Thursday, January 6, 2022
7:00 a.m. Room 5, PLP Guest House
Mae Hong Son, Thailand
What a difference a day and a night can make. Yesterday morning, I woke up beside a gorgeous lake in the mountains with all that that entails. And this morning, I’m back in a small town in a wonderful little guest house. Not to get too crazy with this thought, but it strikes me that right now, the mist is flowing over that lake’s surface just as it does every single morning, just as it has done for probably hundreds of thousands of years if not millions of years. That lake just goes about its business of being beautiful whether people are there to appreciate it or not. Mist was probably flowing over that lake and looking beautiful before the human species even existed. And that thought makes me wonder what Ban Rak Thai looked like before it became a tourist attraction. Can you imagine a century-long time lapse of that lake showing what it looked like in 1922 and then showing the changes until today? I didn’t have enough time in the town to really explore, so it’s possible I missed some kind of small museum or display that contains photographs of the lake from the past. But I haven’t seen a single photograph of the village pre-tourism.
As planned, I stayed in Ban Rak Thai pretty much until the last minute before my noon checkout time. Even before I went out for my morning coffee, I packed up all my stuff to the point that my backpack was ready to just be strapped to my scooter. There was nothing left for me to do except get on the scooter and ride away when I returned to the guest house. I had plans to take a quick shower before I did that, but there was no water in the room upon my return. Luckily, I had water in a bucket to flush the toilet, but that was all. No water was flowing through the pipes. On the positive side, I was leaving late enough – at noon – that I was able to get my key deposit back. It was only 100 baht, but 100 baht is 100 baht. That can be transformed into two very enjoyable cups of coffee somewhere.
Knowing I had a room waiting for me in Mae Hong Son was a wonderful feeling. It’s relaxing. And I was particularly relaxed because the town was only 44 kilometers away, and it was nearly all downhill. So I was in no hurry, and I rode my scooter around the lake one last time and checked things out a bit more before I left. I discovered that a large building on a hill that had puzzled me was a local hospital. And then it was time to leave. It struck me as it often does what a dramatic change even a short physical distance can make. At one moment, I was at the lake nestled between all those hills. A little jewel. And then I rode 100 meters and the lake was gone. You wouldn’t even know it was there.
I knew that I had done some climbing on my scooter when I rode up to Ban Rak Thai. But I guess I wasn’t really paying attention, because going down was dramatic. The road went down and down and down seemingly endlessly. It was a surprise. I hadn’t had the feeling at all that I had climbed up as much as I had. I did not attempt to vlog the day. I have far too much video to work through as it is. There was no need to make this ride to Mae Hong Son a big event. I would have happily done it if there was enough time, but there simply isn’t.
I knew exactly where PLP Guest House was, and I rode almost directly there once I arrived in town. I was a little bit displeased upon my arrival, I have to say. There was that small touch of disorganization that always bothers me. For one thing, there was no one at PLP to talk to. No one was there except for some random woman that was cleaning a room and who wasn’t very friendly. As is common, there was no office or front desk or reception. There was no one there waiting to greet new guests whether they’d reserved a room or had just shown up. I had no choice but to walk up to the woman cleaning and indicate with sign language that I was there to sleep in a room. With my face and hands, I asked, “What do I do? Where do I go?” And she kind of grunted and pointed across the street.
