Friday, November 26, 2021
6:22 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
Let’s start with the story of the pants. It’s kind of amusing. I told the first part of the story with two main themes: One was that I was so pleased that I found a tailor and that this tailor understood the kind of repair that I was looking for. And the second was that this tailor told me to come back at 5 p.m. the next day and the pants would be ready.
I felt nervous going back the next day. And I was right to be nervous. The pants weren’t ready. And my arrival at the tailor’s shop caused a kind of small kerfuffle. I saw my pants being worked on by a woman sitting at a second sewing machine. And the man I’d spoken with the previous day seemed upset and embarrassed. I felt weird. It seemed like I was there too early and I was hassling them to get my pants done faster. But he had told me to come back the next day. And not only the next day, but at this precise time on the next day. I was just following instructions. But now I felt uncomfortable, and the tailor also felt uncomfortable. He was clearly now telling the woman to hurry up and finish the pants, and he was talking to me and trying to smooth out what he saw as a problem. I did my best to assure him that there was no problem at all. I didn’t need the pants that day. I could come back tomorrow or the next day or even the day after that. It didn’t matter. But he misunderstood me, and he thought I was saying that I was leaving Mae Sot tomorrow and I needed the pants right away because of that. I quickly told him no, I didn’t mean that at all. I did my best to smile and relax and adopt a happy, carefree pose and attitude to reassure them that nothing was wrong as far as I was concerned. They could keep working on my pants, take as long as they want, and I would come back tomorrow or the next day. And with lots of waves and bows and smiles worthy of a diplomat negotiating world peace, I left.
I returned the next day at five, and my pants were ready. However, it appeared that the tailor and I had not been communicating as well as I thought we had. I thought we had settled on a plan whereby he would simply cut out the entire panels that were worn through and just replace them with brand new sheets of material and sew them into place. That seemed like the best thing to do, and it was what I wanted done. However, he had taken the exact opposite approach and had kept all of the original material and tried, like a masterful surgeon, to sew it all together while leaving as little evidence of the repair as possible. And I guess that makes sense from his point of view. He’s a professional tailor, and he would assume that that was what a customer would want. But that’s not what I wanted. The original material is completely worn out. It’s as weak as tissue paper. There is no point trying to salvage it and sew it together. It’s just going to tear again. The tailor had tried to deal with that problem by putting a bunch of thin patches on the inside. And it’s not like he covered the entire inside of the pants with new material. He had actually carefully placed this new material between the sections that he had sewn. I suppose it was a masterful job. It clearly took a lot of time and skill to do. And I guess the advantage was that it kept the original material on the outside, so it all looked the same, and it kept the pants material thin. The patches he added on the inside were made of some kind of white netting, almost a gauze, and I think he had applied it with heat. I guess it was some kind of special space-age material that tailors can now use.
Anyway, I wasn’t happy with the repairs. It wasn’t anything like I wanted or expected. And it feels like it would have taken them a long time to do it. And that’s because it made no sense. It’s a bit like taking an old car to a repair shop because the body is really rusty. And the idea would be to remove entire panels of the body and replace them with brand new ones. But instead, the mechanic tries to repair every single hole where the old body had rusted through. It would take a lot longer. So, I felt bad that I’d made this tailor or his partner at the other sewing table work so hard to repair all the tears in these pants that I didn’t want repaired at all. I didn’t want the tears fixed. I wanted brand new material sewn into place.
The funny thing is that when I brought the pants in, I demonstrated this. I wanted to show the tailor how weak the material had become and how it made no sense to sew up the tears. So I grabbed a section of the weakened material, and I tore it apart right in front of him. I just grabbed it with my fingers and ripped it open for five or six inches. It was a brand new tear that wasn’t there before. I wanted to show him how brittle the material was and how I wanted it all removed and replaced. Instead of doing that, he had sewn up all the tears, including the big one I had just made right in front of him. So, I guess we weren’t communicating nearly as well as I thought we were.
It remains to be seen how long this repair job will last. I don’t think it will last long at all. I think the first time that I put on the pants and then bend down to pick something up, the material will tighten over my knees, and it will just tear wide open again. But who knows? Maybe I’ll get a month out of this repair job. And if I bring these pants to a tailor again, I will take a different approach. This time, I will take a pair of scissors and I will just cut away all the offending old and brittle material. I’ll just remove those entire panels myself. And then the tailor will have no choice but to sew in brand new material. As I said, I felt bad that this misunderstanding had made them do so much unnecessary work, but the final price was still more than reasonable. They charged me eighty baht, which is about $2.40 US.
