Remorse and Gratitude

Should you one day find yourself up in the mountains of Northern Thailand, beginning your journey from Chiangmai bearing west-northwest, following the main roadway’s gradual winding ascent up into jungle-clad mountains, some four hours into your drive you will suddenly find yourself turning down and rapidly descending until the dense foliage suddenly opens onto an idilic little valley. And there in that valley you will find a village called Pai.

I love Pai.

The Pai Valley is a magical place - one of a number of such I’ve had the fortune to experience in this life - one where the air shimmers a little different and its spirit of place infuses and infects the people who pass through and that all creates this impossible little bubble within which an alternate reality which is governed by its own set of rules exists outside the constraints of the domain of normal space time which you and I currently inhabit.

I will try to describe Pai to you now but know that no words of mine can do it justice. You will have to take it on my word that, although I’m describing someplace which your mind will convey into an image and a feeling, and although you might think this image you’re forming in your mind is in some sense an approximation for the place which I’m describing, Pai is in fact an impossible place which you will not appreciate nor understand until you, too, descend down the Thai mountains through that portal into another dimension.

So. About Pai.

Pai is tiny. It’s a village of some two thousand and some odd people - if official statistics are to be believed. Who knows what its reality is, as I suspect the Thai administrative authorities themselves have difficulty defining that place with words and numbers.

Pai is surrounded on all sides by verdant mountains which are briskly cold and wet and lush. Those mountains provide cover to the valley it cradles and the town which inhabits that valley, and the cover the mountains provide creates a lush and sunny and cozy climate oasis within which Pai sits.

There are a few lovely points of interests scattered around the valley, points of interest which should be totally ordinary and barely worth remarking were Pai any other place. I recall a big buddha statue to the north, although north might be south in my recollection of the place as cosmic cartography means little in that place, and there’s a majestic but somewhat sparsely visited teahouse at a nice lookout point high up towards the statue’s opposite end of the valley - let’s call that direction south. The valley’s main natural attraction is the specularly beautiful Pai Canyon which fills up every evening with what feels like must be all two thousand of the people officials would have you believe are in the Valley to catch that day’s sunset, although even a moment’s reason would tell you that obviously not all two thousand residents can possibly be here now. That canyon sunset is surely among the most beautiful you will ever witness, and though the canyon gets very crowded and navigating its people packed ridges seems precarious, the entire experience actually feels quite cozy and harmonious.

The village of Pai has one main street. That open air hub for the city is barely more than two blocks long - there’s no way the town would be able to sustain more than that - and every night this main street is host to a bustling night market full of food and music and merriment and Pai’s night market is, in my estimation, the greatest night market in the world. I really couldn’t tell you with words why it should earn that accolade, although I’m quite confident in my sentiment. It bears repeating again: words cannot convey this place.

Now, Pai is not Thailand. Some people who know of Pai turn their nose up at it precisely because Pai is not authentically Thai. And I agree! Thai, Pai is not! But I have generally found that the people who look down on Pai have never been to Pai, for an authentically Thai experience is really not the reason to seek out and journey to Pai. The magic of Pai is such that it creates a vortex of its own tiny reality, and that is what you are going there for. Pai is Pai, and it’s really great that this is the case.

Pai’s community is majority minority, an element I have found to be integral to many of the greatest communities I’ve come to know. Most of the people in Pai are expats and they come from all over. The expats come from China and Germany and Korea and South America and Australia and everywhere in between, I suppose. There are even a few Americans who’ve somehow found their way settling down up over there. To call Pai a hippie community would be the most expedient way to describe it - conjure for yourself the feeling that 1960s and 70s Berkeley must have had, roughly - but I don’t think “hippie community” quite does it justice. That phrase is somewhat reductive for what Pai really is. It would be more accurate to describe Pai as a community of refugees escaping the realities of the default world and the societal norms of the communities which Fate would have had them be born to so as to find spiritual solace in the Pai Valley’s magical alternate reality.