I went across the street, and I found myself at a small coffee shop or restaurant. And no one was there either. Nor was there any information or any signs. I simply wandered around this place for a while and waited. And after some time passed, a woman came out from the back, and she appeared to be connected to PLP. I indicated that I had a reservation, and I showed her the information on my phone. And she told me that the rooms weren’t ready, and I would have to wait for a while. I took a seat at one of the tables in the restaurant. I told myself that I was very flexible and I had a lot of things I could do, so it didn’t matter, and I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t annoyed. But, to be honest, I was a bit annoyed. I never understand lack of organization. I’m so attuned to organization and systems that it bothers me greatly when it is absent. It is so apparent to me. It just makes me feel weird when I deal with people that don’t see it the same way. I don’t understand how you can run a business for years, for decades even, and it never occurs to you that there should be some kind of system in place to greet the guests at your guest house. I’m not talking about anything elaborate. How about a simple sign at the guest house that reads, “The PLP Guest House reception desk is across the street at the coffee shop. Please go there to check in.” Would that be so hard? In a weird way, this lack of a system makes me feel lonely. People always ask me if I’m not lonely because I’m alone. And I always say no, and it’s true that I don’t feel lonely in the normal sense. But I do feel lonely when I see all the humans around me behaving in ways that I don’t understand at all. It makes me feel like we’re not the same species at all. How can I relate to people that are so profoundly different?
I had a similar experience last night when another guest moved into the room next door to mine. I think this person was from Italy. It was a man. And this man sat down right outside the door to my room and got on the phone and had a very loud and very passionate conversation with a woman from around eleven until one in the morning. And he had her on speaker phone. Because of the weird construction of this place, the doors to our rooms are right beside each other at right angles. And sitting where he was on the steps outside my door, he was having this loud conversation just two or three feet away from my head where it lay on my bed and where I was trying to sleep. The door is thin, and it was like he and this woman were right inside the room with me.
The very first thing I noticed about this room when I moved in was how the door was right beside the door to the neighboring room. And the door is a bit awkward and a bit loud. So, I instantly adjusted my behavior so that I found ways to open and close this door quietly. I would not want to disturb my neighbors if I had any. And in a billion years, I could never understand what goes on inside the head of a person that could, in this same situation, just sit on the steps right outside the door to the neighboring room and have a loud phone conversation from eleven until one in the morning. What kind of human being does that? How can I possibly relate to such a person? Being around these people all the time is what makes me feel truly alone and lonely. This is normal behavior for this person. And they go through their entire life behaving this way, oblivious to how much they bother those around them. This person might as well be another species in terms of my being able to understand and relate to them.
My problem with the lack of systems here goes to the PLP restaurant as well. The woman was the only person there. And she had checked my reservation and taken a picture of my passport, and she had told me that the room wasn’t ready yet, and I would have to wait. From that point, with my brain, I would assume a couple of things would happen. If I were in her shoes, I would encourage the guest to sit down at one of the many empty tables in the restaurant to wait. And I would bring this guest a glass of cold water. And I would ask them if they wanted anything from the restaurant’s menu: A cup of coffee? A fruit smoothie? Some lunch?
I was actually quite hungry, and I wouldn’t have minded ordering some food. Failing that, a cup of coffee would have been awesome. This place actually had full menus with both Thai and English words, and I grabbed all the menus and brought them with me to a table to look them over. But no one ever came to take my order. And this one woman just disappeared. She went somewhere and was gone, and I was just sitting in the restaurant all by myself, waiting. Again, I tried to tell myself that I was a flexible person and this didn’t affect me in any way or make me feel anything. But it did make me feel something. It made me feel annoyed. I got out my phone, and I started editing a video. I had a ton of YouTube-related work to do, so I just tried to make the best use of my time as I waited. But I was annoyed the entire time. I suppose a person from Thailand would just tell me that alI I had to do was shout loudly towards the back, and someone would come. But I’m never comfortable or happy doing that.
After an hour or so, this woman returned, and she said in English something about the room being ready. I was eager to move in and unpack, so I gathered up my phone and started to put it away, and I got up from my chair and reached for my knapsack. But two things happened. One is that I was distracted. I’m always a kind of eager-to-please person, and I didn’t want to make this woman wait. She said the room was ready and she was already heading across the road with the key to the room. So I wanted to move fast and catch up with her. And in moving fast, I got careless, and I tripped over the chair.
