Wednesday, January 5, 2022
5:47 a.m. Room N18 Nungnuch Resort
Ban Rak Thai, Thailand
I’m now in room N18. I was right that this room is a considerable step down from room N16, my original room. It is much older and quite rundown. It feels like the kind of budget room you’d find in a backpacker hostel of old. It’s also smaller and darker and generally kind of sad with its broken door and barely functioning latch. Yet, it costs the same. It should cost thirty or forty percent less based on the room itself. But, as I wrote about yesterday, the rooms in Ban Rak Thai are irrelevant. You are paying for the setting and the views, and the setting of N18 is identical to that of N16. So, they both cost 800 baht per night, which is $30 Canadian.
The big problems with this room are the same as with N16. The bedding is absolutely toxic. They did allow me to move into this room relatively early, which was nice. I think they did that because they realized that I would be staying in N16 right up until checkout time. And then I would move to N18. And the sooner they got me out of N16, the quicker they could clean it and get it ready to deny it to the next guests. I was monitoring N18 while I was shooting my time lapses, and I noticed that it was occupied during the night. A young guy with a gigantic camera had spent the night there. But he joined the flow of people leaving Ban Rak Thai early and was gone right away and the room was prepared early. And at around 11:30, I approached the people at the hotel that I could find, and luckily, I was fobbed off onto some young guy whose job it was to clean. He wasn’t in charge of room reservations, so he doesn’t enforce their policies. And he just allowed me to do whatever I wanted, and so I just grabbed my backpack, which I had already carefully pre-packed and gotten ready, and I marched it over to N18 and plopped it onto the bed and grabbed the key and padlock from the door. I didn’t give them a chance to tell me that I couldn’t take the room until two in the afternoon. I just took physical possession, and no one was there to tell me that I couldn’t.
I guess it was still a bit early even for that room, because the beds didn’t have complete bedding on them and there were no towels in evidence. It appears that they have just enough of these things to have one set per room. And every day, they have to wash and dry everything before the rooms can be ready for guests, and maybe that’s why they are so strict about it. But the room was empty and had clearly been cleaned and prepared for new guests other than the lack of some bedding. The new water bottles and little bars of soap were all on display, for example. So I was happy to move in despite the lack of towels and the lack of a bed covering. Actually, I was happy about that. I wasn’t going to use them anyway. But after a while, there was a knock on my door, and a couple of women came in with towels and the bedding. There was actually a big, bright, fuzzy comforter of some kind that was inside a square plastic zipped bag. I thought for a second that it was brand new, and I was happy about that. But when she unzipped the bag, the entire room filled up with that toxic smell of detergent. It was incredible. My eyes began to burn, and I was standing across the room over by the door. The women arranged this comforter on the bed, but when they left, I quickly tossed it to the side and far away. I didn’t want this thing contaminating my sleeping area. If I’d had a garbage bag, I would have sealed it up inside. I didn’t even want to touch it with my hands. If I had big metal tongs, I would have used those to move it. This thing should go into a toxic waste dump for safe disposal, not on anyone’s bed.
The water heater is also problematic, even more problematic than the one in N16. What is it with these electric water heaters? Why aren’t they strong enough? Is it that they just don’t work in general and the technology isn’t proven? Or are the ones in Thailand just so old that they are all broken? In any event, this one can produce just a bit of hot water if you set the water flow to the smallest trickle possible. And in a weird twist, when you turn it off, it goes through a kind of shutdown procedure that involves blasting out a spray of superheated steam and water. It’s scalding, and it goes across the entire bathroom. And if you happen to be standing near the thing, you could end up getting burned. It’s that hot. It’s essentially super-charged steam from a boiler being blasted into the bathroom for about six seconds. And while it does this, the water heater sounds like it is going to explode. It does this every time. And it periodically does this at random times throughout the night.
