The last few weeks I’ve been wondering if it was possible to take public transportation the places I was headed. My motivations were a mix of things: eco-friendliness, gas prices and a desire to explore. Mind you I think high gas prices may just save the country and the planet in lots of ways but that’s a subject for a different time. Several weeks ago I started looking to see if there was a public transit alternative available to the places I was going. It started with trying to find if there was a public transit option to get between my two “homes” in Idyllwild and Long Beach. As I expected before beginning my research public transit doesn’t reach Idyllwild… not even close. So I looked deeper wondering if I drove down the mountain to Riverside could I there pick up a Metro-link train and get to Long Beach. I discovered, again as expected, that if I drove about 45 minutes to Riverside it was indeed possible to catch a Metro-link train there from which I would then need to travel Union Station in LA where I could transfer to the Metro. Metro-link would take about 1:30 to get to Union Station. A short ride on the Metro Red Line followed by a ride on the Metro Blue Line would then get me to the Long Beach Transit Mall. Metro time, a little over an hour. From the LB transmit mall I would then take a short 3 mile bus ride would in fact reach home in Long Beach. About 15 minutes on the bus.. Driving door to door would take me about 2:15. If I drove the 45 minutes to the nearest train station it would then take me an addition 2:45 to get long beach. Or a total trip time of 3:30 hours door to door assuming I wouldn’t have to wait between connections. Waiting between connections it would easily take over four hours. Mind you because the public transit system in Southern California is so fractured there is no one online search engine that can actually put this trip together. It required separately searching Metro-Link’s website, LA Metro’s website and LB Transit’s website… of course that was after I figured out which website to search, which for someone completely unfamiliar with Southern California’s public transit system took quiet a while as well. Someday maybe they’ll all get incorporated into Google Transit, which is amazing, but for now it’s a nightmare to figure out. I think in the end it took me longer to figure out how to make the trip than it would have to take it… which I decided not to do anyway.

A few days later I tried to figure out if I could take a bus from Long Beach to Aliso Viejo (South Orange County). If I was willing to walk a couple miles it was indeed possible and would only take me three hours to get where I could drive in 45 minutes… Fortunately this time, Orange County’s transit system is on Google Transit, so figuring it out is quick, but again it doesn’t make a very appealing way to get there. Especially since it would require a couple miles of walking even though there is a bus stop literally in front of Elena’s in Long Beach and on the corner of the public park I was trying to get too.

Over the last several weeks there were other futile explorations until I woke up today with an idea for a different approach. Instead of trying to figure out how to get to places via public transit that I needed or wanted to go, I decided to figure out where I could get to using the public transit system and then what I might want do there. So I walked out Elena’s front door and got on the bus which I knew before getting on would take me to the Long Beach Transit Mall, from which I was 99% sure I could get on the Metro Blue Line to LA. After 15 minutes of waiting for the bus, 15 minutes of riding the bus and maybe 5 minutes of waiting for the train I was on the Blue Line headed into Los Angeles. I wasn’t exactly where I was headed, but I figured that I could always just turn around and go home if I ended up somewhere lame… fortunately I didn’t.

Originally I planned on just trying to make it to union station and then walk around down town a bit, see what I found and then head home. However about 20 minutes into the ride on the Metro Blue Line a different destination came to me, Chinatown. The Blue Line made it to Metro Center, somewhere I may explore next time. After exiting the train however I looked at a map and determined that indeed if I transferred to the Metro Red Line I’d make it to Union Station as originally planned and if I then transferred to the Gold Line and traveled just one more stop would indeed reach Chinatown. I arrived in Chinatown a little over two hours after getting on the bus in Long Beach. Driving would have taken a little under an hour depending on traffic and not counting time it’d take to find parking. Which today, being a weekday, wouldn’t have been bad. All told the round-trip cost me $6.90, and that is in part because I was lazy and not sure where I’d go so I bought a Metro day pass for $5.00 even though it might have been slightly cheaper buying individual tickets. The bus was $0.90 each way. All told I went to Chinatown and back, had some great food, practiced a little of my mandarin (mostly listening as I’m still shy about speaking it) and had a great adventure… all things I find lacking in my life back in the USA. For comparison spending on which of my cars I took driving there and back would have cost about $16 in gas and require about $3.50 for parking, so let’s call it $20.

