Tuesday, November 9, 2021
6:45 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
My day yesterday kind of spun out of control. And because of that, I don’t think I will be on the road to Sukhothai this morning. I could still leave today, but I’m just way too tired and my brain is too scattered. I think I need today to settle down and relax and do some other stuff. And then I would be in a much better frame of mind for Sukhothai. With these delays, I’ll end up with less and less time to spend in Sukhothai, but it’s still a possibility. Tomorrow is the tenth, and if I leave tomorrow morning, I can still have as many as four days in Sukhothai. And that includes a stopover in Tak City in both directions. If I drive straight through, I could stay in Sukhothai even longer. And that’s fine. So, I am going to lean into today as another day of work and organizing.
I had a bunch of tasks and errands yesterday. I needed to get money for my Sukhothai trip, and the ATM showed me some love and gave me some cash. That was nice. It was still pouring rain at that time, but I went out into the city with an umbrella and stayed relatively dry. I also got a haircut at the neighborhood barbershop. There are definitely much nicer places in town, but this place is very close, it’s convenient, and the guy there doesn’t need to speak to me at all. I like that. He recognizes that I’m a guy and I don’t really care what my hair looks like. I will love whatever he does to my head. So I indicate that I’d like my hair shorter, I sit in the chair, and then he cuts it, and we’re done. Once the rain stopped, I hopped on my scooter to get some gas. For some reason, I’ve started tipping the people who put gas in my scooter. I don’t think that is commonly done in Thailand. Yet, I did it one day because my change was exactly twenty baht, and I just did the usual “keep it” gesture when the young guy tried to hand me my change. He appeared to be very happy about that, and when he went back to the cluster of other gas pumpers, he waved the twenty-baht note in the air happily and showed it off to the other pumpers. I guess I got a kick out of that reaction, so I’ve kept up the habit. It usually costs 100 baht to fill up the tank, and then I hand the pumper 20 baht. But the pumpers confused me yesterday. When I rode up to the gas station, I wasn’t quite sure where to go. But a young woman indicated a spot where I should pull up. And I did so. She was filling another scooter’s tank at the time, and she had to then go to the cash register with the money from that customer. But while she was gone, a young guy came over and filled up my tank. But then the young woman returned and took my money and went to get change. So I got all mixed up about who to tip. The guy had done the actual filling of the tank. The girl had greeted me and organized my visit to their gas station and handled the payment. In the end, since the girl was dealing with the money and was standing right beside me, it was most convenient to hand her the tip. She put her hands together and bowed in a gesture of thanks. And then she started to walk away. But then I think she realized that the guy had actually done the work of filling my tank. So she turned around and was holding the money in her hand while she walked over to the guy. I never saw the end of the transaction, but maybe she gave the money to him. It’s not a big deal, obviously. Twenty baht is not much money. I was just interested in the social norms at play here.
Some of my other small errand-type adventures centered on the local Mr. DIY hardware store. I went there because I wanted to pick up some wrapping paper. I had a birthday present organized for the young son of a friend of mine, and I wanted to get some wrapping paper. I remembered that Mr. DIY had a pretty extensive party decorations section containing such things, so I dropped by there. I couldn’t find any wrapping paper, but I found some kind of construction or party paper that would serve, and I bought some of that. But on my way to the cash register, I passed by a wall containing small home appliances, and I spotted a travel kettle.
The crazy thing is that I had just bought a brand new kettle in Kamphaeng Phet for 200 baht. It’s actually quite a nice household kettle, and it would normally cost something like 500 or 600 baht. It just happened to be on sale at a deep discount. And I thought it would be nice to have a kettle to make coffee in my room at these hotels. Even if I only used it for the week I was in Kamphaeng Phet, it would be worth it. I ended up putting it in my backpack and taking it with me all the way back to Mae Sot. It’s big and somewhat heavy, but it still fits into my backpack without any problems. And I planned to take it with me to Sukhothai as well. Had I seen an actual mini travel kettle in Kamphaeng Phet, I would have bought one of those instead, but one wasn’t available. So I bought the full-size one.
But there at Mr. DIY was a smallish travel kettle for 209 baht. If I bought it, I would essentially have three kettles. I have my usual cooking pot, which I’ve been using for the last year and a half as my kettle and cooker. And I have the big kitchen kettle from Kamphaeng Phet. And if I bought the kettle at Mr. DIY, I would have the travel kettle. Not even I need three kettles. But I bought it anyway. I couldn’t resist.
I was actually pretty happy at the thought of my purchase as I walked back to the guest house with the kettle packed away inside my knapsack. I love a good mini travel gadget. They’re just fun to have. And it’s half the size and half the weight of the Kamphaeng Phet kettle. It will be much more convenient to toss into my backpack and bring to Sukhothai and maybe even on my trip to the north of Thailand. However, I ran into a problem when I took it out of the box. How could it be otherwise? It turns out that despite being half the size and half the weight of the big kettle, this travel kettle has a gigantic cord and plug. It’s a 220-volt kettle, and the plug is huge. It has the much larger round pins with a ground pin on top of that. And that means it won’t plug into my normal extension cord and power bar. Why does such a small kettle have a plug that size? I have no idea. AND the cord itself is very short. So it’s a certainty that ninety percent of the time, the cord won’t reach from any kind of tabletop to an outlet. I didn’t think that would be a problem, because I have my extension cord and power bar. But this monster plug won’t fit into my power bar! And I do have a big and fancy and expensive Skross world travel adapter. But, would you believe it, the plug on this mini kettle won’t fit into that either. The holes on the Skross are too small. In any event, my expensive Skross is broken, too. I bought this Skross precisely because it has two USB charging ports on it. But neither of them work anymore. More and more, I’m of the opinion that buying expensive high-quality gear like this Skross is a waste of money. Sure, it’s better than the cheaper alternatives. But that’s no advantage when it breaks anyway, and you have to keep replacing it. It seems to be better these days to just buy the cheap versions of everything. It’s all going to break soon anyway.
