I hear there are tons of things to do and see around Pai, but who has the energy to do them in this intense heat? From 10am to 5pm the sun blares, burns the dusty pavement into a glowing white, makes it unsafe to go out without a bottle of water in hand, beats down its intensity into a small ache in the center of my brain and saps my energy completely within a ten minute walk. So I go to the pool.
The pool is a community pool that costs $1 to enter and serves food and drink at the bar, a convenient 10-minute walk away. It's big enough to swim laps in and has a hazy green sheen that seems safe for disease-free swimming. There are only a few people who show up before three p.m after which the travel crowd begins to trickle in. They sit in clusters on straw tanning mats on the grass, the girls spread out their tie dye rayon wraps on the mats and the boys sit with their elbows on their knees smoking cigarettes and sipping coke. Most of the conversation happens in the pool where the heat can be ignored. The grass is hard and crawling with a variety of ants, many of which find their way up and over your legs and arms as you try to read a book, squinting to understand the black words vibrating against the glowing white of the page. It would be better if they had reclining chairs rather than straw mats, but being here is better than being burned alive in the street.
The music at the pool is good. Well...It has a hippie flare, but even Dave Matthews is a welcome treat after more than a few doses of blaring Asian pop. And then there's the 70's mix on rotation, including the Shaft theme and Superfly, but that does get tiresome after the fourth rotation. So, I took a break from the pool yesterday, spent most of the day reclined in the shade reading a book, except for meals which forced me to sit upright. And then I had to shower and dress to meet friends for dinner, the big event of the day.
We ate at Petit Poulet, the only Indian Restaurant in town. You sit on mats on the floor and eat your curry by candlelight, jazz music playing in the background. Decidedly pretentious if you plunked the restaurant down in SoHo, but not on a side street of Pai with nothing on the menu priced over $1. I had a pumpkin and chick pea curry. The chick peas were a bit undercooked, but with only one woman working in the kitchen and a restaurant full of hungry people, I had to give her credit anyway. She also served the rice in the shape of a teddy bear.
And now I'm off the the pool again, the last day of the Shaft theme song and batting ants from my arms and legs on my bamboo mat in the sun. I'm sure I'll be missing it all tomorrow as I sit on the hot bus back to Chiang Mai and wait for the night train that will take me back to Bangkok, the city that retains heat like no other. But also the city that has air-conditioned department stores like no other.
