Tuesday, February 22, 2022
6:22 a.m. Room 1102 Phannu House
Mae Sot, Thailand
I woke up this morning in a completely different mood, and I’m back to thinking about going north for the next month. I feel a bit like I’ve gone to sleep since I returned to Mae Sot. And I’m not sure that I’ll be able to navigate my way back to the surface if I stay here. I can feel the world out there beyond this room and outside the walls of Phannu House. But I’m not confident I’ll be able to reach out and connect with it if I stay here. I need something more drastic than that, and 1,000 kilometers of scootering over the next thirty days would fit the bill. It’s a bit drastic. But I like the idea. I’ve been making a list of all the places I’d like to visit on this trip and all the roads I’d like to scooter along. I didn’t mention this the other day, but Eddie also offered me a discount on the scooter rental. He would charge me 2,000 baht for the month, which is $62 US. It’s hard to resist that. Food costs are largely the same whether I’m staying in one place or moving. Accommodation is always the biggest expense. Traveling for the month means that accommodation would cost three or four times more than staying here. Renting by the month is considerably cheaper than renting by the day. And renting by the day is annoying for someone like me, since I don’t need or want any of the things I’m paying for. I didn’t really think about it last time, but I suppose gas does cost something, too.
It’s funny that most of the things I do in my life start as one idea. And then as I plan for that idea, it morphs into something completely different. And quite often, this new idea doesn’t make any sense. But I end up doing it anyway. That has happened with this idea of returning to the north by scooter. My original idea was simply to spend the month in Pai instead of in Mae Sot. I remember seeing a place there that was renting rooms very cheaply by the month. I thought that if I was just going to be hanging out in one place, why not hang out somewhere new?
I liked this idea, and I started thinking about how I would get to Pai. The plan was to reduce the amount of gear I bring with me to the point that I can carry it easily in a backpack. And I was going to go to Pai by local transport. I thought that would be another interesting experience. And as I was contemplating this, I started watching some travel videos on YouTube from foreigners who also visited Pai. And all these people travelled by bus to get there. And then they would rent a scooter when they arrived.
And as I watched these videos, the reality of what I was thinking about doing settled over me. I noted that taking buses isn’t free. You’d have to factor in the cost of all the bus trips. And there would be a number of them I’d have to string together to get from here to Pai. And I’d have to go through main cities, because that’s where buses go. And I’d have to wait in each city for many hours or even overnight to catch the next bus. And then I’d have to arrange for scooter rental in Pai and pay the associated costs. And then I saw how utterly boring the bus rides were. The people were trapped inside these giant machines with dozens of other people, barely able to see the world outside them, forced to see and do the same things as everyone else. And then when they arrived in Pai at the bus station, they were reduced to finding more transportation to get from there to a guest house. And once I put all of this together in my head, I realized that I’m not a bus person. This same thought pattern is how I started bike touring. I couldn’t stand the alternatives. I like to be in control of my days.
So I convinced myself that even if I went to Pai to hang out for the month, I should get my own scooter here in Mae Sot. It made sense. But once I pictured myself having my own scooter, then I no longer had to ride directly to Pai. I could come up with an interesting route to get there with interesting stops along the way. And before I knew it, my idea to spend the month hanging out (economically) in Pai for the month turned into another month-long scooter journey through the north of Thailand. That’s what always happens to me. I start with one sensible idea. And then I start to tweak it. And within moments, my sensible idea has turned into a crazy one. And I quite like the crazy ideas.
Today is February 22, of course. I have this room until February 24. And I have to be back in Mae Sot by March 23 or 24. That gives me around 28 days. Given how late it already is, I doubt I can be on the road by the twenty-fourth. But I could pay for one extra night here at the Phannu and leave on Friday morning, the twenty-fifth. A good thing is that departing for this trip would be far easier than when I left from the Green Guest House. I’d be a bit busy over the next couple of days, but it would be nothing like last time. Well, I’ll leave my thoughts there for now. I certainly have butterflies in my stomach right now as I think about this new plan. I’m excited about it. And that’s a good thing. Staying in Mae Sot makes more sense, but I certainly don’t feel excited at the prospect.
And yesterday, unfortunately, was another rather uneventful day. I worked on videos for the entire day. It was a Skinny Doug Fasting Day (SDFD?), and that was interesting. I’m pretty accustomed to going without eating for long periods of time. But these fasting days are quite challenging all of a sudden. I don’t know what has changed in my life, but I feel different about not eating. Yesterday, I was overwhelmed with the desire for food. I was ravenous at times. I’m not sure why.
