Tuesday, January 18, 2020
5:07 a.m. Room 2
Rooms for Rent Chiang Dao Chan and Cees
Chiang Dao, Thailand
A lot has been going on, and I’ve fallen behind in terms of this daily journal. I probably wouldn’t be writing now either except that I couldn’t sleep. I’m actually exhausted. And I need sleep. But I couldn’t fall asleep. So, here I am.
Part of the problem is that the bed at my recent hotel is strangely soft. I guess I’ve gotten used to the hard mattresses of Thailand, and this mattress is like a sponge. I can’t get comfortable. And it’s not just the mattress. The mattress itself is clearly old. So they put some foam layers on top. And all of that put together makes a bit of a spongy experience. I got some sleep, but not very much. And then I woke up at around three, and try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I eventually got frustrated and decided that if I was going to be awake anyway, I might as well turn on the light and have a cup of coffee.
I’m in the small town of Chiang Dao. I arrived early in the afternoon yesterday after a pretty wonderful scooter ride from Pai. It was also a bit of a tough ride. I left from my guest house in Pai at around 6:30. That is my usual habit, and I usually experience a lot of benefits from leaving early. But this habit has not been working out very well lately. For one thing, it is extremely cold in the morning before the sun comes up. And I am not outfitted for that kind of cold. I end up a frozen statue on my scooter, and that isn’t the best state from which to enjoy life and the scenery. On top of the cold, there is thick mist and fog. The fog is atmospheric, but it also means you can’t see anything. Finally, nothing is open at that time of the morning. I passed a surprising number of interesting coffee shops on the way, but none were open.
As I rode along, I began to consider that I was missing out on a lot that this road had to offer. And I concluded that it would have been better to begin these riding days on the Mae Hong Son Loop at mid-morning or even late morning rather than early morning. This would allow for a more relaxed morning in whatever hotel I am staying at. I could have a nice breakfast, if a breakfast was available. Then I could be on the road when the sun was already up and it was warm. And I would be able to stop at various places along the way. With my early-morning departures, my mental focus becomes arriving at my destination. Yesterday, for example, I just became fixated on getting to Chiang Dao. My mood had little to do with enjoying the road. It was just a means to getting to Chiang Dao.
And with all those thoughts swirling around in my head, I came up with a new plan for my return to Mae Sot. To be honest, I’m actually thinking now it would be better to apply for my visa extension in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is only seventy kilometers and one easy day away. Mae Sot is over six hundred kilometers and four days away. The more often that people tell me I should just apply for my visa extension in Chiang Mai, the more I think they might be right. But I am going to stick to my original plan of returning to Mae Sot. And with my thoughts about approaching the Mae Hong Son Loop in a new way, I am considering retracing my steps and doing the entire loop a second time. I like this idea. The most direct route back to Mae Sot takes me down the main highways and through Tak. That route is 422 kilometers long. Alternatively, I could ride from here to Mae Sariang vis Mae Chaem and then south from there to Mae Sot. That would provide some nice scenery. And that route is 495 kilometers long. But if I were willing to add just over 100 kilometers to that journey, I could re-do the entire ride from here to Pai and then to Mae Hong Son and then down to Mae Sariang and Mae Sot. That would give me the chance to relive the entire ride but see everything from the opposite direction. Plus, I could test out my theory that leaving later in the morning would change and improve the experience. I think when I rode around the loop the first time, I was focused on the towns that I was getting to. For my return, I would think of the towns as just places to sleep and nothing more. The focus would be the daytime and the road. I would live on the road and not in the towns. I would live on the road and sleep in the towns. The idea is that I could leave later in the morning and then arrive at the towns later in the day. Then I would simply eat and sleep and then get up to ride again.
The distances work out fairly well for this plan, as well. The most interesting parts of the road are between here and Pai and Mae Hong Son and Mae Sariang, of course. And the distances separating those towns are actually pretty small. Surprisingly small. From here to Pai is 128 kilometers. From Pai to Mae Hong Son is 107 kilometers. Mae Hong Son to Mae Sariang is a bit longer at 162 kilometers. The last chunk to Mae Sot is the longest at 233 kilometers. And I can see how the first three days would be very enjoyable if I left later in the morning and arrived later in the day and didn’t worry about it. I could just take my time and relax on the road. I already know exactly where I could stay in all those towns.
Thursday – Chiang Dao to Pai (Diamond Guest House)
Friday – Pai to Mae Hong Son (PLP Guest House)
Saturday – Mae Hong Son to Mae Sariang (PS@Riverview Hotel)
Sunday – Mae Sariang to Mae Sot (Phannu Hotel)
The only place that I would likely have to book in advance is PLP in Mae Hong Son. At the other places, I could just show up. I really like this idea. One big question I have is whether I should even bother taking any video. And if I did shoot video, how should I approach it? I don’t really know. It feels like if I am going to do this 630-kilometer journey, it would be a shame not to document it in some fashion. I’ll have to give this some thought.