I visited Pai for the first time many years ago while I was on a solo backpacking trip through Asia. This was during my before days when I was but a young adult. I was full of adventure then, and my journey had no itinerary and no fixed return home date and my days were the stuff of hostels and beers and cigarettes with strangers and fleeting connections with fellow travelers and vague word of mouth pointers as to where I should venture to next. This is how I stumbled onto Pai in the first place. Pai was, and to this day remains, one of my favorite places on Earth. You should go sometime.

But anyway. There is a point to all of this. And the point is that I’m now about to tell you a story.

A couple years ago I went back to Pai with a buddy of mine. We had decided to check out Northern Thailand together, you see, starting in Chiangmai, and with fond recollection I told my friend about Pai, an impossible place up in the mountains. “We’ll rent a couple little motorbikes and we’ll pack down our stuff in the back of our bikes and we’ll go riding northward-ish and along the way we’ll stop over in Pai for a while and we can ride on through the region from there.” And so we decided to go for it.

On the evening that we drove down the mountain and into the valley we booked a stop at this modest little hotel which was down a narrow, hard to spot, little alley mostly comprised of locals’ homes and stray alley cats, and it was there in that alley by our hotel that we parked our bikes. We went walking down towards the main street and we stopped over in an empty pub (yes, pub - I’ve already told you Pai isn’t Thailand) and there my friend asked me with the smallest tinge of exasperation “now will you please tell me what it is we’re doing here.” And so I spun him a fanciful tale of our upcoming adventures - a tale which was verbose in my enthusiasm but sparse in detail, because truth be told I really did not know myself.

The next morning we went scouring for a mechanic who could fix up my bike (my bike had turned out to be a temperamental thing throughout this journey, hardly reliable, and stopovers to get it tuned and fixed turned out to be frequent) and with that done we got a bowl of Thai soup noodles, if you could believe it, for lunch and then finally we set off on our adventure.

We began with a detour to that empty teahouse with a nice view over the valley and took some photos and there we reversed a curse long ago conveyed, and we then traversed the valley once again towards a hippie circus commune I knew of from my time before. This commune is largely made up of expats, of course, along with some backpacking visitors who are in the know, as we were. This place is part event space, part performing arts training center, part community hall, and it has a lounge and a bar which might on occasion serve you a life rejuvenating drink. I will not speak the name of this place here so as to protect its sanctity, although I suppose you could find it easily enough if you wanted to.

But there we chose to split one refreshing drink and then we hung out at the bar-bungalow-circus-living-room-space-thing for a while waiting for our drink to settle. And then we were off.

We were a trail blazing duo, the two of us, mario karting through paradise on the lookout for wonder and adventure. We rode our bikes up and down and across the Valley of Pai, our environs zipping and melding and morphing around us in ever shifting stylistic landscapes. The magic of Pai really came to life in that moment, in all her colors and sensations and splendors. We followed a school bus to the edge of the village and then we slingshot out of the village to a quiet little roadside smoothie bar where we ate some wonderful fruit and lounged in soothingly creaking swings.

The day’s end was approaching, and so we jumped back on our bikes north(?)-ward to Pai Canyon, where we parked once again and joined the throngs of people through the ridges and the nooks and the precarious ledges and we picked out a spot to settle down with a view looking over the jungle to admire a perfect sunset. My buddy likes photos, and I dare say we got some great shots in the hour or two we basked there, and we enjoyed some fun moments of connection with some other backpacking transients immediately around us.

The sun had set, and something not often discussed but well known by adventurers to foreign magical places is how much the spirit of place changes in the transition from day to night. Scenes and roads that had already become familiar but a few hours ago were now confusing and in need of consideration and discernment - a difficult thing to do when you’re also riding a motorbike!

