Thursday, December 9, 2021
7:30 a.m. Room 26, Tha Song Yang Hill Resort Hotel
Tha Song Yang, Thailand
I had to think really hard to come up with the information I just wrote above. I didn’t know the room number. I could barely come up with the name of the hotel. And I wrote the name of the town incorrectly two times before I remembered how it really went. That’s the kind of day it was yesterday. It was so long and so full of varied activities and, frankly, so tiring, that my brain wasn’t working very well when I pulled in to Tha Song Yang. I’m not sure I knew my own name.
The day started, as it often does lately, with packing up. And I struggled with that. My backpack was already an interesting technical challenge to pack up with my cooking pot, travel kettle, and the variety of camera gear. But now I had added a puffy jacket, a mosquito net, and a bunch of food. I certainly don’t regret taking any of those items. It is cold here in Tha Song Yang. It’s so cold that I wore my jacket to bed last night. The warmth of that jacket is the only reason I got any sleep at all. And this bungalow is filled with hungry mosquitoes. The bathroom contained clouds of them when I arrived, and they all poured eagerly into the main room when I opened the door. A feast was ready for them in the form of my hot blood. Plus, this hotel is far outside of town, and it won’t be such a convenient thing to pop outside and grab some food. So the ability to cook my own will be handy.
However, with all that new stuff to pack, my recently developed packing system started to fall apart. I ended up simply jamming things in any which way and hoping for the best. The final result wasn’t terrible. The backpack is heavy and bulky, of course, but I was still able to strap it to the scooter without any issues. And the scooter is carrying the weight, not me, so I don’t need to be that concerned about how heavy it is. I wouldn’t want to carry it very far on my back, but I keep telling myself that these scooters routinely carry the weight of two people. And no matter how heavy my backpack becomes, it will still be lighter than a second person. So I’m not concerned about the scooter.
I tried to do some casual filming as I packed up. I wanted to set the mood for the day with the GoPro. And as part of that, I filmed a packing time lapse as well as a video screen capture of my smartphone as I went over Google Maps to show the route through the countryside that I was considering taking. And then I settled in for a bit of journaling. And after all of that, to be honest, it almost felt like the work of the day was done, and it was time to just settle down and relax for the rest of it. I could have gone back to sleep happily. Yet, the day hadn’t even started. This was all just prep, and now the actual day was starting, and I was expected to get on the scooter and head off for a day of small adventures on the road to Tha Song Yang.
Yet, I didn’t even do that. Ever since I discovered that the owner of the RETRO Twin Home spoke some English, I had wanted to talk to him about the hotel and get his answers on video. And before I left on my scooter, I asked him if he’d mind answering some questions for a YouTube video. He was a bit concerned that his English wasn’t good enough for that, but he agreed. Even before I asked, I felt that he would do very well. In the four days that I had stayed there, I learned, among other things, that he loved to talk. I assumed that once he started answering one of my questions, he would forget all about the camera and about English, and he would just talk. And I think that’s how it worked out.
If anything, I was the awkward one. So far, I’ve done these casual interviews only three times. I did it once with the owner of Fatboy’s Burger Bar. I did it a second time with the clerk at the Kamphaeng Phet Historical Park. And when I reviewed both those videos, I was embarrassed to see how awkward I was, in particular how many times I said “okay.” Every time the other person said something, I responded with okay or a strange vocal noise. I was clearly not an experienced interviewer. I thought about this as I approached the owner of RETRO, and I told myself to monitor my own behavior and to stop saying okay all the time. It was hard to do. I found myself being very self-conscious as I simply stared at him, silently, as he answered my questions. I wanted to respond with little verbal noises and exclamations. And I could feel myself wanting to say okay. But I forced myself to stay quiet and let him talk.
I haven’t had a chance to review the video yet, but I hope it is okay. I have to admit that my questions were a little bit disingenuous again, because I already knew the answers to most of them. In our previous chats, I had learned these things. I just wanted to ask him again and get his answers on video. Some questions were new, however, and I did learn new things. And they were interesting things, at least to me.
