“I went to Pai for three days and ended up staying a week”.
This is something that you read when you do any research on the small mountainside town of Pai, Northern Thailand. So in sticking with tradition – I went to Pai with enough clothing and a plan to go for two days and ended up staying for two weeks.
The area, surrounded by mountains, natural forests and rice fields, is a picturesque escape 130 kilometers north of Chiang Mai. The road from Chiang Mai to Pai (and onto Mae Hong Son), is a renowned mountain pass with, according to the souvenir T-shirts for sale in Pai, 762 curves. Arriving in Pai you’re presented with a host of accommodation options from cheap hostels catering to backpackers, to medium priced bungalows, and premium hotels and guest houses built onto the river or onto the side of the mountains.
About Gareth Pickering
After running my own advertising agency in Johannesburg for 10 years, I decided that I needed to do something else. I sold the business to my partner at the time and left on a 6-month trip to Asia to decide what to do next. That was 4 years ago.
I now travel full time and aim to live as many perfect days as I can.
I set up The Freedom Fighter in 2015 as a travel blog and it has since grown into a community of like-minded people looking to improve how they live and separating their earnings from their time.
Along with a partner, I recently launched an ongoing project called Ignite. Ignite is a 6-month masterclass that helps people set up and launch a business that teaches on the internet.
I am also a partner in another e-learning platform called Keep It On Core. An online tuition service that assists high schools students to improve their Math grades.
I think that the two most important days of a person’s life are the day that they’re born, and the day that they figure out why they were born.