Thursday, October 14, 2021
6:20 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
I’m feeling a bit annoyed with the weather again. Yesterday, I started planning a trip to Khampaeng Phet. This is a province (and the capital city of that province) to the east and south of Tak Province. I quickly became very excited at the thought of this trip. It’s close enough that I can go there easily over the next few days and be back in Mae Sot on the 22nd. It is close enough that I could make the scooter trip there in one day if I wanted to. In fact, it is closer than Umphang. Umphang is 165 kilometers away. And I made that trip (even going over the mountains) in a long but enjoyable day. The city of Kamphaeng Phet is only 146 kilometers away. If I can enjoy a day of riding to Umphang, then a day on the scooter going to Kamphaeng Phet should be even easier.
Plus, the route to get there has lots of interesting options. The first part of the trip would necessarily take me to Tak City. There is no other route to take. So, if I wanted to be very leisurely about it, I could ride to Tak City one day and spend the night there. Then I could ride the remaining 70 kilometers from Tak City to Kamphaeng Phet on another equally leisurely day. And Kamphaeng Phet is directly south of Tak City and right on the banks of the Ping River. There are small roads on both sides of the Ping River, which means that I don’t have to take the main roads. Essentially, I could follow the winding Ping River all the way from Tak to Kamphaeng Phet.
Kamphaeng Phet (the city) feels like the perfect kind of place for me to visit. It is relatively small with a population of around 30,000 people. Yet, it contains an important tourist attraction in the form of the Kamphaeng Phet Historical Park with temples, city fortifications, and palaces dating back to between the 14th and 16th centuries. This historical park in Kamphaeng Phet is, in fact, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Historic Town of Sukhothai and Associated Historic Towns.” Kamphaeng Phet is one of those “associated” historic towns mentioned in the name. And as such, just enough tourism developed over the years to support a range of tourist- and foreigner-friendly hotels. Yet, Kamphaeng Phet remains small and informal and friendly. Best of all, it sits right on the Ping River. River towns are always the best.
I’m not quite up to speed on the history as yet, but it appears that Kamphaeng Phet played an important role in protecting the early kingdoms of Thailand from invading armies coming from the west. It shares that history with Sukhothai. In fact, the name Kamphaeng Phet translates roughly as “diamond wall” or “wall as hard as diamonds”. This refers to the role of the city as part of a defensive line protecting the Ayutthaya Kingdom from Burmese invaders. Wikipedia tells me that Kamphaeng Phet was already a royal city in the 14th century and part of the Sukhothai Kingdom. It protected the Sukhothai Kingdom from invaders just as later on, it was important to the Ayutthaya Kingdom.
There appear to be at least two attractive but low-budget guest houses in the city. That’s awesome for me. I read that the night market scene is wonderful. And to my delight, I read that this night market is unusual in having lots of tables and chairs. The lack of a place to sit and enjoy snacks is a constant challenge for me when it comes to markets. One is usually forced to snack while continuing to walk. And that can be a struggle at the best of times for me. And if I happen to be taking along a camera, it becomes even more difficult. If the story is true that this market is filled with convenient tables and chairs, it could be tailor-made for me. Even exhausted as I usually am at night, perhaps I can get much enjoyment out of the place.
However, as excited as I am about this upcoming trip, my excitement is being tempered by the weather forecast. I thought we were finally done with the rain. But on the exact days that I was thinking about leaving for Tak and then Kamphaeng Phet, the forecast is calling for the usual 90%-98% chance of rain all day long. That’s so depressing. It will probably be okay. If I do break the trip into two parts, then I will be looking at two extremely relaxed days, and I would have plenty of time to stop and take shelter if the rain starts coming down hard. And I can attempt to assume the optimist’s attitude: a call for rain probably means cloudy skies, and therefore cool weather. And cool weather is always welcome on Planet Doug. I do not thrive in the heat when the sun is out in full. The optimist would be glad to see a forecast calling for cool rainy weather. Yet, the camera guy in me does always yearn for bright blue skies even if the sun then roasts me alive.
Today is the 14th already. (Where has October gone?) I could spend today and tomorrow here in Mae Sot. I have things to do. And then I could leave for Kamphaeng Phet on the 16th. I believe that is Saturday. Even if I spent Saturday night in Tak and went to Kamphaeng Phet on Sunday, I’d still have up to three full days to relax and enjoy the atmosphere there. And if I wanted to go crazy, I could turn one day into a day trip to one of the local attractions: the Khlong Lan Waterfall. This waterfall is located on the edges of the nearby mountain range, about sixty kilometers from the city. I’m not instantly attracted to waterfalls. However, it would serve nicely as a destination and excuse for a ride through the countryside and into the hills.