I learned that he was from Chiangrai, and he worked in television production either there or in Bangkok. But he found his job and his life to be somewhat boring, and he decided to make a change. I wish now that I had asked him why he chose to open a hotel in particular. There must have been some reason for that, but I don’t know what it might be. But he did say that he had a friend here in Mae Sot, and that is one of the reasons he opened his hotel here. Plus, he said, he was aware that there was a lot of tourist traffic going in and out of Myanmar at the border crossing in Mae Sot, and he thought that could be a source of customers for his hotel. I asked him about the name, and he told me that he chose the name because he really is a twin. He has a twin brother. And he and his twin brother came up with the idea to open this hotel together. It was their shared dream and project. And he put RETRO into the name because he likes retro things. Unfortunately, I put words into his mouth at this point, so I don’t know exactly what he meant by retro, but I talked about the posters of Vespa scooters and Triumph and Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Coca Cola ads, and I said that by retro he was probably referring to that decor.
I also asked him about how the RETRO seemed to be popular with foreigners like me. And he had some interesting things to say about that. I’m not 100% sure, but I think he was saying that his idea from the very beginning was to open a hotel for foreign visitors. Whether that was his plan or not, it certainly ended up that way, and he said that 80% of his guests were foreigners. He essentially confirmed what I already suspected, that this casual, homey, hostel-style hotel would not be popular with Thai people. As he himself said, Thai people want to stay in fancy hotels. They want to stay in big hotels with many floors. They don’t want to have the feeling of being in someone’s home. That is something that we odd foreigners look for. But Thai people don’t.
I also asked him about how he has been coping with the pandemic, and he talked about the things he had already told me previously. He talked about how when all his guests stopped coming, he had to do something else. In addition to the hotel, he also had the restaurant and a tour company. The hotel and the tour company lost all of its business. So he put all his efforts into the food side of the operation, and he added the home delivery angle. He said that he doesn’t make a lot of money doing that, but it has kept his business afloat.
After that little interview, I finally got on the scooter and started my ride to the north. As I said, with all the activity of the morning, I could easily have just turned around and settled into my room for another day and a night. I kind of wanted to. I’d love to have had a cup of coffee and edited that interview video. But I was fully packed and ready to go, so I left.
The new helmet is fantastic. Though as with many improvements in my life, my happiness over this new helmet was mixed in with a certain regret and embarrassment that I’d stuck with that old, awful helmet for so long. Just how unsuitable that other helmet was became more and more clear as the day went along. I always do that. Considering how unstable and changeable my life is, it’s surprising that I often resist change. Something in my life will be unsatisfactory in some way. And it is probably obvious to everyone around me that I should make a change. But I never do. I just stick with what I have for a long, long time. And then when circumstances make the change for me, I suddenly see how unhappy I was with the previous circumstances. And I kind of knew it. But I guess I also kind of resist change. Is it laziness? It might be. But I think it’s also fear of making mistakes. I think my sense is that I will always do the wrong thing anyway. So why bother changing? It’s the whole “the devil you know” idea. The old helmet was awful, but I managed to make it work. It was the devil I knew. And deep down, I think I felt that if I changed to a new helmet, I would just end up with a much worse one. I felt I would make a mistake anyway and get the wrong helmet. So instead of making things better, I would just make things worse. I’d end up with a much more terrible devil. It’s this fear of making mistakes that keeps me from making changes in my life and making choices. I let circumstances and other people make the choices for me.
