Thursday, September 16, 2021
10:20 a.m. BK Coffee & Beer
Mae Sot, Thailand
Well, this is kind of exciting. I’m sitting inside one of my favourite coffee shops instead of inside my guest house room. I don’t know when BK restarted dine-in service, but it is open now. I’m here partially because I went to the immigration office to renew my visa. And BK Coffee and Beer is right on my way back into town.
My trip to immigration went well. I had all the proper paperwork completed in advance, and submitting my application and getting out the door took perhaps ten minutes. Though, technically, this is only the application stage. I have to return on October 1st to see if my application has been approved and then get the official stamp. The approval is somewhat automatic at this stage, so I’m not worried about that. But that is how the system is set up. So I’m not finished yet.
I actually shot a YouTube video a while back about this coffee shop. It was a kind of vlog about my day but also a kind of review of the coffee shop. And I happened to be focused on a variety of Doug-like details. For example, I talked about how the Google Maps pin for this coffee shop was in an incorrect and very confusing spot. So I had trouble finding the place. I also noted that the posted hours were inaccurate and contradictory. One sign said that they were open until 6 p.m. Another sign said they were open until 7 p.m. I also noted that, as much as I liked this coffee shop and its design and seating, a lot of noise bled into the place from the next-door car detailing and car washing operation. I then went on to say a lot of very nice things about the place, particularly how I loved the variety of seating they offered.
After I posted that video, I was quite surprised to get a message from the owners saying that they appreciated my video very much, AND that they had corrected the Google Maps Pin. The pin is now in the correct spot, and when I arrived today, I noticed that one of the opening-hours signs had been adjusted to match the other. They both now list the correct opening hours. Plus, when I came in, all the doors were open, and a lot of noise was coming in from next door. But once I placed my order and sat down, the clerks closed the doors to block the sound. And they turned on the air conditioner.
My hot latte is as good as ever. It’s so good. It’s by far my favourite coffee in Mae Sot. And I’m pretty sure the women that work here are now well aware of my YouTube hobby, and are aware that I featured their coffee shop in a number of videos. They were quite animated in greeting me and making sure I felt welcome and comfortable. I’m now like an official coffee-shop reviewer and getting special service because of that.
I have a few random and somewhat trivial thoughts about yesterday. I left off yesterday morning wondering just as I was leaving the guest house to run some errands. My landlady happened to be sitting at a table outside my room, and I stopped to chat with her for a minute. She’d been out there several days in a row, surrounded by piles of official-looking books and papers and forms. And, almost against my better judgement, I decided to ask her about all the papers and books on the table and what, exactly, she was doing all day. I learned quite a while ago that she actually taught English once. And I suggested to her that perhaps she had started teaching again. Is that what all these papers were about?
She said no, and then she tried to tell me what the papers were for. And I didn’t really understand anything. She said something about “after covid” and she talked about the government and 5,000 of something. And not just in Mae Sot, but 5,000 of these things everywhere. And she wound her story up with references to her garden and fertilizer and government reports.
I had no hope of putting any of that together into any kind of coherent form, so I just nodded and moved on. But, apparently, 5,000 government agents are coming to inspect her fertilizer use, and she has to prepare reports for them. Why this would happen or why it would take weeks to prepare the fertilizer reports, I have no clue.
From there, I walked to my local neighborhood photocopy shop to make copies for my immigration visit. That visit was interesting in ways that, perhaps, are only interesting to me. But I have thoughts. For one thing, customers are no longer allowed inside. In the past, I would go inside and sit down at a computer and printer and copier and make all my own copies. But I can’t do that anymore because of covid, and I have to hand everything over to the women at the entrance and give them instructions as to what I need. Obviously, there is no way that this would end up with me getting what I actually want.
In this case, I needed photocopies of the first seven or eight pages of my passport. These were all pages with visa stamps on them. After that, the pages are blank, since it is a relatively new passport. I explained this as best I could using a combination of English and sign language. After that, I could only hope that this woman would draw on common sense, and even if my instructions weren’t clear, she’d realize that I didn’t actually need copies of all the remaining blank pages.
She took my passport and other documents deep inside the office, and she got to work. And then a LOT of time passed. So much time passed that I felt sure that she was making copies of my entire passport. But at this point, there was no way to back up and try to get this sorted out. From past experience, I knew that it was best to just leave things alone. Once you place your order or give your instructions, it’s best to just let things take their course. To try to confirm anything or correct anything mid-task will surely lead to much more confusion than already exists.