And as if all this isn’t enough, the main culinary delight of Kamphaeng Phet appears to be bananas, particularly a small but tasty banana called the kluai khai. Bananas are such an important agricultural product in Kamphaeng Phet that they even hold an annual banana festival.
Other than the weather, a challenge facing me is learning how to pronounce Kamphaeng Phet. My brain and tongue goes into fits every time I look at the word Kamphaeng. As with most Thai words written out in English, I can never make sense of the combination of letters. I currently have six tabs open on my computer for websites offering advice on “how to pronounce Kamphaeng Phet.” I’ve listened to them all multiple times, but my brain and tongue still short circuit when I try to say the words aloud. As far as I can tell, the initial letter K in Kamphaeng is not pronounced as a K at all. It is pronounced more like a hard G. And the “ph” letter combination doesn’t seem to produce a soft “f” sound as I would normally expect. The Thai pronunciation appears to be more like a standard hard “p” sound.
Therefore, the name, as pronounced by the Thais, appears to be more like Gampeng Pet. Yet, all the foreigners who say the name follow the English letters and say Kamfeng Fet or Kampeng Fet. So, what is a poor dummy like me to do? Who do I trust?
Yesterday was something of a YouTube and technology day. I was working on a video for my Planet Doug channel, but I decided to record the process with a smartphone screen recording app and turn that video into a type of hands-on tutorial for using the Kinemaster video editing app. I was relatively successful in that, and I actually produced three Kinemaster tutorial videos for my new Learning Curve channel. As is my wont, I talked quite a bit, and each video is nearly an hour long. I enjoyed the process, and I even ended up learning more about the Kinemaster program myself. And the videos themselves were not difficult to make. The final video, for example, does not require much editing. The whole thing is essentially the video record of one long video editing session. All of the time-consuming editing tasks were actually done as part of editing the Planet Doug video. And that was what I was recording. Therefore, next to no editing was required for the Learning Curve video. All I did was cut it to length, upload it, and then create the thumbnail and write the video description. It still took a long time, of course. But it wasn’t nearly as time-intensive as trying to make a regular YouTube video.
And speaking of regular YouTube videos, I finally posted the video about my scooter trip from Mae Sot to Sam Ngao. As often happens, the video recording and then the final video spun out of control and ended up being very long. I made an attempt to shorten it, but I eventually gave up and just posted the entire hour-and-a-half video documenting the entire trip from beginning to end. Ironically this 90-minute video is actually already a much-shortened version of the full video story. And that’s because I also filmed a long segment of packing up and loading up the scooter in the morning. I left all of that out. And I recorded many more sequences along the highway and through the hills as I rode my scooter. And finally, I recorded a long sequence of my arrival at the hotel plus a tour of the hotel room and more final thoughts. And I deleted all of those, too. The day itself from door to door was exactly ten and a half hours long. And I probably recorded four hours of that in full in various forms on various cameras. Why? I’m not entirely sure I know why. But I think it’s because I still have the brain of a journal-keeper. And I approach my cameras as tools for keeping a video journal or video diary. And that naturally leads to recording a lot of my thoughts and experiences. I’m sure many would argue I’m recording too many of my thoughts and experiences.
For the Kinemaster Learning Curve videos, I was editing the video I shot between Sam Ngao and Tak City. I thought the Learning Curve videos were relatively successful, if overly long. But I’m not happy with the Planet Doug video at all. One issue is that my entire day was built around visiting a special national park and a special coffee shop. And both of those places were closed. So there was a big build-up to going to those places, and then I wasn’t able to really go to either one. As I rode my scooter along the insanely busy and insanely loud Highway 1, I talked about those two places and I talked about a bunch of other topics, including some technology stuff. I had a series of technological problems during the day, as well. At one point, I completely forgot to turn my wireless microphone back on, and I recorded about thirty minutes of video without any audio at all. I thought about adding voice narration afterwards, but it didn’t matter. I just deleted the video completely.
The national park and the coffee shop were the only reasons I was taking the major highway to begin with. Without the goal of going to those places, I would have taken small countryside roads the entire time and stayed beside the Ping River as much as possible. But at least those hours spent on the major highway served as a good reminder as to why it’s a good idea to take the small roads. The noise of the major highway can be overwhelming. You may not even be aware of it at the time, but the constant roar of traffic is wearing you down and driving you to a mental breaking point. It’s just a matter of time until you snap.
Once I got past the closed park and the closed coffee shop, I was free to leave the major highway, and I turned down a quiet road through farmer’s fields until I reached the Ping River. And then I followed the road alongside the Ping River all the way into Tak. THAT was glorious. It was such a relief to leave the roar of the highway behind. It’s almost like having someone beating you on the head with a shovel all day long. And then when you finally turn off onto the small road, that beating finally stops. And the relief is overwhelming.