The best thing about this new helmet was the way that it handled wind. The old helmet acted like a sail. It caught the wind all the time, and I had to be aware of that all the time and hold my head in the exact right position so as to keep the wind from catching it and spinning it backwards or sideways on my head. And I always had to have the visor down. With the visor up, the helmet was like a sailboat, and it was blown hither and yon by the wind. One thing I didn’t think about, however, was that my old helmet was also not very safe because it also acted as a sail when I turned my head sideways to do shoulder checks. With this new helmet, I don’t have to worry about wind. I noticed that right away as I was navigating the busy roads and intersections and highways leaving Mae Sot. I was turning my head to look behind me to make sure the road was clear, and the helmet didn’t respond in any way. It just stayed planted on my head. I found I had all kinds of freedom of head movement that I didn’t have before. And this was not only more comfortable, it was much safer. I was able to monitor the traffic around me much better and more often. Not only that, I was able to raise the visor and leave it up for long periods of time if I wanted to. It was not affected by the wind.
My plan for the day was to follow highway 105 to Mae Ramat. In Mae Ramat, I would stop for coffee at Cafe Amazon. Over coffee, I would fire up the GoPro and talk about the trip so far and decide if I would stay on highway 105 or switch to my countryside route. The ride to Mae Ramat went fine. Nothing of note happened except that at one point, I was passed by about a dozen big motorcycles. Most of them, maybe all of them, were Harleys. They had that insanely loud engine noise that Harley riders feel they have to annoy the world with. I always find the roar of loud motorcycle engines to be ridiculous. It would make sense if that loud sound meant that the engine was more powerful. But it has nothing to do with power. It’s just a poor muffler or a deliberate style of muffler. I could remove the muffler from my 125cc Honda Click and it would make enough noise to wake the dead and annoy every normal person in a half-kilometer radius, but it wouldn’t suddenly have a powerful engine. The engine doesn’t change. It just becomes louder.
I got the sense that this group of guys were part of a legit motorcycle club of some kind. And it seemed like they were on a big tour. They had duffle bags strapped to the back. Black was the color of choice for just about everything, of course. And a lot of the guys were wearing classic motorcycle gang black vests with giant eagles and skulls emblazoned on the back. I was pleased when I arrived at the PTT Station in Mae Ramat that the motorcycle gang had stopped there as well. That meant I could get a look at the riders without their helmets, and to my surprise, they turned out to be Americans. At least, I assume they were Americans. I didn’t talk to any of them. But they sure looked American. They were big men, I’d say fat men, and older men, with crazy long hair and wild bushy beards. I suppose it’s possible that a Harley-Davidson motorcycle club from Germany could be on a tour of Thailand, but it’s more probable that the club would be from the United States. Or maybe all these guys were retired foreigners living Thailand. I guess that would make the most sense. Anyway, it was quite the sight. I wanted to talk to them and perhaps do a little interview on the GoPro, but I didn’t. I noticed that lots of people around them were coming up to them and asking them questions and taking a closer look at the motorcycles. Even a group of three Thai policemen came up and started asking them lots of questions. Given all the attention they were getting, I didn’t want to add to that and annoy them.
My latte at Cafe Amazon was surprisingly good and hot, but I wasn’t able to do my video segment there because of the loud music playing. In fact, as I rode up to Cafe Amazon, I had this idea to try to do a little bit of the trick of putting the camera in position and then riding or walking up to it. I actually put the camera down on the ground in the parking lot, and then I turned around on the scooter and rode away and then came back as if I was arriving for the first time. Then I put the camera near the door of the Cafe Amazon, and then I walked back to the scooter and walked away from it a second time as if I was doing it for the first time. Then I crouched down in front of the camera and talked for a bit about the trip so far. Who knows if I will end up using any of that video. I’m sure it looked goofy. It takes skill to pull that technique off. You also have to fully commit to it and do it all the time, and that takes a lot of time and energy.
My countryside route started off well and badly at the same time. It started badly because I completely missed the first turn. I rode right past the place where I was supposed to turn left. And I ended up taking an entirely different road to start. And that road was extremely rough. And that made me think this countryside route might be a big mistake. But because of this mistake, I found myself riding beside a large solar farm. And I never would have seen those thousands of solar panels in the fields if I hadn’t made that mistake.
