Friday, March 11, 2022
7:52 a.m. Pronto Coffee
Chiang Dao, Thailand
I’m in Chiang Dao. It’s the next morning, and I am at my favorite place in this town: Pronto Coffee. It’s a truly wonderful coffee shop with a design and setting that can’t be beat. It sits almost at the base of the third highest mountain in Thailand, Doi Chiang Dao. They also have early hours. They’re supposed to open at 7 a.m., and this morning, they opened at 7:45, which is pretty good for Thailand. I’m amazed they opened at all. I figured that since the universe knew I wanted to come here for sunrise and coffee, it would make sure the place was closed. I wrote yesterday that I’m not very good at pleasure, but I seem to be good at this type of pleasure. I certainly enjoy the pleasures that this place offers. I am very happy and very much at home here.
The other day, I wrote a critique of the Time Cafe in Pai – all the little things that were wrong with it. This place is the exact opposite. Through my experience this morning and in my current situation, I don’t know that I can come up with a single problem. The chair is perfect. The table is perfect. The coffee is among the best I’ve ever tasted. The setting is perfect. The coffee cup is just right. And they have nice glass containers of ice water and ice coffee-flower tea for customers to help themselves. I honestly can’t get over how nice this place is. The service is perfect. If I absolutely had to nitpick, I could say that the sun is a bit strong. Three of the four walls of this place consist of nothing but glass from floor to ceiling, and that makes it beautiful. But it also allows the sun to pour in unchecked. And since it faces to the east, the morning sun is resting on my back and shoulders as I sit here. There is seating outside, and I could sit there and be a bit more sheltered and a bit cooler, but I knew I wanted to sit for a while, so I didn’t want to occupy that premium space. Tourists flock here for selfies with the mountain, and they like to be out on the outside verandah to do that. It’s best if I sit inside and I don’t get in the way.
My ride from Pai to Chiang Dao went off without a hitch. I got a good night of rest, and I was full of energy, and it was rather effortless to pack up my stuff, get the scooter ready, and then hit the road. I didn’t make a big deal out of the trip. I didn’t try to see everything along the way. I didn’t even turn on a camera the entire time. I simply rode. It was the third time for me to ride my scooter on that beautiful stretch of hilly highway, so I was quite familiar with it. During the second half of the trip, I listened to podcasts.
When I arrived in Chiang Dao, I rode straight to a guest house called Chan and Cees. I stayed there on my first visit to Chiang Dao, and I had good memories of the place. When I arrived last time, I was greeted by the Dutch man that owns the place with his Thai wife. He made me feel quite welcome, and the bungalow appeared to be good value. I was looking forward to a similar experience, and it has been fine, but the Dutch man wasn’t there this time, and I was shown to a bungalow by a Thai employee. And the bungalow doesn’t seem nearly as nice as I remembered from last time. It’s still perfectly fine, and it is much nicer than the cheap bungalow at Mr. Jan’s, but it isn’t quite as well put-together as I remembered. I also opted for the cheaper fan-only version. That may have been a mistake. I was here in January last time, and it was quite cold. In March, it’s quite a bit hotter, and I was a bit uncomfortable yesterday afternoon and last night. Some air conditioning would have been nice to have. However, the star of the show was the WiFi. Only I would ever ride my scooter a hundred and thirty kilometers to a new city just to get better WiFi. But that’s what I did, and I was not disappointed. My various devices still had the details of the WiFi network in memory from my first visit months ago, and the moment I arrived, all my devices went nuts. The YouTube video that I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to upload for six days suddenly uploaded in minutes. The WiFi is fast and dependable. I uploaded that video and then I uploaded a second one. And I uploaded all my photos. I got all my Internet stuff done that I haven’t been able to do since I arrived in Pang Mapha a week ago. That felt so good.
I was so excited about my new WiFi and my new life in Chiang Dao that I completely forgot that it was a Skinny Doug Fasting Day. I just went out and got all my usual meals. I’d say that I got more than my usual meals. I don’t know what it is, but I’m so hungry lately. I couldn’t get enough food yesterday and I kept going back out to get more. I feel quite chubby this morning.