I recently breezed through the thirteen episodes of the first season of a show called AP Bio. They’re short and fast-paced, so it was easy to do. I can’t say it will take a place on my list of favorite shows. I could sense a good show in there trying to get out. And I occasionally got a glimpse of how I felt it should work as opposed to the way it was. But I didn’t devote a lot of brain cells to it. I just let the goofiness wash over me. I think in general, I wanted a bit more heart and a bit more of the main character being what he claimed to be. That would have made the show work better I think.
What I mean is that the main character, Jack Griffin, saw himself as too good for the town of Toledo and for teaching in a high school. The whole conceit of the show is that Jack had a PhD from Harvard and the life he was living in Toledo was beneath him. And yet, as events unfolded, he really came across as an idiot. He was a moron. He wasn’t just NOT smarter than the people around him, he was considerably dumber than they were. It was just weird and didn’t feel right. I think the show would have worked better if the main conceit was actually true. Jack should have been smarter, more sophisticated, more experienced, and better travelled than the people around him in Toledo. His downfall should have been that he was too arrogant and no one liked him. But there should have been a solid foundation for his arrogance and sense of superiority. But there wasn’t any. He was an idiot. He was superficial. He was delusional. He was kind of gross. He was nothing like the Harvard-educated elite he kept claiming to be.
Of course, I’ve seen a million shows and movies like that. It’s a common plot. A person who is very successful and living in a big city (usually New York) is forced by disaster or extreme circumstances to move back to their provincial hometown. And this person feels superior to everyone there. They hate it there and constantly scheme to get out. And, as time passes, they see the value of the small town and the people there. It’s been done a million times. But it’s a formula that works. Maybe that’s why AP Bio went in a different direction. They wanted to do something new. But it fell flat for me.
The first similar show that springs to mind is Community. Community is on my list of favorite shows of all time. And when you break it down, it follows the exact same storyline as AP Bio. It’s practically a copy. The main character was a successful lawyer. And he is forced to go back to community college, where he feels superior to everyone around him. And the dean of the college is very similar to the principal in AP Bio. He’s good natured but ineffectual and not very bright. And he is enamored of the main character. And that’s kind of the plot device that allows the main character to get away with so much bad behavior.
But a big difference is that the main character in Community can back up his arrogance. Finding himself attending a small community college as a student really was a fall from grace for him. He’s extremely good looking and physically fit, and he is accustomed to a life of nice clothes and nice cars and good food. He’s very intelligent, aware and witty. He kind of is what he claims to be and what the show claims he is. He really is better than the people around him in many ways. And then there is a real heart to the show. He falls in with a random group of ragtag misfits at the college, and he eventually learns to appreciate the good things about this place. Of course, there is much, much more to Community than that. But in comparing it to AP Bio, I see those similarities.
By contrast, AP Bio made the main character into a complete fool. It was impossible to take him seriously. He made all these grandiose claims about himself, but he couldn’t back any of them up. I couldn’t see him holding down a job at a fast food restaurant let alone getting into university, certainly not Harvard. He was too dumb. It made no sense to me that this guy was able to go through university, get a PhD, and become a philosophy professor. I just didn’t buy it.
There was one moment in the entire first season that I bought. And I wanted so much more of that. This was when the local school superintendent was inspecting the school because the principal had been nominated for an innovation award. And on that day, Jack’s class was supposed to be dissecting pigs. Of course, everything went wrong, and one of the students, Heather, brought a fully grown pig carcass to class from her family’s butcher shop. And Sarika tried to embarrass Jack in front of the superintendent by challenging him to actually talk about the biology of the pig. And it turns out that Jack knows everything about biology. He talks in great detail about pig anatomy. He’s an expert. And as he explains to Sarika in an aside, it’s not that he doesn’t know biology. He just refuses to teach it.
And I loved that moment because it showed that there really was something to Jack. He was smart. He knew stuff. He might even be a genius. That little flash of a real moment hinted at where the show could have gone. Jack should have been more sympathetic. More likable. But he came across as quite unpleasant. The show itself was kind of unpleasant.
I’m guessing that the show ended up this way because Glenn Howerton was the star. He was also one of the main actors in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And the success of that show had much to do with how extremely unlikable all the characters were. And the tone of the show was dark. Very dark. They didn’t exactly worry about sticking to reality either. The situations the characters found themselves in were often quite insane. It’s a very good show. And somehow, Glenn Howerton’s character from Sunny seemed to have been ported over to A.P. Bio, where I don’t think he really belonged.
8:23 a.m.
Big news. I committed to being a scooter guy again. I just sent Eddie a message saying that I’d like to rent the scooter again. I’m very excited. This is the right thing to do. It means I am going to be very busy over the next two days. I asked Eddie if I could get the scooter as early as tomorrow. And if that works out, it’s possible I could be on the road by Thursday. Definitely by Friday if I extend my stay at the Phannu by one night.