Luckily, this rough road was also very short, and then, to my surprise and relief, the countryside turned out to be paved. And not only was it paved, it was one of the most fun and interesting roads I’ve ever scootered down. From Google Maps, I had no idea what kind of road it was. I was hoping for, at best, a somewhat smooth dirt farming road. The white line representing this road is so small and so curvy that it barely showed up at all until you went down to the most powerful zoom-in factor. Yet, not only was it fully paved, it felt like a somewhat major road. It feels like it should figure more prominently on Google Maps. It should be represented by a thicker line. And as I rode along it, I kept thinking that I had discovered one of Thailand’s secrets. I say that not because it was paved when I thought it wasn’t, but because it went through gorgeous scenery and was unbelievably steep. In short, it was incredibly fun to ride along. And challenging. The steep portions were so steep that I worried at times whether my scooter could even make it to the top. And even if it had the power to do so, I worried that the drive belts would tear in half.
I would currently be online and trumpeting this amazing discovery to the motorcycle and scooter world in general except for one thing: at a certain point, the road appeared to simply disappear. Roads have a habit of doing this on me. I can’t really talk about this with any certainty, because I honestly have no idea what happened. I reached a point when the road pulled into another small village. And in this village, a road went north to the town of Ban Ler Tor. I had been seeing signs for Ban Ler Tor right from the beginning of this ride. It appeared to be the main town that my road of choice was heading towards. Yet, I couldn’t find it on Google Maps. But in this small village, I reached an intersection where a road, the paved road, continued north to Ban Ler Tor. And my road continued straight ahead. In fact, those were my only two options. I could turn to the right and go to Ban Ler Tor. Or I could continue straight ahead. Unfortunately, the road straight ahead fell apart badly. It became so rough within the village limits that the word impassable started to dance around in my brain. It was a bad, bad, bad road. And I wondered, as often happens, if this was the end of my day’s journey. And from here, I don’t think there was any way to suddenly cut off this road and head down to 105. If I didn’t go forward, my only option was to turn around and go 100% all the way back to Mae Ramat and start all over again and take 105.
Right at that point, a local man driving a pickup truck came up to me. He didn’t speak any English, but through sign language and using our smartphones, we tried to communicate. And whatever else he was saying, he was clearly telling me that there was absolutely no problem with taking the road ahead on a scooter. He indicated that, sure, it was a bit bumpy. But what road isn’t? And he smiled and eagerly seemed to be telling me that I would have no problem taking that road. And with his encouragement, I set off.
And this road was a big tease. At times, it got so rough as to be laughably bad. And then it would smooth out. There were even stretches of pavement. And I kept thinking and hoping that the road would suddenly settle into one condition or the other and I could figure out what to expect and how to continue or perhaps turn back. And I rode for what felt like a long, long time. The road was so bad that it was clear even to me that it would be impossible to continue like this for the remaining 40 kilometers to Tha Song Yang. I was moving far too slowly. I would never make it before sunset. I made up my mind that just after a certain landmark I knew about – a waterfall – I would take a secondary road that cuts to the southwest and returns to 105. To be honest, by that point, I felt like I had absorbed enough of what this road had to offer for one day. This road was amazing. I had loved riding on it. It was a suitable small adventure for my day. But it was a concentrated experience. I had ridden perhaps thirty-six kilometers along it. And I had mainlined the pure joy of it. And I don’t know how much would be gained from doing forty more kilometers of it. So I didn’t mind the idea of only doing half of my intended countryside route. I didn’t mind the thought of cutting it short. It’s like going to an amusement park and having your mind blown by fifty incredible roller coasters. And this park might have fifty more roller coasters you haven’t tried yet, but the fifty you’ve already been on might be enough for one day. You could also try to ride the remaining fifty, but it likely wouldn’t add much to your enjoyment of the day. It might even detract from it. With thoughts like that, I settled into the idea that, at the next opportunity, I would cut southwest and get out of the mountains and back to the smooth sailing of 105.
