Thursday, February 24, 2022
6:06 a.m. Room 1102, Phannu House
Mae Sot, Thailand
Preparations continue. Yesterday was a bit of an erratic day. But progress was made. I got the scooter. On my last trip, I had rigged up a quite specialized system for mounting a GoPro on the scooter. But when I returned the scooter, I had taken it all off. Now I had to rebuild it, and I spent some time doing that. There’s no easy way to do it, and I used a DIY method that involved a bunch of zip ties and strong tape. It takes a methodical approach to put this system together, and I didn’t realize that I had used up nearly the last of my tape for a different project. So I had to go back out into the city to buy another roll of tape.
I also used my scooter for a trip to the water purification machine to stock up on drinking water. And then I decided to get a spare key made for the scooter. I’d wanted to do that for my previous trips, but I never got around to it. Eddie has a spare key for the scooter, of course. He keeps a spare key for all his scooters and motorcycles. Then if a customer loses a key, neither he nor the customer is stuck. But his customers are always here in Mae Sot. People don’t take his scooters on longer trips like mine. And not having a spare key was always at the back of my mind as a small worry when I left Mae Sot. I worried about losing the key to the scooter, and then I’d be stuck, hundreds of kilometers from Mae Sot and the spare key. I like to have a spare key with me, even for my hotel rooms. I think I never got a copy of the scooter key before because I assumed I wouldn’t be able to do it. In Canada, of course, a local keymaker in a shopping mall isn’t legally allowed to make duplicate keys to cars and motorcycles. They’re regulated, I believe. And I hate being rejected, so I never went to a keymaker here with my request.
But I was in a good mood yesterday and feeling positive. So I dropped by a local guy I know that makes keys. He made my spare keys for my room at the First Hotel, the Green Guest House, and now Phannu House. To my surprise, there was no problem making the scooter key at all. When I first stopped by his small key-making stand, I scanned all the available keys on his display, and I saw what looked like large scooter key blanks. But when I showed the guy the kind of key I had – an official Honda scooter key with a special magnetized section for opening and closing a secondary keyhole locking mechanism – he rummaged around inside a different bag and produced much fancier keys for me to choose from.
I think I had a choice between a cheap key from the display and one of these fancier and more official keys. I should have gone for the cheap one. I’m sure it would have worked fine. But I decided to go with the fancy one. It actually looks more real than the one I have now, and it works better. It has what looks like official Honda branding. It’s thicker and heavier and just feels more premium. And I wasn’t expecting it at all, but in cutting the key, he also cut the special rubber magnetized section that opens the special keyhole lock. I didn’t know it was possible to do that. I guess that is one reason this special duplicate key is more expensive. It made me wonder where this blank Honda key had come from. The way he dug it out of a bag made it seem like he was showing me something special that perhaps he wasn’t really supposed to have. Anyway, I’m happy that I have this extra key. It will provide a bit of peace of mind for this journey. I will put it in a safe place and keep it in reserve for an emergency.
There is no way I can actually pack light for this trip. Just my electronics and camera gear alone makes that an impossibility. In fact, I will have even more camera gear. On my last few trips, I didn’t bother to bring my bigger Panasonic camera with me. I just brought my GoPros and other small cameras. But I want to use my Panasonic a bit as well, so I’m going to bring it with me. However, to allow for that extra weight, I seem to be leaving other things behind. In particular, I’m not going to bring any kind of kettle or cooking gear on this trip. So, I won’t be able to make my usual cups of coffee in my rooms, but I think I can survive for a month without that. It might even end up being a good thing. I found that on my recent trips, having access to coffee in my room lessened any enjoyment of coffee out in the world. In fact, I would often just walk past interesting coffee shops because I’d already had coffee in my room. In the old days, I would often go out into the world first thing in the morning to find a place where I could have a cup of coffee and write in my journal. And that urge always led to interesting experiences, as I was out in the world while it was waking up. But if I have coffee in my room, I’m more isolated. So I don’t mind the thought of leaving my kettle behind. It might change the routine of my days for the better.
I actually have a bit of a funny history with kettles of late. When I went to Kamphaeng Phet, I actually bought a full-sized kitchen kettle when I was there. And then when I returned to Mae Sot, I spotted a much smaller travel kettle in a local store. I bought the travel kettle and I gave the big kettle to Eddie. But when I left on my trip to the north, I brought along both my big cooking pot and the travel kettle. And during that trip, I ended up leaving the travel kettle behind. I really liked having it, but I honestly didn’t need it. My cooking pot can also boil water. It isn’t as convenient, but it does work. And I made the snap decision one morning to just leave the travel kettle behind in my room to free up space in my backpack.
And as I’ve been packing for this new trip, I was back in that same store, and I found myself drifting over to the hardware section where they keep their kettles. Once I left that travel kettle behind, I found I missed it. And I was thinking about replacing it. But they weren’t selling that kettle anymore. They did have a somewhat suitable kettle. It wasn’t as small as the travel kettle. But nor was it as large as a normal kitchen kettle. And I was very close to buying one. I thought that if I didn’t bring my cooking pot with me, it would be nice to be able to at least boil water for coffee. Luckily, I was able to fight off the impulse, and I didn’t buy one. At some point, I have to stop buying kettles.