I learned to things today, first to think of public transportation in Southern California from the standpoint of where one CAN go, rather than as a means to get somewhere specific, and second that blind adventure can be had in the USA with fun results

My couch surfing host’s driver gave me a ride to the bus station. I planned to catch one of the many daily buses to Pai. Unfortunately the faster and more comfortable minibus I hoped to catch was already full so I ended up waiting in the bus station for an hour and half for the next bus, a local bus. The two primary ways of getting to Pai are by minibus, faster and slightly more expensive, or by local bus, slower and slightly less expensive. Frankly the difference in cost wasn’t enough to sway me either way, nor the difference in comfort which is quiet relative on such a twisty road. Catching the earlier mini-buss was mostly just about getting there as soon as possible to start the search for somewhere to sleep. Like many popular backpacker destinations most guesthouses in Pai don’t take reservations. The guesthoueses just trust that as one guest leaves another is likely to show up looking for a room. At any given time half of the guesthouses will be full, but walking past a few door to door you’ll easily find one with space. The guesthouses know from experience that most people do not stay a predetermined amount of time and they don’t want to get into the position of having to tell someone to checkout because someone else is comming. Here in Pai many people stay for weeks… or even months. Talking to one GH operator they said the longest guest they’ve had was 8 months and counting. Most people staying that long though get out of the guesthouses and just rent an actually house. Anyway I ended up on the local bus.

I like local buses they always have the most character. Having the most character is really a euphemism for being least comfortable and having the greatest number of things falling off of them. Seriously though I always like the people better on the local bus, it’s typically a mix of locals and travelers, unlike the minibuses which tend to be 100% foreigners. Well, let me clarify and say I like the local buses for day trips, over-night trips become a different story all together although in that case I’d really prefer a trains and then VIP (sleeper) bus…. I digress… On this local bus I met some fun local guys who very much wanted me to go have a beer or twenty with them as soon as we got to Pai. I kept telling them I had to find somewhere to sleep first and that after finding a room I’d be happy to join them in there debaucery, but they didn’t want to wait… Although really there was no waiting really involved since they were already drinking on the bus.

I was actually a bit surprised by the two local guys I befriended on the bus, namely because they looked typical local for the area yet on the bus ride one whipped out a iBook and started playing music from it for his friend. I took the opportunity to ship out one of my cameras memory card and ask for some Thai music which he was very happy to do. Thai music is a interesting mix… I’ve never been good at describing music, but they listen to the standard international popular fair (from Christina Aguilera to Rappers I’ve never heard off) as well as a Thai version of that sort of music… most of the Thai music tends to be swoony love songs. Talking to him more I learned he works in marketing and graphic design, but I didn’t get much more than that. It left me wondering what marketing and graphic design looked like in Northern Thailand.

On arrival in Pai I started to my search for a bed. I’d gotten to town fairly late in the day and it took longer than I expected to find a room. It didn’t occur to me until later but I got into town on the first day of a big Thai holiday weekend… hence the local Thai’s on the bus coming home from city jobs for the weekend. Eventually the nice people at Good Life, a restaurant I would come to know and love, helped me find a bed in a dorm room a few doors down from them. It’s pretty typical that when one guest house is full they’ll point you towards their friends guest house that has space, which make the searching much easier. The dorm room was good enough for the night to set my bag down and allow me to search unencumbered the next day for something better. Now I could go back to good life for a well earned beer and dinner.

Good Life has a great setup. They only have a handful of rooms, maybe even just a handful that is missing a few fingers. Their restaurant is small and cozy, highlighted by two large community tables, a long bar with swings instead of chairs and another community table surrounded by floor cushions for seating. It serves a pretty simple menu, a little Thai food, a little western food, and lots of beverage options especially in the Tea, Coffee and fresh fruit shake/juice section. It was swinging on a chair there that I met two women, Lucky and Sarah. They helped educate me on the layout of Pai and what was going on around Pai. On there advise I promised to check out the bungalows just outside town on my planned search the next day.

In the morning I had breakfast again at good life, again bumping into Sarah who was there for her morning coffee served in a French press. Then before it got to warm I took my walk to explore the town in better detail by daylight. It doesn’t even take an hour to walk every street in Pai and having not found anything I loved, I started the walk out of town over the river. Over the river there are dozens of bamboo bungalow operations, some look like bamboo versions of tract homes back home. I walked further and finally found a wonderful bamboo bungalow at a place called Eden Garden. It is next to the more expensive an posh Sun Hut. It is kind of a miniaturized version of Sun Hut. Where Sun Hut has 5 hammocks around a large garden to relax in, Eden has 2 around a very small garden. Where Sun Hut has a full restaurant/cafe, Eden has a few snacks available if you can find someone to sell them to you. For half the price and the ability to walk next door I was quiet happy with Eden Garden. So happy in fact that my two or three days planned in Pai quickly turned into a week…

So these are just a couple of random photos from that I took the first few days in Pai… I do just love funny signs. It constantly amazes me in places like this where there are endless numbers of fluent and native English speakers that no one every seems to bother to ask one of them to proof read a sign or a menu… The Thai’s certainly do care about keeping you safe.