Pai

It's roughly three hours from Chiang Mai on a road famous for the number of curves in it — winding, mountainous, and relentless in a way that makes the trip an event rather than a transfer.

The whole thing is extraordinarily scenic and it feels never-ending, in the best sense. Ridge after ridge, mountains that simply keep going. There's something very pure about it. If you get motion sick, take something before you leave rather than halfway.

You come out of all that terrain into a flat, elevated valley, and the town sits in the middle of it. It's small. You can walk the whole centre comfortably, which is genuinely unusual for anywhere in the region worth staying in.

The food and drink are excellent and the prices are better than Chiang Mai, which surprised me and still does. For a town this size, the quality per baht is the best I've found in the north.

Pai is heavily foreigner-targeted, and that's the thing I like least about it. Walk the main streets and the overwhelming majority of faces are not Thai. The Thai community is absolutely there — it just lives in different parts of town, and the centre has been shaped almost entirely around visitors.

It also carries a hippie reputation that's largely earned. Most people are through for one or two days doing a fairly predictable set of things, mushrooms and weed prominent among them. None of that is a problem in itself; it just means the version of Pai most people describe is a very short and very particular slice of it.

Yoga and hiking, both of which the town is well set up for. And quiet — there are a lot of good places to simply sit, and it's one of the easiest places I know to do nothing deliberately. If you want somewhere to meditate without effort, this is it.

Outside town: Pai Canyon for the ridge walks and the sunset, several waterfalls within a short ride, the hot springs, the White Buddha above town for the view, the Land Split, and the bamboo bridge across the paddies. The canyon is the one I'd do first.

You can rent a moped and plenty of people do. You don't have to — the town is walkable, and a lot of people choose to walk specifically because it's safer.

That's not caution for its own sake. Pai is where a lot of people ride for the first time, and I've seen accidents. The ones I saw were low-speed and everyone was fine, but the pattern is real. Enforcement is light: riding without a helmet or a licence is common and largely tolerated, which means the only thing actually protecting you is your own judgement.

There is a moped riding school in town, and if you have never ridden before, use it. A couple of hours of instruction against a holiday you spend in a clinic is not a close call.

Winter is the best of it — December through the cool months. September, just after the rains, is the other good window and the air is remarkable: the clearest I have ever breathed anywhere.

Avoid burning season. Whatever you have heard about the smoke in Chiang Mai, Pai sits in a valley and it is meaningfully worse there. That's the one time of year I would tell someone not to bother.