Sunday, January 2, 2022
7:02 a.m. Room 1 The Like View
Mae Hong Son, Thailand
As happens every year, I’m stumbling over writing down the year 2022. I keep wanting to write 2021. I remember this happened a lot in the years when people still wrote physical checks. They would write the wrong date on their checks for a long time before the habit of writing down the new year kicked in.
Yesterday became a different type of day than I had planned. After I had my morning coffee in my room, I suddenly felt the urge to make a short video message for my YouTube channel wishing everyone a happy new year. Being here in Mae Hong Son on my own, I haven’t had any particularly strong feelings about the holidays. They don’t mean that much to me. If anything, I find that I get annoyed by the Christmas and New Year’s Holidays. It just means disruption for me. It means that hotels are booked. It means that other people go on holidays. It means that flights are expensive and fully booked. It means that all my favorite podcasts and TV shows take breaks, and they just post repeat episodes and what they like to call classics. And being in Asia makes it worse because there is both the Western New Year to deal with and then right after that come all the same problems with Chinese New year.
However, I had a sense that my videos on my YouTube channel are not in sync with real time. I’m falling farther and farther behind. And all the travel vloggers that I follow on YouTube were posting special holiday videos. Paddy Doyle, for example, did the smart thing and booked a week at a fancy hotel in Bangkok for the holidays. And he posted a shortish video about that experience as his holiday message. With all these holiday videos on YouTube, I got a bit more into the holiday spirit, and I decided to ride my scooter up to the temple on the hill and have a coffee there and shoot a holiday video. I wished everyone a good year in 2022, and I showed a bit of the temple and the scenery of Mae Hong Son. And then I edited the video and posted it back in my guest house room afterwards. As always, this was supposed to be a quick task and not interfere with the rest of my day. But the editing and posting of even this simple and short video took up much of the day, and I never did get around to all the housekeeping tasks.
In the early evening, I loaded up Agoda, and I spent some time picking out my hotel in Pai. I eventually settled on a place called Mr. Jan Guest House. Pai is packed with guest houses, hotels, and hostels. I’m amazed at the number I see on Google Maps. For the first time in a long time, I saw lots of options for staying in dorm rooms at low prices. However, my current lifestyle doesn’t really allow me to stay in dorms. I need too much space and too many electrical outlets for all my camera gear. At first, the more rustic bungalows a bit outside of town seemed to suit me. The first place I booked was like that. But then I started to think that I’d rather be closer to the center of town. With my scooter, I spend lots of time out in remote areas. I think staying at a hotel inside the town would be a nice change. And Mr. Jan Guest House seemed to hit the right note. It is located right inside the town. Yet, the place offers bungalows in a kind of garden setting. And it wasn’t expensive. I didn’t see any giant red flags in all the reviews. And I booked five nights at this place.
However, after I posted my video, I noticed that someone left a comment saying that they hoped I’d visit some kind of interesting village near Mae Hong Son. I had no idea what they were referring to, but I did some research, and it turns out that there is a type of tourist village called Ban Rak Thai situated around a lake right on the border with Myanmar just forty-four kilometers north of Mae Hong Son. I think in my normal life, I wouldn’t be particularly interested in a place like Ban Rak Thai. It is, as I said, a tourist town. But it seemed to have an interesting history. And it has a nice setting. It has hotels. And the road to get there looks very beautiful. I started to think I could enjoy a trip there, if only a day trip, and it would be an interesting experience to document on video.
But then I decided it would be better to spend the night if possible. And that led to all my usual intense calculations as I tried to figure out how a day trip would work in terms of my reserved nights here in Mae Hong Son and at Mr. Jan in Pai. And then what it would mean to spend one night at Ban Rak Thai. Or two nights. Unfortunately, none of the hotels in Ban Rak Thai are listed online. So you have to take your chances that you’ll be able to find a place to stay there and just show up. All my calculations led me to think that it would be better to just go there on a day trip. But that would mean booking another night here in Mae Hong Son. I didn’t think that would be a problem, but my current place appears to be booked out again. And I figured that if I had to pack up fully, then I might as well just go to Ban Rak Thai and try to find a room there. If there is no room available, then I can just spend the day and return to Mae Hong Son and move into a new hotel, which I would have had to do anyway.
So, after all of that, I decided to go to Ban Rak Thai and spend a couple of nights there. And that meant cancelling my reservation at Mr. Jan in Pai. In this case, that wasn’t a problem. One of my reasons for choosing to stay at Mr. Jan was that they had a free cancellation policy. The other hostel I booked was the same. So I was able to book rooms there and then cancel my reservation without an issue. A funny thing is that when you cancel your reservation, you must select a reason from a list. And in all my life, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to choose a reason from one of these lists that matches my real reason. I’ve always wondered why that is. They provide more than a dozen reasons. And you’d think one of them would be at least close to my actual reason. But they never are. I always have to choose a reason that isn’t true. My honest reason is never listed.
Anyway, that is the plan for now. I’m going to spend today in Mae Hong Son. And in the afternoon, I’ll slowly get prepared to leave the next morning. And tomorrow, I’ll likely get up early and begin the ride to the village. I’ll probably spend three nights in the village if I can manage that. One day in a place like that never seems like enough to me. And then I can choose between staying in Mae Hong Son for one night again, or I can ride all the way from the village to Pai. I’ll probably do that. In fact, the distance from Ban Rak Thai to Pai is about the same as the distance from Mae Hong Son to Pai. So, that works out well.