I was leading us back to our modest little hotel but by golly did I have trouble recognizing which of the little alleys off the main artery road was the one we sought. So I rode down that road, doubled back again when I knew I’d gone too far because, lo, we had reached the river, and I turned around and rode back up to the main street… darn, there I’d missed it again! This went on and on, at least three times which I clearly recall as I peered down unlit alleys passing by while attempting to decide which might be ours. My buddy followed me wordlessly up and down, unannounced U-turns from my part and all, and as our U-turns gradually grew tighter and I narrowed in on what surely must be the right alley I made my choice and took a left.

Now you might very reasonably say: Christophe, you could have simply stopped over and pulled up your destination on Google Maps, for surely that would have been much simpler and at least a little bit safer. And to that I would say: how reasonable of you indeed, and also no! Only in absolutely the most dire of circumstances would I have ever done such a thing. For can you only imagine how such crass an act as pulling out my phone would have been. It would have utterly soiled the magic of our day of adventure and serendipity and whimsy, just as our journey was coming to an end. Pa-tooey!

And in our questing and waywarding and to-ing and fro-ing and gradually narrowing in on a decision, lo!, find that alley we did. And so we rode down the final leg of our journey home, we parked our bikes and we doffed our helmets. And there in a moment of exhilaration at the day we’d just had, and as an act acknowledgment of our momentary disorientation just now, I grabbed my friend and gave him a great big hug and I proclaimed:

“Thank you for getting lost with me Will.”

And, you know, my friend Will said the strangest thing back to me. “You don’t have to apologize for getting lost.”

And so I told him what I’m telling you now, the point of this whole tale I’ve spun here: “Oh I’m not apologizing. There is nothing I regret about this day. Our adventure has been wonderful, and this was the perfect way to end the day. I’m thanking you for being with me for all of that.”

I realized something in that moment, and my adventure on that day in Pai taught me something profound. Something I’m sharing with you now about the duality of our humanity.

Remorse and appreciation.

Apology and gratitude.

These are but two sides of the same expression. Although we’ve been conditioned to think of them as opposite sentiments in fact they are differing manifestations of the same action: an acknowledgement of a moment which was shared and a living connection between people. An apology frames that moment looking back with regret, gratitude has the power to frame that same moment with fondness. Sometimes the lens of regret is appropriate and remorse is called for. But too often, it is not. Our actions, our experiences, and we ourselves need not be perfect to be deserving of appreciation and to have touched others richly.

Words matter, intent matters, and the intent that we convey with our words changes the quality of our connections with others and the memory of those connections.

Why, to this point in life, did I apologize so readily. And why do others expect apology so reflexively as to mistake the words I have just said. Will’s reaction was quite ordinary. I am well certain you yourself might have heard my gratitude as an apology.

Our connections are beautiful and the moments that we enjoy as humans both together and also as individuals are precious. We should not be so eager to express remorse, for those moments and those connections are the fabric that make up our experience and our lives. They ought to be treasured.

Since that day I make a conscious effort to apologize less, and I express my gratitude and acknowledge the people around me more enthusiastically. My relationships are richer and my connections are truer. The touch of my own soul on others is deeper, I think, and I can say with certainty that my life is brighter for the positivity that is reflected back to me in return.

Perhaps the boundary between remorse and gratitude is not as firm as our language would have us believe. Reality and perspective are tricky things. We can accept reality for what it is and, coming from a place of love, celebrate our shared experiences with one another fondly without apology for what more they might have been.

Pai is a magical place, and in that place I saw the world a little differently. There I learned something. I tell you this story so that I may not lose its gift to the vulgarities and inconsiderations of everyday life. And if you’ve enjoyed my story, or whether it’s made you pause and think, or if you might even carry a twinge of a memory of my tale into a moment in your future where it might strike opportune; well, then, how grateful I am for that.

And should you ever find yourself in Northern Thailand, whatever the reason, consider trekking northwest-ward from Chiangmai on your journey and making a stop to that impossible little village in that idyllic valley nestled within those cold and wet jungle-clad mountains. I dare say you will not forget it, and I believe you will be very glad that you did.