Sunday, January 16, 2022
7:30 a.m. Room 11, Lilu Hotel
Pai, Thailand
This will almost certainly be my last morning at the Lilu Hotel. My Mystery Benefactor booked an additional four nights for me at this hotel, and that time is up today. I’m pretty sure I want to spent today in Pai as well. I don’t have a specific place I want to visit today, but I’d like to spend the day getting caught up on some YouTube stuff and relaxing and getting prepared for moving on. In any event, the weather is probably awful for being on the road. It has been raining heavily most of the morning. I can still hear water falling outside. The forecast is calling for showers and thunderstorms today. I continue to be personally offended by that. I’m so annoyed that once again my mood is being controlled by weather forecasts. The forecast indicates the sun might come out tomorrow. Then there are a few days of mixed sun and cloud and the chance of rain. And then the sun comes back out for the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. And that is promising at least. Those are the days that I will be riding back to Mae Sot, assuming all goes well.
I could probably book this room at the Lilu for another night if I wanted the convenience of just staying in this room, but it is an expensive place, and outside my normal budget and normal lifestyle. So I will probably move. I don’t mind that. I have the packing process figured out, and it doesn’t take much time or effort to pack up. And I can find lots of interesting places to stay for half the price of this mini-suite at the Lilu. I could even stay at the Diamond Guest House right around the corner. Leon stayed there for 400 baht per night. And the place looked fine. Nothing special, but it’s close. Or I could try to find a place that is more interesting and more in keeping with the tone of Pai. I’m looking in particular at Mr. Jan Guest House for 335 baht per night or the Villa de Pai for 495 baht.
And the plan was to go to Chiang Mai on Monday, but I’m rethinking that plan a little bit. I’m a bit intimidated by the big city of Chiang Mai. There’s just too much going on there. Instead, I might go to the smaller town of Chiang Dao to the north first. I read that it has a nice setting. And there appear to be some reasonably priced but nice hotels there. The ride there is also supposed to be beautiful. I was reading about that in an article yesterday about the best of the Mae Hong Son Loop. I guess Chiang Dao is considered a kind of detour on the main loop. I’d like to see the place.