And just for fun, let’s see if I can depress myself by looking at the weather forecast. This entire idea was sparked by the thought of riding back to Pai in beautiful sunshine. I feel like I missed most of the appeal of that road by riding along it in the ice-cold fog. So I want to do it again. However, the weather forecasts have suddenly been calling for endless rain again. Maybe things have changed overnight. Let’s see…
No, it hasn’t changed. They are still calling for clouds and rain on Thursday and Friday. And those are the two key days for my new plan. Saturday and Sunday look okay. But I’ll try not to let the weather forecast get me down.
Now that I’ve got the future plans segment of today’s thoughts out of the way, I need to back up a bit: I spent my last night in Pai not at the Lilu Hotel relaxing in comfort. I decided to move to the more budget-friendly Mr. Jan Guest House. That worked out well enough. I was actually curious about what the place was like, since I had been considering that guest house seriously when I was first making my plans to visit Pai. I ended up staying at the more up-scale Lilu only because my Mystery Benefactor booked it for me. I’m very glad he did, of course. It was a perfect place to stay. But I was still curious about the more typical backpacker-style places like Mr. Jan.
I booked the room online for 335 baht. When I checked in, the woman at Mr. Jan told me that if I wanted to extend my stay, I shouldn’t book online but pay her directly. Then it would cost 250 baht per night. The bungalow was not really that great, to be honest. Their Agoda listing did a bit of a bait and switch by showing a picture of a nicer bungalow than the one they actually gave me. The bungalow in the online photo was a separate unit. But the one they gave me was connected with a second one. It was two rooms sharing the same building and connected by a verandah. And that means you have to be more careful about walking around and making noise. The reviews I read about the place were accurate. It’s true that the front area is not very nice at all. If you just looked at the main building and the parking area, you’d think the place was a dump. But the front doesn’t match the back area where the garden and the bungalows are located. That area is much, much nicer. The bungalows themselves are perhaps a bit tightly packed back there. I can see an issue if you happen to get noisy neighbors. I think you’d be able to hear much of what your neighbors are up to. But the garden was nice, and the more expensive bungalows looked to be much larger and nicer than the budget option I chose. And the main attraction of Mr. Jan is its proximity to Walking Street. It is just one street over from the Walking Street, which puts you right in the heart of the action but far enough away that you don’t get bothered by the noise. It’s a perfect location, really.
And I was pleasantly surprised by my reception. A young woman greeted me warmly and she handled the check-in process smoothly and with a friendly and informative style. She told me everything I needed to know about staying in the place. She was the highlight of my stay there, to be honest. The bathroom was nicer than I expected. And the rest was pretty basic. The furnishings were all quite old and worn. But everything worked except for the WiFi . WiFi was an issue, but that’s about it.
I worked on some videos throughout the day, went to bed early, and then I woke up early to start the ride to Chiang Dao. Mr. Jan actually had a simple breakfast ready for their guests even when I was leaving, but I was eager to hit the road, and I didn’t have any of it. Thinking back, I should have. There was no reason to be on the road as early as I was.
The initial section of the road out of Pai was extremely steep and winding. It felt more curvy, in fact, than any stretch of road on the entire loop. And it felt the most dangerous. But that could have been because the road was wet from the rain, and there were many sections that were covered in a carpet of wet leaves and pine needles. Those sections were as slippery as ice. There were also a fair number of large rocks and branches on the road. I stopped frequently to move them. I like to think that this small public service has prevented the occasional accident. I often move dangerous objects that have fallen on the road. The most interesting moment of the ride was when a herd of carabao slowly emerged out of the mist and fog ahead of me. Their ponderous gait gave them the air of emerging monsters.
This mountain section was shorter than I expected, and I was soon at a lower altitude and making my way along wide, sweeping turns in flatter land. But it was also quite interesting there. I think that the section of road connecting Chiang Mai and Pai gets a lot more traffic than other parts of the Loop, so there are enough customers to support a lot of very elaborate cafes and coffee shops. One notable spot was decorated with dozens of large Halloween decorations. There were witches and monsters everywhere. I noted all these places, but I didn’t stop at any of them. They weren’t open, anyway.
Everything changed at the spot where highway 1095 met up with 107. That road, 107, connects Chiang Mai with Chiang Dao, and at that point, you are suddenly back in normal and extremely busy Thailand. I expected 107 to be a small countryside road but it started off as a four-lane divided highway, and even when it went down to two lanes it was always extremely crowded with fast-moving trucks, cars, and SUVs. I did finally stop at a coffee shop to gather my wits and babble into a GoPro, but the traffic noise inside the coffee shop was overwhelming. And the coffee was mediocre. Chiang Dao itself was also a disappointment upon arrival. The main drag consists of this same highway, and the level of traffic was crazy high. There was nothing pleasant about the town at first glance. The one saving grace was the towering and looming limestone massif of Doi Chiang Doi.
