Saturday, March 5, 2022
5:23 a.m. Hillside Bungalow, Jungle Guesthouse
Pang Mapha, Thailand
Just call me Doug the Tourist this morning. I’ve got my nice bungalow at the Jungle Guesthouse. And I am awake early so that I can ride my scooter up to a scenic lookout point to see the sunrise. To be honest, I’m not really going up there for the sunrise. It’s just that the hazy season appears to have started in Thailand, and it’s not possible to see anything of the surrounding hills during the day. I’m hoping that the skies will be clear the first thing in the morning, and I will be able to appreciate my surroundings a bit better. There is a small village nearby called Ban Jabo. And it sits along the ridge of a set of hills. Apparently, it is a well-known and desirable spot for witnessing the sunrise. It’s about thirteen kilometers away, and that is where I am going to go. Originally, I was hoping to spend the night in Ban Jabo. Homestays are listed on Google Maps there. However, I have great difficulty doing anything in Thailand even in tourist towns. It would be even harder in a small village. I decided it would be too awkward and too difficult to try to spend the night in a homestay there. If you can’t speak Thai, such experiences are awkward and usually not much fun. Plus, my guess is that they would be vastly overpriced. I find that is another trend in Thailand. Common sense would dictate that when your accommodation consists of a simple shack with a single bare light bulb and a wooden floor to sleep on, it would be inexpensive. But in Thailand, they tend to charge as much or more for those places than for comfortable fully-furnished places like my current bungalow. Homestays aren’t good value.
I just checked, and I learned that sunrise is at 6:45. So I don’t have much time to babble this morning. I’ll have a quick cup of coffee courtesy of my feisty Benka cooker, and then I’ll get on the scooter. My hardware store gloves will come in handy this morning. It’s cold out there. It’s cold even here inside my bungalow.
My bungalow is extremely nice. As always in Thailand, I feel like I am living someone else’s life. On previous trips, I would never stay in a place this nice. I would gravitate towards the simple windowless room in the middle of town. Very comfortable bungalows on a hillside outside of town were reserved for other, more real, people. But Thailand doesn’t appear to offer the low-budget accommodation I usually seek out. In fact, in terms of booking online in advance, this fancy bungalow was my only option.
For one thing, it’s big. It’s like a little house or a cottage. It has two very large and very comfortable twin beds separated by a lot of space with lots more space on all sides. It also has a large bathroom with a separate shower. The shower even has its own gas-powered water heater. There is no air conditioning, but up here in the hills, you don’t really need it. Even the fan is far too cold to be running at night. A bit of air conditioning during the day wouldn’t be a bad thing, but at that time, you are supposed to be sitting outside in the comfortable chairs on the expansive verandah anyway.
I shouldn’t give the entirely wrong impression. This isn’t like a real resort. It’s not like I can pick up a phone and call a front desk and order fancy cocktails and buckets of ice brought over. It’s not like that. And the grounds are quite rough and village-like. It’s not like this bungalow is sitting in a groomed garden with flower beds all around. And my neighbors aren’t retired fund managers taking a break from their yachts. I saw my neighbors yesterday afternoon briefly, and they were two young German backpackers going around the Mae Hong Son Loop on their rented scooters. But it’s a very comfortable place to stay.
The quality of my arrival and reception at the Jungle Guesthouse hung in the balance yesterday, I have to admit. The guesthouse was quite difficult to find, being at the end of a rough and rocky dirt road that didn’t appear to be going anywhere. There was a sign on the main highway, but it was just a rather worn, hand-painted wooden affair. When I first rode into town, I didn’t see it at all. In fact, I rode from one end of Pang Mapha to the other four times, and I never saw the sign. It was only when I really settled in to look for the place that I saw the sign. When I was riding back and forth, I wasn’t looking for the guest house. I was just checking out the town and exploring. The ride from Mae Hong Son had gone by very quickly, and I had arrived in town around 11:30, and it was too early to check in anywhere. So I spent some time looking the town over, and I stopped at a place for a banana smoothie. And then at one o’clock, I came to the guest house.
