Pai is a small town (2006 population 2300) in Mae Hong Son, about a 4-hour drive from Chiang Mai. I've never been there: In fact I'd never heard of it until a few years ago. But it is a very major tourist destination. A large portion of the backpackers one sees in Chiang Mai are either on their way to Pai, or just coming back. Once it was a little-known very scenic destination, but now I see pictures of almost wall-to-wall people. A (hill-people) woman I knew went there often, in part to get some sort of "mushroom juice"! My wild days are in the distant past, so I have no report to offer on this "mushroom juice."
The reason I mention Pai will appear after a long and general report on "Ethnic Diversity" here, e.g of tourists.
Ethnic Diversity in Thailand
In rural Central Thailand Farangs are rare and almost all the population is Thai. The more affluent middle class has a very high portion of people with Chinese ancestry, but they've mostly lived in Thailand for generations and don't stand out unless you notice Chinese religious motifs.
(Of course even "Thai" covers a broad range. I chatted with a woman born in Buri Ram who was fluent in FOUR languages since childhood: Thai, Isaan, Khmer and Suay. Isaan and Suay are closely related to Thai and Khmer respectively, but they are classed as distinct languages, NOT as dialects. She lives in Chiang Mai now but I didn't ask how fluent she was in Kam Mueang -- the native language here, close to Central Thai but again a distinct language, not a dialect.)
But in urban areas, especially where tourists congregate, ethnic diversity is high, both among tourists, expat workers and retirees, but also among workers. Just as many of the dishwashers and motel maids in California speak Spanish instead of English, so the down-market restaurants in Chiang Mai are often staffed by people who may speak English, but little or no Thai -- with "Tai Yai" perhaps the most common such ethnic group here in Chiang Mai. In addition to "Hill People", who've lived for generations in Thailand but atop remote mountains, there are ethnic groups that seem to migrate between Burma and Thailand. (The political, military and ethnic variables that permit or prohibit such migration are too complicated to get into.) Last week I got a massage from a Lisu woman who came from near the Burmese border.
Decades ago there was a "German mafia" in Pattaya, but I think they were superseded by Russians. Many signs in Pattaya had Russian language as well as English. Some of the Anglophonic bar owners in Pattaya moved to Kanchanaburi City and set up a tiny Western bar district there ... but soon complained that Russians were appearing there also!
Google quickly informs that countries of visitors to the Kingdom in January rank #1 China, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, India, U.K., U.S., Taiwan, Germany, and #10 France. Tourism in Chiang Mai has been booming for a while, but I found no numbers specific to that Province.
I DID see recent numbers for nationality of tourists in Pai:
Statistics for foreign tourists in Pai in 2024 show 221,776 visitors, ranked as follows: 1. British, 2. Israeli, 3. Dutch, 4. German, and 5. American.
In fact it was this that caused me to post at all. With less than 10 million people, Israel is a smallish country yet ranks #2 in visits to Pai!!?!?
(221,776 visitors seems absurdly large for the small town of Pai, whose 2006 population was a mere 2300. One reason for the high count is that foreign visitors are counted by the TM30 forms filed: a tourist who stays in two different guest houses will get two TM30 forms; with the Tourism software possibly not bothering to check for duplicate passport numbers.)
My friends on Floating Fortune Road in Chiang Mai inform me that they have many Israeli customers, and that these tend to be trouble-makers.
And at the top of my news-feed today were reports from Pai about unruly behavior and deportations. As shown in the image below some small business owners in Pai no longer want Israeli customers.