Paradise Direct

May I introduce the sexpat. You will know him by his flip flops dragging across the polished floor of the 7-11, his bald patch, his thin white vest. He sits at the front of restaurants that serve 100 baht burgers, leaning over to the waitresses nearby, telling them about America, telling them that he needs them to help him out. He is glassy-eyed, slack-mouthed and flake-skinned. Usually he carries a plastic shopping bag in one hand, a cane in the other. A skinny girl will follow a couple of steps behind. If you walk around a few sois after 8pm you'll hear her "hee hee hee!" echo down the alley.

And so I have landed back in Chiang Mai, which is really very nice, except for holes in the pavement and some funny smells. I've just come back from 26 hours in Pai, the mythical laid back mountain town. No funny business here please, there is a mosque. Four boys and I took a bus through spiralling jungle roads, bumping past towering green pulsing city of plant life twisting all sexy around everything, all of it growing on top of itself. Flowers hang open like mouths. Tiny houses made out of bamboo and palm leaves are being slowly eaten by the land. Mountains appeared suddenly, vastly, yawning out into the grey horizon. Rice fields and brown cows, then little huts behind big signs that say PAI IN LOVE, HAPPY HOUSE, SWEET DREAMS. We arrived at the tiny bus station and walked down the road, past little restaurants offering coffee and fried eggs. We checked in to the Riverside, all bamboo huts and hammocks.

We rented motorcycles, yes dad that is what we did, and I rode with a helmet on the back with a boy who had been riding motorcycles since he was 12. And he slowed down when I asked him to. I am unscathed, unlike one of the others who crashed into a car next to the rental place, burned his leg on the exhaust and had to pay off the driver 2,000 baht, or the other one who decided to go to a mountain summit to watch the sunset, drive into a pothole in the dark and bash up his foot.

We went to Pam Bok waterfall, a gorge full of mist and rushing noise. There was a very good rock for climbing up and jumping off, and a strong current that knocked one of the guys under water and swept him downstream. He is still alive, and probably not concussed. It was certainly a confrontation with a big natural force; water is in so many forms in this country, whether it's the canal around Chiang Mai, stagnant ground water in the village wells, in the waxy green of plants, or in deafening 30 foot falls.