As I rode up the access road, I was surprised to see how old and broken-down the main guesthouse building looked. From pictures online, I got the impression that the Jungle Guesthouse was a bit luxurious. So I was surprised at how rustic and old the buildings looked. And when I parked my scooter and walked up onto the rickety verandah around the main building, there was no one there. I have been greeted so many times by empty and unstaffed places in Thailand that I was disappointed. I was hoping for a friendly and warm welcome at Jungle Guesthouse. I had read online that the people that ran the place were very hands-on and very friendly. But, of course, the whole place was empty, and I didn’t know what to do.
But then everything changed. I heard a voice calling out to me from a distance. That alone was such a surprise. I usually just get ignored by everyone in Thailand. To have someone actually calling out to me from far away with a cheery and welcoming tone to their voice felt very strange. I looked over, and I saw a Thai woman marching across the hillside toward me and waving her arms about. This was, as she introduced herself, Da, the owner and manager. She told me that she, her husband, and her son ran the place together. And they had done so for thirty-five years. And they had no staff. So, she was busy cleaning the bungalows herself for the day’s new guests, and when she saw me ride up, she came over to greet me. Da is definitely unusual for a Thai person. She was warm and full of life and chatted with me non-stop about everything. That the name “Douglas” was impossible for her to pronounce took up probably fifty percent of our initial conversation. She simply couldn’t get over what a tough name that was for her to pronounce.
There were no formalities to deal with. She told me that one of the bungalows was ready for occupancy, and I walked back with her to where a set of three or four bungalows were lined up across a hillside. She brought me to the one at the very end, showed me the inside – chatting all the while – and gave me the key. It was all very easy and efficient. The bungalow looked great, and I felt welcome and at home. And I loved the large front verandah and the chairs and table there. Once I had unpacked and settled in, I was very quickly sitting out there with a cup of Benka coffee and enjoying some sun and the views. The place is so private in its way that I felt fine just hanging out outside in a pair of bedraggled shorts and nothing more. It’s kind of embarrassing how white my body is considering that I’ve been in Thailand all this time. You’d think I never saw the sun. And that’s actually true. My face and hands and feet and forearms are nicely tanned. They are out in the sun all the time. But that’s about it. The rest of my body is usually covered by shirts and even long pants.
Whoops. I have babbled on too long already. I have to start getting ready for my morning trip. I will pick up my story when I come back from the sunrise village.
11:45 a.m.
I am back from my sunrise adventure, and it really was something of an adventure. It was still dark when I stepped outside. But the sky was already starting to light up in the east, and I knew it was going to be a race between me and the sun. “Would I make it to Ban Jabo before sunrise or after?” I wondered.
As it turned out, it didn’t really matter. The sun had actually come up from the horizon before I settled into my sunrise-viewing coffee spot, but there was so much of interest around me that I didn’t care. It turned out the local people, who are members of the Lahu tribe or ethnic group, were celebrating their New Year holidays. I guess last night was their New Year’s Eve, and today was the first day of the new year. And to greet the new year, they dress up in their finest traditional clothing and then parade up and down the village streets with trays of ceremonial food and drink. And adding to the celebratory tone were thousands of firecrackers. Some of them were powerful, more like small bombs than firecrackers. And men who had guns were busy firing them into the air and at the nearby cliffs. I spoke to a few people to get some information about what was going on, but, as usual, I didn’t really get answers that made sense to me. But that was okay, too. It’s not like what was happening around me was mysterious. People were just celebrating and setting off lots of firecrackers. It was similar to new year festivities anywhere in the world.
