The Future of Pai
The following prediction was written in December 2007, with an update below.
I believe Pai will undergo massive and rapid change (even more than now!) as soon as there is some easy way to get here.
There is a newer, slightly less curvy road under construction from Chiang Mai through Samoeng and Wat Chan that may be able to carry real aircon buses, but that is not yet finished.
More ominous is the airport. It was paved, striped, and fenced as of 11 October 2005, and as of 1 February 2007, regular flights have begun. As of December 2007, service has expanded from one to two (weekday) or three (weekend) flights per day.
I believe that regular airplane flights will transform Pai in the most significant and irrevocable way it has seen since the road to Pai was paved. Remember, the airplane changes a harrowing, vomit-inducing 3-4 hour bus ride from Chiang Mai into a 20-minute blink of an eye with beautiful views. It brings Pai within only 90 minutes of Bangkok. That's less time than it takes to board the tour bus from Bangkok to the floating market or the Bridge over the River Kwai.
Suddenly, guesthouse owners will see that there is a whole new type of tourist who is willing to pay 4000 B or more per night, rather than the 80-250 B a backpacker will pay. Even better, this type of tourist loves to advance-book overpriced package tours from Bangkok or their home country, including lodging, food, air transport, and tours, increasing the profit to embarrassing levels. To this kind of tourist, the 1500 B airplane fare is insignificant. The "just two flights a day" we started with in late January 2007 will continue to swell past its current level into a deafening roar of "dream vacation hopper flights" from multiple carriers.
Guesthouse owners will be motivated to tear down their 40 natural-looking wood or bamboo huts to build 4 concrete, air-conditioned, view-blocking monstrosities and expect to make twice as much money. Restaurants will go upscale, and probably further and further away from local Thai cuisine, until the final death knell sounds with the arrival of baby arugula.
And lots and lots of businesses will do this. If there's one thing I've learned living full-time in Thailand for 3 years, it's that once a single Thai business succeeds at anything, all local business owners will swarm in and ferociously copy that idea, even it means hopelessly saturating the market so that none of them succeeds.
This probable outcome is sad for several reasons. First, the new aircon resort construction will further erode the beauty of Pai valley. Second, everything will become more expensive to the point that nearly all locals, including not only the thousands of Burmese immigrant workers who farm all our food and build all our buildings, but also many Thai families who have lived here for generations, will be forced to move further and further away from downtown Pai. Third, at the end of the process, all we will have will be a lot of empty hotel rooms and bankrupt Thais (it's great for the hardware store, though). Fourth, and perhaps worst of all for me, is the kind of tourist who tends to book those package tours...
In my experience of travelling Thailand for 7 years, I can say that high-end package tourists tend to be the most un-inspring and un-creative people on the planet. They do not play music, write, sing, or create anything and they share nothing with those in the places they visit. They arrive at a place with stiff preconceptions ("Where are the long-necked people?" "What kind of costume do the Karens wear?") and their goal is to consume something that matches those preconceptions. Their crass tour operators carefully route them from one artificial, profit-optimized, completely spiceless and tasteless Khan Toke dinner-dance to another. Rarely do they ever interact with real locals who are not somehow paying or receiving a commission. These folks spend thousands of dollars to see a place and somehow manage to completely miss it.
In fact, by the sheer dumb force of their cash, these tourists often end up twisting a place to meet their preconceptions. Just look at what has happened to "hill tribe treks" to "tribal villages" out of Chiang Mai(hint: there are no long-necked people anywhere near Pai, and the Karens in the Pai area haven't worn tribal costumes for decades except in rare private ceremonies. They are real-life human beings, not zoo animals for the government and tour operators to exploit, and they have chosen to integrate into Thai society in this way).
When something unexpected happens, like a power or vehicle failure, high-end package tourists bitch and whine rather than taking this ideal opportunity to observe real local culture at its most inventive and amazing. They curl in fear away from the delicious and rare local delicacies they see at the market—one of the freshest, most sensual treats of real local culture—in favor of the Continental Breakfasts and "safe" Thai food cooked by their Bangkok-run hotel. When restaurant or hotel service is not up to the standards they're used to from the Holiday Inn, they get rude and arrogantly superior with the staff, behaving in a way they never would with anyone at home.
Hippie backpackers may smell a little funny sometimes, but for the most part they treat the locals with respect, they fearlessly explore the food, art, and adventures of actual locals, and, as it should be clear from the rest of this website, they interact with the locals in wild and creative ways to make the place even more interesting for all. Package tourists and their cash have a chilling, almost anesthetizing, effect on this interaction because they quickly price out both the locals and the backpackers. This is the main reason I am sad about the future of Pai. It is ironic that many of the package tourists will be sold, in part, on the "whimsical and ecletic" nature of Pai. Too bad that, by the time they get here, it will be gone.
Why hasn't this happened yet? The current, dodgy transportation options to Pai are filtering most of those people out. But the airport will change of all that.
I hope I am wrong.
2010-2012 Update: Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The high-end farang tourist flood I predicted has not yet happened, and flights remain around 2 per day (5 in the high season). There are still rumors of a runway expansion that will allow larger airplanes from Bangkok to fly in, but that has not yet happened. Unfortunately, the alternate phenomenon we got instead was the Horrific Bangkok Thai Swarm, and you can read all about it in this section.