However, this may not have been great for my YouTube video because now that I was on the country road and following the river, I had more things to talk about. And when I arrived in Tak City, I documented my arrival and recorded my thoughts about what I was seeing and experiencing. And then it was still early to go to my hotel for check-in, so I rode to the King Taksin the Great Shrine and spent some time there. After my visit to the shrine, it was still too early to go to the hotel, and I went to a local sweets and coffee shop for a snack and to hang out. Finally, it was 2 p.m., and I could go to the hotel, and I recorded that on video as well.
I recoiled in horror yesterday as I kept adding more and more of the original video clips from my GoPro Hero 9 and then from the memory cards from my Hero 7 and then from the memory cards of my new Pocket 2. The final raw video kept getting longer and longer and longer. I don’t even remember now how long the complete video collection of that day ended up being. But it was clearly going to be a lot to deal with. And it raises the question of what to do with it all. Even I can’t justify posting a video like that. It’s probably three hours long right now in its raw form. It’s true that from my point of view, it was an interesting day. Everything about it was new and exciting and thought-provoking. But, be serious, no one has such an exciting day that the world is clamoring for a 3-hour video recording of it.
This morning, I still don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I guess there are four basic subjects of the video. There is the scooter ride as I discuss the Petrified Wood Forest Park. However, all of that seems kind of pointless now, since the park was closed and I wasn’t even able to go there. There is the scooter ride down the Ping River and my arrival in Tak City. That’s interesting, but it’s only interesting as part of an overall day’s journey. It’s hardly fascinating as its own stand-alone topic. And then there is the visit to the King Taksin the Great Memorial Shrine. THAT is actually interesting, but I filmed it as just a part of a longer day rather than as a separate experience. I’m not sure I’ll be able to carve it out and make it a separate video. I got a kick out of my visit to the coffee and sweets shop. But it was also interesting only as much as it was just a small part of a much longer day and longer journey. A video about just that coffee shop would probably feel quite weird. And then, finally, there was my arrival at the hotel and a tour of my hotel room. That, too, was very interesting for me and lots of fun. But it really only makes sense as a video subject if it’s part of a longer day. It’s really just the end of my scooter trip – the arrival at my home for the night. And as such, it’s interesting and appropriate. But if I made a separate video about just that experience, it would feel lacking. And to end the day, I went for a walk at sunset to Tak City’s beautiful pedestrian bridge over the Ping River. That’s probably another hour of video in total.
So, I don’t know what to do with all this video. If I put it all together in a way that makes each part sensible and logical, it would be far too long. But if I carve it up into pieces, each piece would feel weird and unfinished.
Late last night, I got around to copying over some other video files from the rest of my trip to Sam Ngao and Tak City. And I recoiled in horror again. On my first morning at the SOHO Boutique Hotel, I enjoyed a very nice breakfast that came with the room. And I brought along the Pocket 2 camera to record the event. I can’t say right now how long the raw video is, but I can tell you that the video clips add up to 42.29 gigabytes of files. Who in their right mind has 42.29 gigabytes-worth of things to talk about over a simple breakfast? I guess I do. Clearly…. CLEARLY I’m not in my right mind.
I shudder now to think of how much video I shot on my scooter ride from Tak City back to Mae Sot. I imagine the raw video from that day will be equally difficult to deal with. Something clearly has to change in my approach to shooting video. And it’s not like this is a revelation. I’ve wanted to simplify and shorten my video endeavors for a long time, and I routinely make up my mind to do so. But I haven’t quite managed it yet.
In fact, I’ve made my video life even more challenging by establishing the Learning Curve channel. We’ll see what happens. I have to fight my way through the video from this Tak City trip. And after that, I can reset for my trip to Kamphaeng Phet and try to shoot video in a more reasonable and sustainable way.
Today is, obviously, going to be devoted largely to more video projects. I have two video goals. One is to do something with all the Sam Ngao to Tak City video that I shot. Perhaps I will make a bunch of short separate videos.
I’m also in the middle of shooting a Learning Curve video about the DJI Pocket 2 camera. I shot the main video. Now I have to shoot some closeup footage of the camera to insert into the main video. I already did it once, but the result isn’t very good. I put the DJI Pocket 2 on a tripod and I put my Panasonic LX10 on another tripod, and I shot the closeups that way. I completed the entire sequence of shots, but it doesn’t look natural. Then I had the idea to point the LX10 downwards and simply hold the Pocket 2 in my hands as I shot the closeups. I tested that the other day, and it looked better to me. It took a long time to work out the technical setup for these closeups using the two cameras. I’m shooting these videos inside my guest house room, and it doesn’t exactly have the lighting and the physical space that a studio requires. I had to do a lot of testing and experimenting to get it right. But after I finish writing this journal entry, I think my first job will be to record those closeups. I was hoping for lots of sunshine coming in through the windows to light up the room, but it is overcast and dark outside. I’ll just have to do the best I can.