In more positive news, the government of Thailand announced that they had indeed extended the covid-19 visa program for another sixty days. And that means that at the end of January, I will be able to apply for another 60-day visa extension, and that will allow me to stay in Thailand until the end of March. In all the commentary surrounding this announcement, there was a lot of chatter about how various immigration offices implement this visa program. Some are much tougher than others and will often deny extension applications. And for that reason, I will make plans to return to the immigration office here in Mae Sot. They know me, and think I would have a much better chance of getting the extension approved here than at other immigration offices. I always find the public comments online about this to be quite amusing. Some other foreigners in Thailand get very upset that this visa option is available. I’m not sure why they get so upset or why they care at all. There are tens or hundreds of thousands of foreigners in Thailand on a wide variety of visa types. I don’t even know all the visa types. And who those foreigners are and what kind of visa they have doesn’t mean anything to me. Why would I ever even think about them? It’s got nothing to do with me. But some of these same foreigners are quite upset that the covid-19 visa program exists. When the extension of the program is announced, it is always explained as being for foreigners who are trapped in Thailand by the pandemic. And this is what annoys the other foreigners. They write angry comments online about how nobody is trapped anymore, and everyone is free to leave, so this program isn’t necessary. And those few foreigners still on the covid-19 visa program who take the bait of these lunatics and reply to those comments will try to explain why they are still in Thailand and why it’s difficult for them to move on. There is one couple in particular that gets involved in these insane Internet debates every time. I have no idea why they bother. If you try to engage with every lunatic on the Internet, you’ll go crazy yourself. But I’m kind of glad this couple states their case, because the lunatics then reply. And the debate goes back and forth, and it amuses me to read their back and forth argument.
The issue for this couple is quite a reasonable one, which is why they take umbrage at the criticism. This couple is here in Thailand on a yacht. They live on their yacht. It’s their home. And Malaysia’s ports are closed. So they can’t go there. For lots of technical reasons to do with living on a yacht, they can’t really move on. And they explain all this in a reasonable way. But the lunatics won’t listen to reason. And the lunatics seem to be angry because they think foreigners on the covid-19 visa program are getting away with something. They’re not paying their fair share in taxes. Or they’re abusing the system. Something like that. I’ve never quite understood their anger about this. As far as I can tell, the covid-19 visa program is even more expensive than the long-term visas that these lunatics have. They have retirement visas, for example, and they seem to think that someone on the covid-19 visa is getting something for free that they have to pay for. But the covid-19 visa costs 1,900 baht every two months, and that adds up to as much or more than a retirement visa. In any event, it’s the same fee that was charged for any tourist visa in the pre-pandemic days. It’s just a tourist visa, nothing more. The only difference is that we don’t have to leave the country and re-enter to get it. We can get it at the immigration office without leaving the country.
When the lunatics get riled up, they usually use the term begpackers, which is a new disparaging term for long-term travellers. I guess they are picturing hippies dressed in rags and living in hovels and spending no money. And this couple living on the yacht always points out that the docking fees and associated costs of being in Thailand on their yacht is higher than the expenses of foreigners living in houses and apartments. They are not begpackers but actually contribute more to the economy of Thailand and spend more than all the lunatics who are criticising them.
Every time the covid-19 program is extended, the same debate occurs between this couple on the yacht and the lunatics. They both repeat the same arguments and have the same debate every time. I find it amusing. The lunatics do say one thing that always gets my attention. They always say that no one can be trapped in Thailand because countries are now open and everyone can travel freely. And I always wonder about that. I wonder if I missed a whole bunch of news stories. I don’t follow the news that closely, but as far as I’m aware, the surrounding countries are all still closed to foreigners. I can’t go to Malaysia or the Philippines or Indonesia or Vietnam or Myanmar or Laos or Taiwan. All these countries are still closed as far as I know. There might be some kind of limited sandbox program where a tourist can jump through a hundred hoops, spend a fortune, and stay in some fancy island resort for ten days. But general travel is still impossible as far as I’m aware. So I’m not sure where the lunatics get this idea that countries are open. Every time they write that, I think I must have missed some big news stories. But then I check, and it seems like it’s still difficult to go anywhere. Not impossible, of course, and I guess that is what the lunatics are focussed on. Given enough effort and enough money, anyone still in Thailand on the covid-19 visa program could go somewhere else somehow for some limited period of time. But faced with the expense and the difficulties, when the government of Thailand offers the possibility of applying for and paying for another 60-day visa extension, it makes sense for a lot of foreigners like myself to do it. Why not? And it doesn’t hurt anybody. It doesn’t affect anyone at all. But it drives the lunatics crazy. And that amuses me every time.