Anyway, I had purchased what I thought was a convenient travel kettle, but right out of the box, I wasn’t able to plug it in. And none of my current plug adapters would fit. I didn’t have much hope, but I decided to go back to Mr. DIY and see if they had a cheap adapter that would work. At first, I thought I had failed. Mr. DIY did have a big display of two very basic and very common travel adapters. I see these exact same adapters everywhere, and they cost about $1 each. I thought they would be exactly the same as the ones I already have – the expensive Skross and the equally expensive ones from premium brand Sea to Summit. My mini kettle plug wouldn’t fit into any of those. And I wasn’t able to test the ones at Mr. DIY, because they were in a sealed package. But for 33 baht, I thought I might as well just take a chance, soi I bought one. And to my amazement, it worked perfectly. At first, I thought the mini kettle plug wouldn’t fit in it either, but I just had to push a bit harder, and it clicked right into place. Not only that, but the equally massive plug on my Panasonic camera battery charger also fits into it. And that meant I could finally throw away this stupid Skross adapter. The only reason I was still carrying around this giant, heavy adapter was it was the only way I could plug in the Panasonic battery charger. It has one of those equally ridiculous and huge 3-pin plugs from the UK . And my Skross was the only way to plug it in. But I discovered that this tiny $1 adapter from Mr. DIY works just as well. Today, I plan to go back to Mr. DIY and buy two more of those things. They’re very handy. I need one for my mini kettle, one for my regular cooking pot, and one for my Panasonic battery charger.
You’d think at this point in my life, I’d be done with adapters. I’ve purchased so many adapters in my lifetime, you’d think I’d never have to buy another one. But the quest for suitable adapters never seems to end. It’s a lifelong challenge.
I think that when and if I hop on my scooter for a longer trip through the north of Thailand, I will bring both the cooking pot and the travel kettle with me. The cooking pot can also serve as a kettle, so, technically, I don’t need both. But the mini kettle is quite small and light. And it might add a lot of convenience. I’ll give it a try anyway. I don’t imagine the travel kettle will last a lifetime. It’s not a heavy-duty appliance. I can already sense that the switch could be fragile and will break. But I will use it as long as it lasts.
And if that isn’t enough trivia about cooking pots and kettles, there is even more. As I thought about packing up my cooking pot and taking it with me, I wondered if I could just leave the glass lid behind. I don’t actually need the lid for cooking. The only time I use it is for straining the water from noodles. I put the lid on, leaving a crack for the water to drain out, and I tilt the pot while holding the lid tightly in place. It’s a delicate operation and invites disaster. I’ve never actually had a disaster, but the possibility is there. The lid is not a pasta strainer after all. And the glass lid adds 25% of the weight of the whole cooking pot. So I wondered if I could rig up an alternative pasta strainer and leave this lid behind. I tested this theory the other day, and I tried to drain the pasta using my normal eating bowl. It fits over the opening of the pot quite nicely. But it is very hard to hold onto. And the hot steam leaking out of the edges blows directly onto my fingers and burns badly. THAT is definitely a disaster waiting to happen.
I was thinking about all this while I was wandering through Mr. DIY, and I happened upon a display of actual plastic pasta strainers. Big, brightly colored ones. And in a fit of insanity, I bought one. It hardly cost anything, so the money isn’t the insane part. What’s insane is that it is quite large and quite green and is a weird thing to make room for in your backpack. But I already love it. I used it once last night. I made some pasta, and it was so much easier to just strain the pasta in this thing rather than my usual approach of inviting disaster by using the glass lid. And that raises the question of why I didn’t buy one a year and a half ago. I could have been using one all this time and been much happier for it. But that’s the kind of thing that happens in my life. In any event, I now have a series of cascading choices to make for my possible scooter trip to the north. Should I bring the cooking pot? Should I bring the cooking pot AND the travel kettle? And if I bring the cooking pot, should I bring the glass lid or the plastic pasta strainer? Or both? Decisions, decisions.
And then came doing the laundry. That took a while. And then came editing videos for YouTube. THAT took up most of the day, in fact. All this other stuff happened as quick errands jammed in between editing sessions. Most of the day was spent on videos. And then came a bunch of time spent trying to organize all my memory cards and charging all my camera batteries and otherwise getting ready for going to Sukhothai today. Things got a bit nutty there because I was so tired by this point in the day. My efforts extended long into the evening, and I couldn’t even keep track of what I was doing or why. And the end result of all that is that I need today to recover from my efforts of yesterday. And, assuming I do go to Sukhothai, I will be going tomorrow.
I should also note that I spent a lot of time yesterday reading about Sukhothai and the history of Thailand. I learned a lot. However, a big stumbling block in terms of remembering this stuff and keeping track of it is simple pronunciation. I keep reading the names of all these famous kings and leaders in the history of Thailand, and all I see is a bunch of letters that make no sense at all in the way they are put together. I can make nothing of the sounds they are supposed to represent. My brain just sees these incomprehensible words and names and skips over them. There is no hope of ever being able to remember them let alone say them.