To my delight, a wonderful coffee shop, noodle shop, homestay, and sunrise viewing place was open. It was called SaoLahu, and it was owned and managed by, as she told me several times herself, a beautiful, young Lahu woman. SaoLahu means Lahu Girl. The woman who greeted me was the Lahu Girl in question. She was dressed in her own fancy traditional dress and she had let her long, black hair fall to her waist. She made quite an impression on this random Canadian on a scooter. And best of all, she spoke English and gave me a warm welcome to her place. I ordered a hot latte, and then I took a seat on some pillows on a wide verandah along with a scattering of other people who had come to see the sunrise. A cat was curled up on the cushion beside me, and I gave the cat a pet and a scratch. To my delight, the cat stretched out with pleasure and then came over and climbed onto my lap and curled up there. She kept me company for the next hour as I watched the sun come up and enjoyed my coffee.
I had some technology adventures while all this was going on. My GoPro has been giving me trouble lately, and I decided to use my Panasonic G85 more. Unfortunately, the G85 is also misbehaving, and I went through a lot of struggles as I tried to film my time in Ban Jabo on the G85. I won’t know for sure how the video turned out until I review it later.
I spent quite a bit of time in the village. When the sun was fully risen, I got up and explored the SaoLahu operation a bit more. And I discovered that they also had rooms for rent. I asked the Lahu Girl if she could show me one of them, and she grabbed a key and opened one of the doors. The room was about what I was expecting: quite plain. It was small and consisted largely of a mattress on the floor and a small fan on the wall. But to my surprise, each room had its own bathroom with a hot shower. The bathroom was equally rough and ready. It was really just a space between some rock and a piece of sheet metal. But it would serve. The key feature was that each room opened up onto another wide verandah, and from there, you got expansive views of the valley below and the surrounding mountains. The beautiful Lahu Girl told me that these rooms normally cost 800 baht per night, which is about $25 US. But now that the hazy season is here, the price has been lowered to 500 baht, or $15 US. Had I known such a place existed and that the owner spoke English, I would have stayed there. The view and the setting would have been worth it. However, it’s certainly very poor value when compared to my current bungalow at Jungle Guesthouse. This Jungle Guesthouse bungalow costs 550 baht per night, and as I already mentioned, it is very nice and comes with many comforts. From that point of view, the Lahu Girl’s rooms were badly overpriced. But you are paying for the view, not the room itself.
Of course, I could stay there after my three nights here at Jungle House. I sounded out the Lahu Girl about this and about whether I would need to make a reservation in advance. It didn’t seem like I would need a reservation. They aren’t busy now. However, she wasn’t sure if she would be open or not. She had plans to go back to her village for the week of the New Year holidays, and she might be closing the place down. I tried to find out exactly which days the place would be closed and when it would be open, but she wasn’t able to tell me. I guess she was just making it up as she went along, and she wasn’t sure about her plans.
I spent some more time walking around the village and taking in the dramatic setting. I had to dodge a lot of the fireworks. The loudest firecracker was shaped like a soccer ball, and that made it particularly tricky. Even the youngest children were allowed to run around with handfuls of these, and when they were thrown, they would roll down the streets like marbles. You never quite knew where they were going to land and go off. And I had more than a couple small heart attacks when these things went off quite close to me. They even set off the car alarms of the visitors who had come up by car.
I found the main street of Pang Maphu to be quite busy when I came down from the village. It’s a Saturday, so there are more tourists than normal. And the New Year holidays made it busier still. I think I’ll spend the rest of today relaxing at my luxurious bungalow and working on videos.
I got some bad news when I was up at the village, unfortunately. I was wondering about this actually. The woman that owns the hostel in Kuala Lumpur where my gear is stored is from Russia. And she sent me a message saying that she is going to return to Russia. She is worried about her mother there. She’s taking the situation seriously enough to consider the possibility that Putin will start a nuclear war, and she wants to be back in Russia in case that happens. Someone else will be looking after the hostel when she leaves. I don’t understand the arrangements exactly, but this other person needs to be paid a storage fee to keep my things there. It’s not a huge amount, but it’s annoying. One more problem to deal with because of covid and this screwy world we are living in now. There is still no solid information coming out of Malaysia about when they might open the borders.