Doi Chiang Dao is the third highest mountain in Thailand, and it sits very near to the town itself. And it presents a dramatic face. From the side facing the town, it looks to be completely separate from the hill ranges around it. It sits alone and craggy and dominates the skyline. In fact, it looks exactly like what I would expect an ultra-prominent peak to look like. Yet, when I checked online, it isn’t listed as one. That surprised me.
I found the guest house without much trouble. The only issue was navigating the busy main road. That road hummed with traffic moving at different speeds and coming from all directions. It was difficult to cross safely. And I had to turn around and stop and check Google Maps two or three times before I finally found the right side road. My arrival at Chan and Cees was awesome. The owner, who told me to call him Cees, which he pronounces like the English word “case”, came right out to greet me and get me settled. He is from the Netherlands, as I knew beforehand, and he was very friendly and we talked for a good while. He showed me two rooms. One room is fan-only and costs 300 baht per night. The other had air-con and cost 400 baht per night. In the hot season, it would be a no-brainer to get the air-con room. You would want the air conditioner, and that room was also significantly larger. I was glad to see that each room consisted of its own separate little house or bungalow. They are tightly packed together, but none of them share walls or foundations.
I was tempted by the larger space of the air-con room when I first saw it, but I saw the fan-only room next, and it was more than large enough. It had a large double bed, a table and two real chairs, a kettle, complimentary coffee, a wardrobe, a comfortable bathroom, and hot water. The room is the very definition of good value, and I had a sense that I was witnessing the result of that famous Dutch attention to detail and concern for cleanliness. The room was spotless, and there were little touches everywhere that told me that someone had put some thought into customer service. For example, there is the usual comforter on the bed. BUT there are also two heavy and thick blankets folded up on top of the wardrobe in case you need more layers during a cold night. That’s very rare in a budget room. The latch on the door throws easily and smoothly. In all these budget rooms, the latch usually stops working well over time and no one ever fixes it. But in this place, they clearly adjusted it over time to make sure that the two sides still line up perfectly. The light overhead is fluorescent, but it isn’t just a bare straight bar with exposed wires and dangling spiderwebs. It consists of a nice round bulb inside a pleasant light fixture with a glass dome to diffuse the light. It is strong enough to light up the whole room very nicely. It’s pleasant and cheerful because of that. There is the usual electrical outlet right by the light switch as you enter. But then there is a second double-outlet right beside the small table. It is conveniently placed to plug in the kettle and any devices you might want to put on the table, such as your computer. It’s not a luxurious room, of course. This is basic and affordable, but attention has been paid to the small and important things. And that extends to the WiFi, which is super fast and strong and reliable, and it doesn’t require a password. My room at Mr. Jan was the complete opposite of this place, yet it cost the same. Even the bedding and the curtains speak to the difference. The bedding at Mr. Jan consisted of hand-me-downs from a child’s bedroom. And the Teddy Bear curtains were the same. You feel like you are sleeping in the spare bedroom at your elderly grandmother’s house. The sheet on the bed here is typically overly-bright and colorful, which is common in Thailand, but they are a bit more adult. And the curtains are thick and heavy and a simple brown with a nice pattern on them. The Teddy Bear curtains at Mr. Jan were made of old and thin children’s bed sheets that had been converted to serve as curtains. The curtains here at Chan and Cees were designed and sold as curtains. And for adults.
I had certain ideas about what I was going to do and get done here in Chiang Dao. And I decided to hit the ground running with some errands. I wanted to get those out of the way. And I had arrived early enough that I had time to do them. And that ended up suitably comical. Cees gave me a nice tourist map of the area, which I loved. And he told me about places where I could go to get things done. He told me that I could get my scooter washed at the big gas station right at the main road. There was a carwash at the back, he said. He told me that I could get the scooter tuned up and the oil changed at a great mechanics shop to the right down the main road. He told me how to get there and what to look for. And he told me about a great but affordable restaurant run by a Canadian, and he told me how to get there. All of this was communicated to me with the expected comments like, “It’s easy. No problem.” But, of course, we are talking about me, not normal people, and all these things that people tell me are super-easy never turn out to be quite so.