It’s a bit unfortunate that this is the hazy season. I don’t know where the haze comes from, but even yesterday, I could hardly see anything of the scenery. That’s partially why I simply rode here without stopping anywhere. The haze is so thick that sometimes the hills were not just hazy but completely invisible. I was riding through some nice scenery, but I couldn’t really see any of it. This morning, I can see the mountains here in Chiang Dao. The third highest mountain in Thailand is right there outside my window, and I can see it. But I can’t really see it clearly. It is kind of hazy and not so beautiful. My idea was to spend a week here and explore the area. But I don’t know that there is much point to going for long scooter rides in the countryside when I won’t be able to see anything. I do have plans to visit the local cave. I will probably do that tomorrow morning. And I will bring all my cameras and make a YouTube event out of it. And the haze won’t affect the experience of going into a cave. But beyond that, I’m not sure what I will spend my time doing. I have a lot of YouTube stuff to catch up on, so I guess I will do that.
I just ordered and ate breakfast. I thought briefly that since I completely forgot about yesterday being a fasting day that I should make up for it today. But I’m not in the mood. I felt really hungry. And they make a very good and reasonably priced American breakfast. And I’ve been sitting here long enough that I felt I should order something else to justify occupying a table for so long. The breakfast was very good.
They have a very nice map of the world on the wall here. It’s made of wood, kind of like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Each country has a slightly lighter or darker shade of wood for their piece. An elderly Chinese man came up to me and started asking me questions about the map in English. He was looking for Ukraine, and he asked me to point it out on the map. Then he started asking me about Alaska and what country it belonged to. He appeared to know that Alaska used to belong to Russia, but this puzzled him because on this flat map, it looks to be very far away from Russia. I tried to explain that the world was actually a globe, and, in fact, Alaska is right beside Russia. It’s just the flat map that makes it look far away. But I’m not sure he understood. He had questions about Mexico, Greenland, Iceland, Canada, and Mongolia as well. Luckily, they were simple questions, and I knew the answers. Things did get complicated, though, because on this map, Ukraine looks much larger than Thailand. Maybe twice the size. But I knew this was an illusion because of the Mercator Projection. I had a vague idea that Ukraine and Thailand were about the same size. I just looked it up, and I was almost right. Ukraine is 230,000 square miles and Thailand is 198,000 square miles in size. So they are pretty close. I thought about diving into the mysteries of taking a globe and showing it on a flat plane. You have to sacrifice accuracy either in terms of the size or the shape. And the Mercator Projection is inaccurate as it relates to size. Countries to the north and the south look bigger than they actually are. But I didn’t try to explain this. I just agreed that Ukraine was a very big country and much bigger than Thailand. By this point, another man came up and rescued me. I think it was this man’s son, and he was used to his father talking to strangers. He figured that our conversation had gone on long enough, and he rescued me.
And, finally, I have one small story relating to an ant. When I was in Pang Mapha, a group of very large black ants were moving in and out of my bathroom and throughout my bungalow. I ended up watching them and interacting with them quite a bit because they were so big and they were everywhere. And then I got on my scooter and rode to Pai and moved into the bungalow at Mr. Jan’s. And as I was unpacking my backpack, one of those big, black ants emerged from my luggage and ran across the bed. This guy had hitchhiked all the way to Pai with me. I felt bad that this guy was separated from his colony, and I spent those two days in Pai wondering about this ant and what he was thinking or feeling (if anything at all) to find himself all alone and far away from his colony. Was he even aware that something was wrong? Can ants be said to feel anything? Or think anything? I don’t know.
I saw this ant all the time I was there. It was interesting, I thought, because all these black ants emerged from one small hole in the bathroom floor in Pang Mapha. They came out of that hole in the bathroom and then they went back into that hole. And this hitchhiker ant to Pai eventually found his way into the bathroom in the bungalow at Mr. Jan’s. All the time I was there, I saw that one ant walking across the floor and the walls of the bathroom. Never stopping. Just walking and walking and walking. I wondered if he remembered that his home was in the bathroom in Pang Mapha, and by instinct he ended up in the bathroom in Pai. And he was trying to find the hole that led to his colony. I wondered how long he would survive on his own in the Pai bungalow. Poor guy.