However, not long after that, I reached a crazy intersection. And it was an intersection where there should have been none. The road going to the left looked to be a great challenge. It went straight up, and the ground under about one third of the road had been washed away by flowing water. There was just a thin chunk of pavement hanging in mid-air with nothing to hold it up. It looked dangerous. But the road to the right looked equally dangerous. So I stopped to check Google Maps to figure out where I was. And to my astonishment, my blue dot on Google Maps showed me to be in the middle of nowhere far, far away from where I was supposed to be. Not only was I NOT on the road and the route I had mapped out, I was in a spot where no roads were indicated at all. There wasn’t even a road here according to Google Maps. According to Google Maps, my scooter and I were sitting in the middle of an untamed jungle. It was so strange.
Somehow, I guess, I had taken the wrong road when I left that village. Yet, as I thought back, I couldn’t see how that was even possible. There were no other roads. There was the road going to the north and to Ban Ler Tor. That road is clearly marked on Google Maps. And there is the road heading northwest, the one that I had planned to take. It is also clearly marked on Google Maps. But to the southwest, there were no roads at all. There is nothing there. Yet, there I was, many very rough kilometers southwest of that village, on a truly terrible road that wasn’t even supposed to be there. I freely admit that I could have made a mistake. And I admit that Google Maps could be wrong. But I honestly had seen no other options. There was no other possible road to take other than the one I had taken. Therefore, if the road to the northwest, the one that I had planned to take, existed, I don’t know where it is. I saw no possibility at any point of going in that direction. Just as with my countryside route out of Kamphaeng Phet, there was no road where Google Maps said there was one. Yet, I can see it on the Default view AND on Satellite view. So, it does exist.
And here we get into an area where I could improve my systems. The problem that rears its head here is that I did not have any fast mobile data. I buy these Internet packages that give me a small amount of fast mobile data and thirty days of slow, unlimited data. I tend to blow through the fast data very fast, and it’s gone. And then I only have the slow data, and this connection is so slow that when I’m out in the countryside, Satellite view on Google Maps won’t load. Photos won’t load. Directions won’t calculate. I am left with only the Default view and the blue dot showing my location. Perhaps if I had had a lot of fast mobile data, I would have been able to call up Satellite view, and then I’d be able to physically see what is going on with these roads. Let’s assume that the Default view is wrong and that it got the locations of these roads wrong. Well, Satellite view, by its very nature, can’t be wrong. It is a photograph of the actual ground. Therefore, when I get into trouble like this, maybe switching to Satellite view would help. But I couldn’t access it.
Even now, I’m not sure I can use Satellite view. I don’t have WiFi access in this room, and I don’t know if I can access Satellite view. I’m going to try right now and see if I can figure out where I went wrong yesterday:
Actually, that helped. I think I can see exactly where I went wrong. And it’s really funny actually. It is one of those perfect storm kinds of situations. Circumstances were exactly right to lead to my mistake. I remember everything clearly now. At the exact point where I went wrong, I happened to be coming down a very steep and very rough road out of the village. And this road hit a point where there was a type of hidden intersection. The road I had planned to follow doubled back at a sharp angle from the road I was on. The angle was so sharp that if the road was very small, I wouldn’t even have noticed it. And the other road was much more visible, much larger, and it had traffic on it. I just happened to come up on this road as two NGO-style white pickup trucks were taking this road. And, remember, at this point, as far as I was aware, there was only one road out of the village. Even on Satellite view, I can’t see the other road, the one I ended up taking. It really doesn’t exist either on Satellite view or on the Default view. So it was the most natural thing in the world to fall into line and take the same road out of the village that all the trucks and motorcycles were taking. And this road continued for a very long time. So I just felt like I had to be on the right road. Again, at the time, I believed there was only one road. So there was no chance of being on the wrong one.
