Wednesday, March 9, 2022
7:07 a.m. Bungalow 14, Mr. Jan’s Guesthouse
Pai, Thailand
The Prime Minister of Malaysia made an official announcement yesterday. The details haven’t been released in full, but he essentially said that they are going to open Malaysia’s borders on April 1st. If this turns out to be true, then there is a very good chance that I will be able to return to Kuala Lumpur in April or May. I have no idea what I will do after I return to Malaysia and deal with my touring bike and all my camera gear and camping gear. But it will be nice to take care of that. The thought of my poor bicycle upsets me. It’s just rusting away.
I don’t have much else to say about yesterday. I was in such a bad mood that I didn’t do anything. I had plans to explore more of Pai when I got here. But I just haven’t been in the mood. I think the only way I can break this bad mood is to leave Pai. At the very least, I’ve got to move to a new hotel that has good WiFi. I can’t live like this. And if I’m going to move to a new place, I could just as easily move to a new town. I might stay here one more night. But if not, I’ll get on the scooter and ride to Chiang Dao. Perhaps my bad mood will lift once I leave Pai.
In recent days, I watched a BBC mini-series called The Chelsea Detective. There were only four episodes in the first season, and each episode was an hour and a half long. So they were really more like individual movies than a TV show. They were essentially murder mysteries. The Chelsea detective in question seemed to be very much like the typical older male detective that you find in stories like these. They are kind of a type? He’s a good guy, but quirky. He’s into classical music and other things like that. He lives on a funky houseboat because he is estranged from his wife. But he’s still terribly in love with his wife. But I guess his quirkiness and his intense focus on his detective work made their marriage unworkable. It’s set in London, but it still feels a bit like it is set in a small town because everything takes place in the Chelsea district, and that neighborhood has its own personality and character in the show. The show was not a landmark television event, but it was pleasant enough, and I liked the main character. These individualistic heroes always seem to live on houseboats, and I like the romance of that idea.
And I started watching a new sci-fi series called Another Life. It is truly awful in many ways. Truly, truly awful. But it’s one of those shows that is so bad that it’s not worth even talking about how bad it is. It’s just a lazy show that didn’t even try to be good. I can write a lot about a movie like Encanto because it is worth talking about. I see major problems in the storyline, but it is still something of value. I can get invested in it because I can see what is good about it and how it could be better. Another Life is in a different category. I could go on at length about everything that is awful about it. But it’s so awful that it’s not worth the energy required to do so. You can tell that the creators were quite lazy and didn’t put much effort into it or care about it that much. This was not a work of passion by someone who desperately needed to tell the story. But because I’m insane and I like science fiction so much, I’m still going to watch the entire two seasons that are available. I am curious about how the story will play out. I want to find out more about these aliens and what exactly is going on. But it’s not a show that I could recommend.
I just tried again to connect to the Internet through WiFi, but it won’t work. So I am going to pack up and go to a coffee shop and use their WiFi. I had one cup of coffee with my lovely Benka here in my room. But my second cup will be out there in the real world somewhere. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a really good and comfortable coffee shop here in Pai yet. But I’ll end up somewhere.
8:53 a.m.
I’m such a silly creature. I’m at a coffee shop now. And you couldn’t really ask for a nicer place. It’s very attractive and stylish. The decor is all in white. It sits on a corner right on the Walking Street just a block away from my guest house. The atmosphere and mood is very open and bright. I get a perfect view of everything going on around me on the streets. The people are nice. They speak English. The coffee shop offers WiFi, and it is strong enough for my MacBook to connect to it. They have wonderful music playing. And the music is at just the right volume. I already have my latte at my table. It is hot and tasty. My YouTube video is now uploading through their WiFi. It’s uploading slowly, but it is working. And yet, all is not perfect. It felt like I had to work for like fifteen minutes to make a comfortable spot for myself. And I can see a range of things I would have to change to make this place right for me. In a way, I’m the worst person to be overseas. I should live in my own little house somewhere, a place that I can make perfect for me. And then I would never leave it.