In the end, my suspicions were correct, and she had gone ahead and photocopied all the blank pages in addition to the ones I actually wanted. This was a bit of an annoyance, because I actually needed four copies of each page, and I needed them in color. And with their equipment, making color copies takes a long time. And, of course, it costs a lot more than normal copies.
The interesting part of the story for me is how people in general handle these situations. My standard policy is always to just let it go. Why make a big deal about these things that, after all, you can’t change? The problem stems from my inability to speak Thai, so whatever problems arise are 100% my fault. I just take the resulting problems on the chin and move on with my life. If I order a latte in a coffee shop, and I get black coffee instead, I just pay for the black coffee and sit down and enjoy it. If I order noodles, and I get fried rice instead, I just happily enjoy the fried rice. I don’t try to tell them that they got my order wrong. What do I care whether I have noodles or rice for that particular lunch? And when this woman handed me a giant stack of color photocopies that I didn’t need, I simply smiled and accepted them and paid her for them.
But I have known many foreigners that would make a big stink and argue with them and refuse to pay for the extra copies. I prefer to simply smile and say thank you and get on with the rest of my day. Why make them feel bad? The problem came from the covid-19 restrictions and from my linguistic failings, neither of which she can control. It’s not her fault.
On the other side of the copy shop is one of my favorite spots in Mae Sot: a small, boutiquey kind of Indian cafe. I haven’t been there for a while because it is also closed to dine-in service. I had a nice chat with the owner. He’s a young guy that shares my interest in technology. We often have an interesting conversation about cameras and laptops and tablets. But while there, I noticed that they were selling a new type of face mask. I took a close look at them, and they were listed as KF94 masks from South Korea.
Since the beginning of this pandemic, I’ve been hearing about the N95 face mask. Everyone keeps saying that if you want real protection, you have to get these N95 masks. But, of course, they’ve never been available here. The only masks available have been the standard imitation blue or white surgical masks. I don’t even know if they are effective, to be honest. My feeling has been that they aren’t great. I can feel all the air I’m breathing going out the sides and coming back in along the sides. And they all blow moist air upwards and fog up my glasses. With all that leakage around the edges, it’s not reasonable to assume that they are actually doing much in terms of filtering the air I’m breathing in or out.
I’ve long wanted to try something different. If I have to wear an uncomfortable mask, I might as well wear one that works, right? I had tried a few specialty masks that I found in stores, but they were all worse than the blue ones. And they didn’t fit my head, either. They were all far too small.
I decided to try out this KF94 mask, and I’m pleased to report that this mask feels like the real deal. It has an actual design and shape. The blue masks are more or less just flat pieces of material that you stretch over your mouth and nose. But this KF94 cups my mouth and nose nicely and curves underneath my chin just right. The metal wire in the nosepiece is quite strong, and, when adjusted, hugs my nose and cheeks nicely. It rides up my cheekbones a fair distance, and my glasses end up sitting over top of the mask flaps. Best of all, it is much stiffer, and it actually holds its shape while I ride my scooter at speed. The blue masks are so flexible that they get blown against my lips, and would even get blown inside my mouth if I open my mouth to speak. And the material of the blue masks can be quite rough, and it scratches against my skin in an uncomfortable fashion.
This KF94 holds its shape and sits out and away from my lips even when I’m riding fast on the scooter. It’s so much more comfortable. And I can see that the air I’m breathing is actually going through the mask material and not around it. It’s a completely different beast. Using it yesterday and today drives home just how useless the blue masks probably have been all this time. On the negative side, I have just the smallest impression that this mask wasn’t designed for my somewhat larger face and head. It feels just a tad on the small size. But it still fits. Plus, since the air really is going through the mask material, I can feel that it is just that little bit more difficult to breathe. When I went to the immigration office this morning, I felt a bit lightheaded and woozy as I walked from my scooter to the building. I felt like I wasn’t getting quite enough oxygen into my blood. I was breathing harder and yet still not feeling quite right.
I did a bit of reading yesterday, and I guess the 94 in the name relates to a percentage reading of the effectiveness of the mask. It is 94% effective at filtering out stuff from the air. And the famous N95 is 95% effective. So, for all intents and purposes, this KF94 is just as good as the N95. So, after eighteen months of living through a pandemic, I finally have an effective face mask. That seems a bit late. But, as they say, better late than never. To be honest, I think the best protection I’ve had is just my current isolation. For a year and a half, I’ve pretty much spent no time with any other people. I have been the master of social distancing. The fact that my blue masks were useless was probably irrelevant because I wasn’t spending time near other people anyway. There has been very little sharing of air going on.