For one thing, when I went to the gas station, there was no one at the car wash area at the back. As with so many places in Thailand, it was open and clearly operational, but there was no one there. There were no staff and no indication of what a customer is supposed to do to get service. It was deserted and empty. I rode my scooter around to the front of the gas station, and I spoke to the staff there, and they told me that they didn’t wash scooters. It was only for cars. After that, I went looking for the mechanic’s shop. I rode up and down the main road a half dozen times and scoured the landscape looking for all the little clues and details that Cees told me to look for to find the place. But I saw nothing. I eventually had to give up. I couldn’t find the place. Then I rode in the opposite direction into the main commercial district of Chiang Dao. Cees told me that the restaurant run by the Canadian was down there. His directions were of the “you can’t miss it” variety, and he told me to look for the German flag. And I rode up and down the main road another half dozen times and looked everywhere and consulted Google Maps frequently, but again I had to give up. I never did manage to find that restaurant.
All was not lost, however, and in my travels around Chiang Dao, I noticed that this town was abundantly supplied with laundromats. I don’t know why this would be so, but there appeared to be a laundromat on every second corner. Washing machines were in evidence everywhere. I chose a very nice one right across the main road from my guest house. It looked new and modern. All the machines looked to be operational. It looked comfortable, and it had a dryer. So I returned to my guest house and gathered up all my clothing to be washed. My one pair of pants were in dire need of cleaning. They were embarrassingly dirty. I had been wanting to wash them for days, but I was just too lazy to do it and never found the time, and they got dirtier and dirtier. There were more stains and dirt than pants.
I’ve had a bit of a strained relationship with laundry in Thailand in that none of the washing machines ever seem to rinse the laundry detergent out of the clothing. I’ve had that experience in many guest houses where the bedsheets, pillowcases, and towels stink powerfully of laundry detergent and clearly have detergent deeply embedded in the material, detergent that never got removed during the rinse cycle. The fumes are toxic and they burn my throat and nose and the detergent burns my skin as I try to sleep. In my own laundry adventures, I’ve been very careful to use just a small amount of detergent, because I know that the rinse cycle isn’t effective. Besides, I think people routinely use far more detergent than is necessary. I dial that back a lot.
At this laundromat, I had high hopes. The machines were big and new and clean, and they seemed to be powerful. I had a very small amount to be washed, and I could have used their smallest machine. But I decided to use their bigger and more expensive machine just so that I could maximize the amount of water used. Unfortunately, it turns out that these modern machines have sensors built into them, and they know when you put in a small amount of clothing, and it adjusts the water level accordingly. So paying more for the larger machine was just wasted money and wasted effort. And with that, I decided to wash all my clothes a second time in a regular machine but add no soap at all. By doing that, I would have triple the chance of removing the excess detergent. In the second machine, the wash cycle would be a full rinse cycle since I had put in no detergent at all. The wash cycle would be a rinse cycle and the rinse cycle would be a rinse cycle. The result would be that I put my clothing through three complete rinse cycles, and the result was that my clothes came out perfectly. There was no lingering odor or burning sensation from detergent.
While I was going through this process, I was amused to see a group of Thai people come in to do their laundry, and I witnessed a good example of how laundry in Thailand ends up soaked with unrinsed detergent. These people had one extremely large sack of laundry. It was a bag that is normally used to hold harvested grain on a farm, and it had been packed firmly. The young man tasked with carrying the bag from the scooter had difficulty lifting it. I watched as they removed the clothing from the bag and put it into the washing machine. It consisted of quite thick and heavy material, and I would have spread that amount of clothing out over at least three machines and probably four. But they stuffed all of it into one. They stuffed so much clothing into that one machine that there couldn’t have been any space between the items at all for water to enter. And when they were done, the laundry itself formed a mound at the top that rose up above the top of the machine. When they closed the lid, the lid had to press down on the mountain of emerging clothing. They also put in a massive amount of detergent. I didn’t think the man pouring from the big bag of detergent would ever stop pouring. He was clearly of the more is better way of thinking. Then they put in some coins and left. They didn’t even stay to monitor the machine.
When they left and the washing cycle was well underway, I walked over to the machine to check it out. And all the clothing on the top was still just sitting there in dry air with dry detergent all over it. The washing machine was churning away underneath, and it was in the middle of the wash cycle, but nothing was happening. The machine was so overpacked that it wasn’t able to pull the clothing from the top down into whatever water was below. I assume some of the clothing at the bottom was actually underwater, but I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see any water at all. I just saw a mountain of dry clothing with dry soap on top. Interestingly, when this trio left the laundromat, one of them stopped at my washing machine to look inside. I don’t know why. But I wonder what he must have thought to see my one pair of thin pants, one pair of shorts, and a couple of T-shirts slopping around in deep water in a washing machine that was clearly about one-third full of water. He would have thought I was wasting my money. In his mind, there would be room for twenty times more clothing in that machine. And what would he have thought if he knew I washed that small amount of clothing in those large machines twice, and the second time without any soap at all? He would have concluded that foreigners truly were insane.