For one thing, the tables aren’t quite right for setting up my laptop. They’re too narrow. I’m sitting at a table next to the wall, and when I sit down in my chair at the table, there isn’t enough room for my elbows. And there isn’t enough room on the right side of the laptop to place my coffee where I like it. So I have to pull the table away from the wall to create enough space. And both the table and the chair are a little bit wobbly. So I have to practically get down on my hands and knees to insert folded-up paper under certain legs so that the table doesn’t wobble anymore. I can’t stand wobbly tables when your coffee is threatening to spill over every time you move. The table and chair are made out of heavy iron, and they are very difficult to move. I had to shift over my chair, so I reached down and grabbed the underside, and my hands encountered something sticky. So my fingers ended up covered in a kind of grease and were all sticky, and I had to go wash them. And the chairs themselves were painted. And the paint stuck to my pants. I couldn’t slide forward or backward on the chair and get comfortable. As I moved, my pants stuck to the chair and bunched up. The coffee cup doesn’t have any handles. It is just a round cup. It’s a very nice cup. It is some kind of clay affair with a nice design. It looks like it came from a nice pottery shop. But when the coffee is hot, you can’t hold the cup because the sides are too hot. I need a mug with a handle. Plus, the menu said the latte was 50 baht, but they charged me 60 baht. I asked for the WiFi password, and they said they would give it to me. But they forgot. And then I ended up waiting and waiting, and I finally had to get up and go bother them again to get the password. Finally, like most coffee shops, the coffee bean grinder and the steamer are as loud as a jackhammer and a high-powered washer at a carwash. And they go off constantly. The music is very nice, and it’s early in the morning. It’s nice and quiet in the world, but the coffee-making noises drown out the music and get very annoying. These are all small things, but they make a difference. By the time I’m finished adjusting everything and I can settle in, I’m exhausted. And I go through this process every time I step outside into the world. Who knew I was so demanding?
Anyway, I will take advantage of the WiFi and reply to some comments on YouTube.
11:27
I’m back at the guest house now. In some ways, it’s exhausting being me. My mood can swing so far from one extreme to the other. And it does so quite quickly. In my irritable and exhausted state of the last couple of days, I really don’t care about much. If someone told me that the world was going to end in an hour, I’d think, “That’s fine with me. I’ve been around long enough anyway.” It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. It would be a relief to stop existing. The struggle could end, and I could finally get some rest. And then at that coffee shop, I got swept up into the music they were playing and the beautiful morning around me, and life suddenly seemed amazing. The beauty of life overwhelmed me like an exquisite pain. And I felt unbearably sad at the thought that life doesn’t go on forever. I find it’s a hallmark of my personality and my nature that I am always the result of two contradictory extremes. I can believe and feel two exact and opposite things at the same time. And they are both true for me simultaneously.
With the strong WiFi connection, I was able to go online, and I replied to some comments on YouTube. I enjoyed that. People were very kind. However, I noticed that my video upload was making almost no progress. The previous day, I had had my nice breakfast at a place called Lemon Thyme Cafe, and my video went from 6% uploaded to 40% uploaded while I was there. But in all the time I spent at this new cafe (which was called Time Cafe), the video upload went from 40% to 45%. At that rate, I’d have to stay there for the entire day and night for the video to upload. So I thought that if I was going to have a second cup of coffee, I might as well pack up and go back to Lemon Thyme. I don’t have to have their expensive yet unfilling breakfast. I can just have a coffee and hang out for a couple of hours. So I did that. I packed up my laptop and other gear, and then I walked down the street to Lemon Thyme. And they were closed. Of course they were closed. There was no reason for them to be closed. It’s a normal Wednesday morning. They’re supposed to be open. But the steel shutters were down, and there was a handwritten note on the front that read, “Sorry Today We are closed See you Tomorrow.” I took a picture of the sign so that I could have a record of this irritating moment.
I quickly cycled through my memory of all the other coffee shops I knew about. And then I set off on one of my usual long but useless walks. I seem to do things like this all the time. I just end up wandering the streets looking and looking and looking for something. And I never find it. Just like my stress dreams. Every place I went to was closed except for one. And that one was full. No empty tables. I got hot and exhausted and irritable and tired all over again as I was walking around. I could have gone back to Time Cafe, but the upload speeds were too slow. I eventually just gave up, and I’m back at the guest house where I have practically no WiFi at all. And now I’m back to being perfectly happy if life ended by noon today. I’d be fine with it. I wish it would. And all because this stupid guesthouse doesn’t have stupid WiFi. As I said, it’s exhausting being me. I can go from exquisite happiness that is almost too painful to bear to stupid exhaustion all in the space of an hour or two.
My little experience wandering around lost this morning has convinced me that I will be leaving this guest house tomorrow. I don’t know if I will be leaving Pai, but I’ll definitely be leaving Mr. Jan’s Guest House. I can’t handle this lack of WiFi for much longer. I’ll go nuts. I’ll decide later on whether to move to a new place in Pai or ride up the road to Chiang Dao. Going to Chiang Dao would probably be better.