The second thing is that all the chairs in the restaurant and in the room are fashioned out of extremely heavy iron. They weigh a ton. And I didn’t realize this. Normally, when you get out of your chair, there is a little bit of give. If you push back with your legs and back, the chair skids back a bit on the floor. If you turn to the side and you nudge the arm of the chair with your shin or your knee, the chair shifts a bit and moves out of the way. And I guess I’m so used to that happening that I was moving on autopilot, and I was expecting this chair to behave in this way. But this chair was so heavy that it did not move in the slightest. It might as well have weighed a thousand pounds. Somehow, when I got up and the chair didn’t respond in the way I thought it would, I lost my balance. And then I tried to regain my balance partially by nudging against the chair with my leg and expecting it to shift over. But it was as immovable as Mount Everest. Plus, I was trying to move too fast, and I still had my phone in my hand. And all this combined so that I lost my balance completely, and I went right over. I mean, right over. I went down like a felled tree. Flat on my face on the cement, and my precious Galaxy Note 10 went flying. I scraped a bunch of skin off my right shin on the heavy iron of the chair as I went down and I cut open one of my toes and jammed my toes all up. All in all, I guess it could have been a lot worse. It was a bad fall. I had no control at all, and I hit hard. There could have been broken limbs, a smashed jaw, and a smashed phone. But the phone appeared to be fine. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw that. And all I suffered was the scraped and bruised shin and the cut and bruised toes. And my dignity suffered a bit. The woman from the guest house heard me go down, of course, and when she came back, she found me splayed out on the floor face-first like I was on the beach trying to get a sun tan. It was a very undignified position. And I jumped up to my feet as quick as I could and reassured her that I was fine. I tried to play the whole thing off like it was nothing. But she was probably thinking I was entering a fragile old age or was drunk. What else could explain going down so hard and for seemingly no reason at all?
On the positive side, other than the weird door placement and my phone-talking neighbor, the room is amazing. For a low-budget 300-baht-per-night room, it’s awesome. The room is big and well-furnished. It has a queen-sized bed with a good mattress and really nice bedding, a little table and chair (made out of that heavy iron, I might add), a fan, a fridge, a nice set of shelves, a nice mirror, three sets of electrical outlets, a big, nicely appointed bathroom with a spacious separate shower area with a functioning hot-water heater. As soon as I had the chance to take all this in, I had two thoughts. The first was what an absolute dummy I was to stay at the Like View Guest house before. My room at the Like View also cost 300 baht per night, and it was disgusting. It was awful. It was like a squatter dump for drug addicts. To think that I could have moved to the PLP at the same price is crazy. My second instantaneous thought was that I wanted to change my plans and stay here for two nights, not just one. At this price, why not? I can spend a day working on a YouTube video and then go to Pai after that. A day to relax here would be awesome.
At first, I thought my usual bad luck would prevail, because PLP seemed to be nearly fully booked online. There seemed to be one room available, but it was a different room to this one. So I’d have to change rooms, and I didn’t want to do that. But then I looked on Booking dot com, and it had more rooms listed, not just one. And one of the rooms appeared to be mine. So I rushed across the street to try to find that woman and ask about staying a second night. That took some time and was predictably annoying and frustrating, but I eventually found the woman, and through some discussion, we concluded that I could stay for a second night, and I could pay her in cash in person. There was no need to book online. I quickly did that, and she cancelled the room listing online, and that means I am going to spend today and tonight here as well. I was so happy about that yesterday. I got a bit worried when my noisy neighbors moved in. At first, I thought that loud conversation was coming through the walls, and that meant trouble. But then I realized the moron was sitting on my steps and was not inside his room. So I felt better. The room was better sound-insulated than I thought. Just as long as idiots aren’t sitting on my steps with their girlfriend on speaker phone, noise levels should be fine today and tonight.
And my Mystery Benefactor from Malaysia booked a hotel for me in Pai starting on Friday. He booked five nights for me at the amazing-sounding Lilu Hotel. He booked two nights in what they call a Superior Room. And then the final three nights are in one of their Mini-Suites. The Mini-Suite looks very exciting. It will be fun to have a hallway and a separate bedroom and living room.