
“Exactly,” I say. “She’s adaptable. And she’s really excited about meeting you.”
“Really?” she asks, surprised.
I don’t exactly want to give away too many details. For all I know, Meena thinks of me only as a friend, a nice foreigner, and has no interest in me at all. Even if she does like me, that doesn’t mean she’d be interested in sharing me with Thalia.
“Yes, I told her about you,” I say. “She’s never been to the north of Thailand, and she’s a traveler who wants to have different experiences while she’s here—“
—which for me isn’t long enough.
“Chom chern ka!” Meena says. She’s welcome.
“I can check to see what flights are available.”
I’m sure they aren’t expensive. Flights inside Thailand usually aren’t. A trip to Bangkok is sometimes less than thirty dollars one way if you can buy at the right time. I’m not sure about Pai.
“You should not spend a lot,” she says, furrowing her brow.
“Mai pen lai,” I tell her. It’s nothing, no problem. “You’re letting us stay with you. That’s generous. Besides, I think it will be a good experience.”
She tells me she’s so excited, which in Thai translates to “woke up dancing.” I’m feeling just the same. She adjusts a strand of long black hair absentmindedly, something she can’t help but fidget with since she can see herself on camera. It’s so feminine and cute and it just makes me smile.
“What?” she says.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just happy to see you. Can I see the village?”
She switches the camera view and I see the forest all around her—dense jungle, stands of bamboo, thatch huts with corrugated roofs.
Then the camera pans up and I can see that the village is perched on a mountainside with this sweep of green valley below it.
Incredible. Mountains stacked behind mountains all the way to the horizon.
“Sut yord!” I say.
“Yes, really!” she says. “The top of the mountain.”
There’s a knock on the door behind me and Thalia slips in, still in her beach things, hair salt-damp.
“Thalia, I’m talking to Meena,” I say, handing her the phone.
“Hi!” she says. “Michael’s told me all about you. How’s your mom?”
“Okay, thank you,” Meena says.
“She’s offered to let us come stay for a few days,” I say. “How about next week?”
“That sounds amazing! Can’t wait, thank you so much, Meena!”
We chat a little more and then say our goodbyes.
“Meena is so sweet,” Thalia says. “And so cute. Right?”
“Definitely,” I say. “She’s gorgeous.”
“You think we’ll all get up to something together while we’re up there?”
“While we’re sleeping in the house of her sick, elderly mother?”
“Old people sleep deeply,” she says.
“No, old people wake up early and often. I should know.”
“Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?” she says, reaching down to pinch my side. “You have to seize the moment while you can. Like it’s a layer of side fat.”
I swat her hand away, then swivel out of my chair and grab her, picking her up and tossing her on the bed behind us. She squeals as I start taking off her clothes and mine. How’s that for seizing the day?
I find out later that there are no direct flights from Phuket to Pai.
Instead, we’ve got to settle for Chiang Rai and then take a four-hour van ride on Route 1095 to Pai.
The trek to Ban Pang Paek, the Lisu village where Meena’s family lives, is another thirty minutes or so from there.
It’s no problem. We’re in no hurry. We really can’t be in any hurry because the roads are so narrow and winding that if we moved any faster we’d be going over the cliffside, or at least throwing up from being tossed around as the van takes one switchback after another, the driver hugging the line the whole way.
Our driver doesn’t say much on the trip, but I notice he’s got a little gold Buddha figurine on the dashboard.
He also wears a medallion around his neck and when he cranes forward I can see he has a sak yant tattoo on the back of his neck—the kind traditionally applied with a sharpened bamboo reed by a monk, the chanting of blessings supposed to keep evil spirits and danger at bay.
So we clearly made the right move traveling with this guy.
The whole mountainside could burst into flames on both sides and with all the protection he’s got working for him, we’d just glide right through.
We make a pit stop at Coffee in Love, this famous cafe on the side of the mountain that most people traveling this road stop at.
It’s become so well known from a couple of Thai films that were shot here that every Chinese tourist in Pai makes the pilgrimage.
I ask the driver in Thai whether he wants a coffee.
He holds up a small can of Birdie, the canned coffee you can get at any 7-Eleven, without taking his eyes off the view outside.
The cafe makes a genuinely excellent cold brew using beans from the hillside farms nearby, where the elevation and the cooler air make for arabica of real quality.
Thalia takes selfies from every angle. I flip through a Lonely Planet that was left on the table.
“Gotta soak this up while we can,” I say. “It’ll be rustic living for the next few days.”
“I’m ready. Are you ready?”
“The only thing that really concerns me is the bed,” I say. “In Thailand, people like sleeping on really hard beds. Like, the tradition is to sleep on wooden slats. So when that’s your baseline, anything softer feels uncomfortable. Not sure if I’m ready for that.”
“Yeah, and there won’t even be a fan. Meena said there’s no electricity, right?”
“Nope. Not except for what you can collect with solar panels.”
“At least it will be dark, and quiet,” she says. “You think there will be monkeys?”
“Almost certainly,” I say. “The whole area around Pai is prime gibbon habitat. The forest is dense enough that you probably hear them before you see anything.”
She curls her feet under her on the chair and looks at the valley spread out below us.
“What would you be doing right now if you were at home?” I ask.
“Home home, or Phuket home?”
“Queensland.”
She seems surprised by the question, as if that version of home is something she has to conjure out of her distant memory.
“Nothing,” she says finally. “Probably just staring at my phone. Staring at this is better.”
“Way better,” I say. “I think that staring at green expanses like this is good for our psychology. It’s nurturing for us humans. It’s something to do with our evolution. It’s biophilia. The love of nature.”
“Biophilia,” she repeats. “I like that.”
We can’t stay too long since we’ve still got a lot of ground to cover.
It’s another hour before we get to Pai. The place is pretty popular with hippies and expats who come because it used to not be full of so many hippies and expats.
While some of the charm of being an undiscovered gem may have receded, the advantage is that it has some modern amenities that will make our experience quite a bit more enjoyable.
There’s a walking street and some decent restaurants and the general vibe of a town that’s decided to slow down completely and expects you to do the same.
We stop at a little family-run convenience store to get some bags of chips, candy bars and cups of instant noodles.
As she’s packing the supplies into her big travel bag, Thalia notices a cannabis leaf flag wafting in the breeze across the road.
We walk over and into a shop with brightly decorated walls.
The painted scene features a yak, the green-skinned giant from Thai folklore.
This particular yak looks especially stoned, his cross-eyed stare glazed and glassy. Fitting.
A young guy behind the counter looks genuinely amazed by the prospect of customers. He’s got six or seven jars on the counter and invites us to open anything that looks interesting and give it a sniff.
Technically, the laws around marijuana restrict it to medicinal purposes. But what actually constitutes medicinal use is left open to interpretation in practice. Generally, as long as you don’t try to take it out of the country or bother people by smoking in public, you don’t have to worry.