In the 1980s, Pai was an unknown village no more than dot on the map in northern Thailand, without paved roads or accommodations for visitors. A traveler in Chaing Mai suggested we visit this laid-back village surrounded by jungle and opium poppy fields. I was traveling with my boyfriend and another traveler, and arrived looking to experience the hill tribe culture. We talked with locals until we found two young men willing to take us into the hills, in exchange for supporting their opium habit. 

Our first few hours on the trail led us to a Chinese refugee camp inside the Burma (now Myanmar) border. There were no border crossings or delineation between Thailand and Burma, but at that time, we knew it was illegal for us to be there, but then so was the entire refugee camp and all of its inhabitants. We were offered pig blood which we refused and our guides bought a bag full of opium  and a pocketful of tobacco.

From then on, they packed and lit their pipe every 30 minutes for the following three days. After six hours of bushwacking through thick jungle with no sign of trails, we arrived at a village of bamboo and palm leaf huts on stilts. We were officially off-the-beaten path. The inhabitants welcomed us, touching our skin and hair, and marveling at our clothes and shoes. They invited us to climb the bamboo ladder into one of the huts where they started a fire in a pit at the center of the floor and began cooking rice. They passed an opium pipe around the room like it was a box of See's Candy that everyone naturally helped themselves to. 

The women cooked and the men smoked. When the rice was ready, they added spices to it for themselves and our guides, and sugar to ours as a special treat. They were very proud of their sugar.

Apparently opium makes you throw up - don't ask me the amount or timing of this hurling - but after dinner, anyone who had to hurl simply split the bamboo flooring with their fingers and spewed their upchucking rice between the floorboards to expecting pigs below.

We slept on the bamboo without covers and hacked our way to a private spot in the jungle when we had to relieve ourselves.