Sunday, October 31st, 2021
1:11 a.m. Room 50, P. Resort Hotel
Kamphaeng Phet, Thailand
I spent quite a bit more time yesterday thinking about my plans for the month of November. I still haven’t fully made up my mind. I can see arguments for both plans of action. In order to complete my loop through the north, I’d want to leave as early as possible, on Wednesday, for example. And I’d still have to pay rent for the month of November, so I’d be paying double for each night of the month – once in Mae Sot for a room I wasn’t using, and once on the road. By delaying my departure until later, I would be saving some money. Not a lot of money, to be sure, but I could definitely spend that money on something else of more value to me.
Anyway, I could go through the dozens of reasons in favor or against each plan of action, but that would be a pointless exercise. I’ve done too much of that in my life. I’ll think it through inside my head and then do what feels right. At the moment, it feels better to postpone my northern loop trip until December. I think that’s the smart move. But regardless, I still want to go back to Mae Sot today (which is Sunday), so that I can return to the vaccination clinic on Monday morning. I don’t know this for sure, but I believe the clinic is operational on Monday mornings, and there is a better chance of being able to get my vaccine certificate then. I’m not sure about Tuesday or Wednesday or any other day.
It’s one a.m. right now, so I imagine I will turn out the lights at some point and try to get a couple hours of sleep before I’m on the road. But before then, I thought I’d jot down a note or two about my activities yesterday. Or I guess I could say just activity, since I did just one thing: I went to the banana market.
The province of Kamphaeng Phet is known for the quality of its bananas. They are a special type of banana, which they call an egg banana, or Khluai Kai. They’re called egg bananas because of their small size and somewhat oval shape. Despite this, they are supposed to be tasty and very aromatic. Whatever the truth of all this, the bananas are popular, and a large banana market has grown out on the main highway, which is the central thoroughfare connecting Bangkok with Chiang Mai. Travellers stop there to stock up on bananas, banana trees, or banana snacks.
This market is located about fourteen kilometers outside of town, and I plotted a route there that took me down some small streets along the Ping River. That was a nice ride, and it finished up with a kilometer-long section of muddy road that was a lot of fun to navigate. I’m not sure I’d call my visit to the market a success. I was expecting a large banana market building. But instead of a central building, the market consisted of a few dozen separate shops and stalls spread along the length of the highway with the heavy traffic roaring past. And that made sense. Travellers simply pulled over to the side of the highway in front of their shop of choice, bought some bananas, and then kept driving.
I rode my scooter down the entire length of the market, and then I parked there, intending to walk back and take video. However, I realized that the sun would be behind me the entire time, so I decided it would be better to start from the other end. I got back on my scooter and rode to the other end of the market. I parked my scooter there after a bit of an effort, and then got my GoPro set up and started walking along and chatting into the camera. I was kind of hoping to magically run into the one banana seller that was friendly, outgoing, and spoke English, but I never did find that magical combination. I just had to stumble and bumble my way along in my normal fashion and make the best of things.
I did get lucky in that I encountered one young and very friendly sales clerk at one of the shops. She was self-confident despite speaking no English, and she guided me through the process of trying out and then buying some bags of banana chips. Because of her, I ended up buying six bags of banana chips, far more than I needed or wanted. But they had a simple system of charging 35 baht per bag or 100 baht for three bags. That’s how I ended up with six. It was just a nice, round number, costing exactly 200 baht.
I found that I struggled with the documenting of the experience. The language barrier is probably the biggest problem. I’m never at my best when I can’t use words to communicate. Without words, I am both helpless and awkward. The other problem is the simple mechanics of shopping while holding a camera, particularly when it is hot and loud. I found myself thinking, as I often have, that it would be an interesting experiment to hire a kind of camera person. The camera person would not have to be skilled. They’d just need to be a physical body holding onto the GoPro and generally pointing it in my direction as I walk around and do my thing. I keep thinking there must be a way to find a young English student that I could hire to simply walk with me for an hour through a market and take video and perhaps even translate a bit, and I could pay them for their time. The trick would be contacting such a person. My idea is that this person would be willing to do it for the money but also for perhaps the entertainment value of hanging out with a foreigner like me and speaking a bit of English.
I enjoyed my visit to the banana market, but, as often happens, I did come away with the sense that it was a rushed visit and not as rich an experience as it could have been. It was a bit of a frantic visit, and I wasn’t upset when it was over and I was able to get off that crazy, loud highway and get back on the small streets on my scooter. My ride back into Kamphaeng Phet just happened to take me right past Fatboy’s Burger Bar, and I took that as a sign that I should have a final chicken burger with fries on my last day in Kamphaeng Phet. I managed to convince the owner to accept a bag of banana chips as a present. He in turn tried to charge me nothing for my lunch. In fact, he really wouldn’t accept any money at all. And I know it is a bit silly, but I didn’t feel comfortable accepting a free lunch. The banana chips weren’t worth an entire lunch, that’s for sure. Plus, I was going to post a video about his restaurant, and I didn’t want to be in the situation of seeming to get paid in free food for a video about the place. I know that’s silly. There’s no reason to take one of my YouTube vlogs so seriously. But there is just the tiniest bit of ethics involved there. Whenever I watch a camera review on YouTube, the YouTuber is always careful to make it clear whether the camera company sponsored the video in any way. If Sony gives you a free camera in exchange for posting a review of it, that must affect the review in some way. How could it not? The YouTuber would feel pressured to say good things about the camera. And the same would be true if you happen to post a video about a restaurant. I wasn’t really reviewing Fatboy’s Burger Bar in my video. I was just doing my usual casual account of my personal experience of eating there. But I remember saying a lot of wonderful things about the burger and fries and other food and drinks that I had there. And my opinion could be suspect if it turns out that I got all that food and drink for free. In the end, I risked offending him, and I put the money down on the table and walked away. He wouldn’t take it from my hand, so the only thing I could do was just put it on the table and leave it there.
As always, I had big plans for getting a lot of YouTube-related things done in the late afternoon and evening. And I did get a bit done. But it wasn’t nearly as much as I had hoped. I was just too tired after my banana market exertions.