As I pondered this mistake yesterday, I realized that one strategy could be employed to help avoid these mistakes. And this strategy would be to check my blue dot on Google Maps just a short distance outside of every village where I had to make a decision. Whatever the limitations of
Google Maps and my brain, that blue dot is fairly dependable. Through GPS, it shows me where I physically am located regardless of the mapping system I’m using. Therefore, if I had ridden just one hundred or two hundred meters along this road and then stopped to check the blue dot, I would have seen that I was heading southwest when I should be heading northwest. I would have seen that I was nowhere near the road I wanted to take. I would have seen that I was out in the jungle and had taken the wrong turn. And at that point, it would have been a simple matter to turn around and return one hundred meters to get back on track. But with my confidence that I was heading in the right direction, I rode many kilometers down one of the roughest roads I have ever seen, and it was far too late to turn around. I really had no choice but to keep going.
A funny thing is that while I was sitting at this intersection deep in the jungle and realizing that I was on the wrong road, traffic continued to pass by. In particular, I was passed by three Thai men riding big dirt bikes. And they were wearing all the protective gear you’d expect, such as shin guards and riding boots and riding gloves. They clearly knew what they were doing and where they were. And they were riding the type of vehicle that was suitable for this type of road. This was dirt bike road. This was hard core Enduro country. To be out there on a heavily-loaded 125cc Honda Click scooter was pretty laughable compared to those guys. I had no business being out there.
I reflected that in one day, I had had at least two examples of what I should be doing and what I should be riding. The motorcycle club on the Harleys had shown me what I should be riding on 105. And these three guys were showing me what I should be riding on this jungle trail. But, there I was on my scooter. I had no choice but to keep going.
And, looking back and taking all the information I have now into account, this might have actually NOT been a mistake. Yes, I had planned to take a different road. And that road is clearly marked on Google Maps, which indicates to me that it must be a real road. Yet, when I look at that road on Google’s Satellite view now, it looks smaller and perhaps rougher than this road that I had taken by accident. And all the traffic was on this road, the jungle road. Therefore, it’s possible that this jungle road was preferable to the road I had intended to take. It could be that this jungle road was the one that local people now used, and they don’t use the other road anymore. Maybe it doesn’t even exist anymore. On Satellite view, I can now see how the beginning of that road doubles back on the road I had been on, but I never saw it at the time. It certainly never struck me as a road that would be going anywhere. It probably looked like no road at all.
I just realized that I was shooting video right at that second, and I went back and reviewed the video. And it’s amazing. I can see EXACTLY where I went wrong at every stage. And I can see the road I should have taken. It’s right there in the video. And the circumstances surrounding why I missed it are absolutely clear. It’s an amazing piece of video when you combine it with Google Maps. It’s incredible that in these modern digital times, we can actually go back and see video evidence of exactly where we went wrong and understand fully how it happened.
Later on during that ride, I ran into the three guys on the dirt bikes again. They were stopping often at the side of the road to hang out and chat. I pulled up next to them, and one of the three guys spoke a bit of English. He asked me where I was going, and when I told him I was going to Tha Song Yang, I was pleased that he said this road would eventually get me there. I asked them where they were going, and he laughed and said, “Here.” Apparently, they weren’t going anywhere in particular. They lived in one of these nearby towns, and they just liked to hop on their dirt bikes and ride around the hills on these roads. It was their hobby.
The rest of the ride on this road to highway 105 was long and challenging, but it was also a lot of fun. The road continued to change its nature constantly. There would be short sections of pavement. Then there would be rough rock. Then mud. Then dirt. Then the road would turn into a river. The road was following a river, in fact, and as I got closer to 105, the road hopped from one side of the river to the other over scenic bridges. Eventually, I met up with 105, and it was smooth sailing from there all the way to Tha Song Yang.
Getting back to smooth road after a period of time on rough roads is always an interesting moment. When you are on the rough roads, you think a lot about how amazing it will be to finally get back to smooth pavement and good roads. Yet, once you are on the smooth road and riding at high speeds, you miss the rough roads and the excitement and the variety and the scenery that comes with them. The smooth highway can feel quite boring by comparison. In fact, I found myself very glad that I had taken that countryside route. I could see how if I taken 105 all the way from Mae Sot to Tha Song Yang, it wouldn’t have felt like much of an experience at all. Think about everything I would have missed.