Despite all these problems with the room, it still cost 800 baht, the same as room N16. Partially for that reason, I ended up booking a room back in Mae Hong Son for tonight. I’ll explain the connection: I’m supposed to be heading to Pai, but the trip to Pai will occupy a full day. And I would want to leave early in the morning and make a whole day of it. But I want to take full advantage of my time here in Ban Rak Thai. I’m paying for the setting of Ban Rak Thai, so I might as well stay as long as possible to enjoy it. By booking a room for the night in Mae Hong Son, which is only an hour away, I can stay here in this village until late in the morning and enjoy a breakfast and the sunrise and even another coffee on the main drag somewhere. I’m planning to go down to the main street very soon and record a time lapse of the lake from there. I’m thinking of shooting it from the dock where the boats load and unload passengers or in the restaurant right above it, whichever has the nicest views and is the most stable. And I wouldn’t be able to do all of this if I intended to then ride my scooter all the way to Pai afterwards and get any enjoyment out of that. I got a room at the PLP Guest House in Mae Hong Son for 300 baht. That’s nearly a third of the price of this room, and it looks to be a much nicer hotel and much nicer room.
For me personally, yesterday was all about just hanging out by the lake. I was awake early, and I enjoyed the morning mist and the sunrise. I had breakfast at the hotel. They served a simple pot of rice porridge, which I enjoyed very much. I then went to the main drag and had a nice cup of coffee. After coffee, I returned to the guest house to change rooms from N16 to N18, and then I went for a walk through the tea plantation at Lee Wine. After that, I stopped for a couple cans of cold beer on the Richpool Walking Street in mid-afternoon. And then I worked on some videos in my room, and I returned to Richpool Walking Street for dinner later. And that was my day.
I took all these activities, and I tried to string them together in some kind of way that made sense for a YouTube video. In my head, I was thinking more in terms of a cinematic approach than a daily-journal approach. And that began with the time lapse of the sunrise. I then did a lot of filming of myself from a distance as I walked through the tea plantation. And I also shot a time lapse of the evening at the Richpool Walking Street. I’m hoping that putting those together with a bit of my talking about stuff here and there will make for a short but punchy and interesting video. That’s the hope.
I could sense that to capture the true experience of the village from a tourism point of view, I should take a ride on one of the boats and I should take a ride on one of the ridiculous Chinese tricycles and I should taste some tea in a fancy shop and I should have a fancy meal in one of the restaurants. But I’m not really interested in doing any of that stuff, and I can’t afford it. It’s not worth it to me to spend that much money. And my videos aren’t popular enough to pay for that kind of activity.
As I’ve thought about before, it might be a kind of chicken and the egg situation. A video about more mainstream and more exotic activities would draw more attention and be more interesting for people to watch. And perhaps such a video would then earn enough money to actually pay for those activities. I’m thinking about someone like Paddy Doyle. I think he also shot a video in Ban Rak Thai. I’m looking forward to watching it. I’m curious to see the village and the lake through his more fun-loving eyes. My guess is that with his income, he was able to stay at the Lee Wine Resort. And my guess is that the went on a boat ride on the lake. And he probably had one of the traditional big cook-it-yourself meals at the shore of the lake. And if his video earns hundreds of dollars, it’s a good investment because he can then afford to do all those things. It’s like the old adage of needing to spend money to make money. It’s like you’d need to spend $200 to be a true tourist in Ban Rak Thai for a day. I can’t afford to do that. But perhaps if you DID spend the $200, the video of that experience would earn $200 and the experience would pay for itself.
10:02 a.m.
I’m still in Ban Rak Thai. I have two hours before I have to check out of my room, so I came down to the main drag. I’m back at the coffee shop from yesterday, and I’m enjoying a latte while looking out over the lake. The latte, unfortunately, is mediocre and lukewarm, but you can’t beat the view.
I had plans this morning to shoot my time lapse from the boat dock, but I guess my timing was off. When I got ready and stepped outside my room with all my camera gear prepared, the lake mist and the morning light was already underway, and the lake was already full of boats. I thought I had more than enough time to make my way down to the docks and get set up. But I left my departure too late, and I decided to just set up my cameras outside my room again. I think that ended up being a better decision anyway. For one thing, I was able to angle my cameras in a different direction from the first morning and capture a different perspective. Plus, for reasons only apparent to the people of Thailand, the main drag was blasting pop music and rap music and other hideous noise out over the lake. This was at seven in the morning. We all should have been enjoying the quiet and birdsong, but instead we got drippy romantic pop songs and rap. And this mainly seemed to be coming from the Lee Wine boat dock. They were the main perpetrators of this atrocity, and it was best to stay as far away from them as possible. And from a distance, it looked like I woudn’t have been able to go down to the actual docks anyway. And by staying at my hotel, I was able to make coffee inside my room and enjoy hot coffee while I watched the morning mist. And I was able to go back into my room from time to time to grab gear that I needed and do other things. It was much more convenient to stay at my room.
I set up my Galaxy Note 10 on a tripod in the automatic time lapse mode, and I put the GoPro Hero 9 on the Jaws Flex Clamp attached to the railing. The day before, I had simply hung the Jaws
Flex Clamp from a laundry line that was strung between some posts. To my eye, it looked completely stable. There was no wind, so there was no reason for it to move. But in the final time lapse, I can see that the camera was moving the entire time. So this time, I made sure to clamp it firmly to a stable object.
I’d also noted that the time lapse from the my phone from the day before was too light. I hadn’t set the exposure. I didn’t even know if it was possible to set the exposure for an automatic time lapse on the phone. I told myself to make sure to look into that for the next morning, but I forgot completely. I had the sense that time was getting away from me, and I set up as quickly as I could. I simply hit record as soon as the phone was in its holder and on the tripod. Only after I went back to check on it later did I notice how light the screen was. Another mistake on my part.
I think the GoPro captured a more accurate amount of light and shot a much darker video that brightened as the sun came up over the surrounding hills. I shot for an hour and a half on each camera, and that produced a three-minute time lapse on each. It was a pretty magical experience to stand there as the mist drifted across the lake and then burned away as the sun rose. It was gorgeous. And it was surprisingly cold. You’d think I wasn’t even a Canadian the way I was so fascinated by blowing out my breath and watching the steam form and rise. Sitting here in this coffee right now at mid-morning with the heat of the sun coming down, it’s astonishing that it was so cold just a short time ago.
I timed the boats this morning, and I learned that they go out for a half hour on each trip. It feels much longer when I watch them on the lake, but it was thirty minutes. And watching them load and unload passengers, it became more clear why they do it that way. I think they have all five boats going in and out at the same time so that they can sell tickets on a schedule. Passengers would know roughly at what time their boat was scheduled to depart and return. That makes a lot of sense. And it’s just more efficient and simpler to have all five boats on the same schedule. And now that I think about it, it’s great that the boats are powered by a guy with paddles. So far, they have resisted putting motors on them.
As always, I have a million unanswered questions about this place. How is the lake managed and controlled in terms of development and water quality? It seems like the density of the guest houses and hotels would put a lot of pressure on the local water systems, whatever they are. Is there someone monitoring that sort of thing? And what about sewage? Is there a sewage treatment plant at all? There must be, but where could it be? I don’t think they could dump all the raw sewage into this one tiny lake. And are there tons of rules and procedures for people that want to build new hotels or new cafes? Or is it wide open and anyone can do anything they want? How much do the boat drivers get paid? How long are their shifts? I noticed that they often get tips from passengers. How much is a typical tip? Where do the boat drivers sleep at night? Are there any local people at all in the village? Or is the entire village now simply hotels and the people that work at these hotels? I noticed that one long strip of waterfront is taken up entirely by parking for cars and trucks. That seems kind of a waste of that space. How did it end up that way? Is there a managing council that can decide to take that parking area and turn it into a beautiful park or pathway? Does someone control where people can put up tents? Or can anyone just plop down a tent anywhere no matter how ugly it makes the lake look? Are there noise ordinances?
And what about safety and insurance? I’m watching the latest batch of boats heading out, and I noticed that some people on one boat are wearing life vests. Those are the first I’ve seen. Apparently, they have them available for anyone that requests them, but they aren’t required. My sense is that in Taiwan, everyone would be required to wear a life vest. If that was a rule here, people would be very unhappy. I think most of the reason people go out on the boats is to take selfies. More and more, I’m seeing women in very nice dresses and elaborate gowns and costumes. There is much preening and grooming and posing to get just the right selfie at the right location. None of those activities would work well while wearing a life vest.