My arrival in Tha Song Yang wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped. I didn’t have that one perfect hotel picked out in advance. Most of my options there were unappealing to me for one or another reason. Most of the hotels, for example, were a few kilometers outside of the town itself. I prefer to be right in the center of town if I can. And I started making my usual mistakes. I knew about one budget hotel that was marked on Google Maps as located right in the heart of the town. It didn’t have a name in English on its Google Maps pin. But I remembered that when I clicked on it, it said that it was lodging of some kind, and an English name that started with a W popped up. And there was a photograph of a very unassuming row of doors with scooters parked outside them. It looked like a very inexpensive and rough place, in short my kind of place. And when I arrived in Tha Song Yang, I opened up Google Maps and I looked for the location of this simple lodging. I rode through the streets, very pleased by what I saw of the town, and very near the main market, I found what I thought was this hotel. But to my surprise, it turned out to be a big and modern six-story hotel. It would have been a great place to stay, to be honest, but I was hoping for something cheaper than their standard rate of 600 baht per night. I left Mae Sot with the hopes of taking many weeks for this trip, and I can’t really afford 600 baht per night for that length of time.
I was really confused about how my budget hotel had turned into this more upscale place, but I figured I must have made a mistake when I looked at the place earlier. But since this place was too expensive, I felt I had no choice but to go to the cluster of, hopefully, cheaper places located outside of town. I stopped first at the Sornphet Resort Hotel. It was a very strange-looking place. I guess they had a range of bungalows scattered about, but I couldn’t see much of them. Everything looked to be broken and old and falling apart and there was a lot of junk scattered about. I got off my scooter and walked up a rickety set of stairs to what looked like the office. But there was no one there. I wandered around some of the buildings and poked my head into various rooms, but I couldn’t find anyone. I saw a sign with a phone number on it, and I think the idea was that you were supposed to just call one of those numbers if you wanted a room, and then someone would come. I was getting back on my scooter and leaving when a man emerged and came up to talk to me. He didn’t speak any English, but he seemed to be indicating that the hotel was closed. He was making lots of negative hand gestures to show that I couldn’t stay there for one reason or another, and he pointed up the highway and said, “Hotel”. He was telling me that there were other hotels further up the highway.
The next place I saw was called Ozone. I knew about this place from my research beforehand, but I decided to check out the Tha Song Yan Hill Resort Hotel first. I could see the sign for this place just beyond the Ozone. By this point, I had had enough of the search. I just wanted a room, any kind of room. There was no one at the front office building of this resort either, but I rode my scooter around for a while until I ran into a young guy that appeared to work there. He told me that they had bungalows an d rooms for a range of prices. I think he started at six hundred and fifty baht. Then they had rooms for five hundred, four hundred, and three hundred. I asked to see one of the three-hundred-baht rooms. It was down a short hill and around the corner, and I was pleased to see that it was a somewhat large separate bungalow. Three hundred baht for your own bungalow seemed like a good deal. And I reflected that whatever the rougher edges of a place like this, at least I could stay here for two nights for the price of just one night at the resort in town. This bungalow didn’t have air conditioning, but I didn’t see that being a problem. It was going to be cold at night. And, he told me, there was no hot water in the bathroom. I dismissed that problem as well. I’m accustomed to cold water showers. And with my eagerness to have a home for the night, I took the room and moved in.
To cut a long story short, the room had a lot more problems than I anticipated, and I now think it is overpriced. For one thing, it was full of mosquitoes. Luckily, I had my own mosquito net. And the cold water shower was a bit more of a challenge than I anticipated. It became extremely cold at night, and subjecting yourself to that icy water took some mental fortitude. But the big problem is that there is no Wi-Fi. I’m thinking now that it would have been better to check out one of their rooms for four hundred baht.