Wednesday, November 10, 2021
5:11 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
It’s five in the morning, and I feel pretty good. A bit tired, but not excessively so. And as I look around my room, I can sense that I am about 65% packed already. All the signs are positive that I will be on the road to Sukhothai today. With an early start, I could ride straight to Sukhothai. The Sukhothai Historical Park is only 154 kilometers away by the main highway. But I’m in the mood to go slow, as I always am. I think I will ride to Tak City today and spend the night at the fabulously named Dome Thong Residence Hotel. I think of a night like that as sort of a launch pad for the Sukhothai experience itself. Right now, my brain is preoccupied with the logistics of simply leaving Mae Sot for this trip. I have been reading about Sukhothai a lot, but my brain is still stuck in Mae Sot mode. It can’t really contemplate Sukhothai with pleasure. But once I am on the road, my mood will shift. And while I ride to Tak and during the night in Tak, I will be able to think only about Sukhothai. I need that night of anticipation to truly appreciate and enjoy a trip like this. If I leave for Sukhothai today directly, I will end up thinking about just logistics: When will I arrive? Will it rain during my trip? Where will I spend the night when I get there? What will I eat? Basically, I will be distracted. But during a night in Tak City, I will be able to contemplate the pleasures of this little expedition. I will be able to focus on it without all the distractions of being in Mae Sot.
I haven’t decided yet if I will take Highway 12 to go to Tak City or if I will take the longer mountain route via Mae Ramat. Both are actually very interesting and beautiful rides. It’s not automatic that the small road through the mountains is the better choice. I’m actually leaning towards taking Highway 12. I don’t want to complicate my life today. And Highway12 takes me past the Chao Por Phawo Shrine, the scenic lookout point, the traditional Muser Market, and the new Muser Market where the nice coffee shop is located. I’ll spend a few minutes on Google Maps this morning to scan the region for any other interesting places to break up the trip.
It hardly seems possible, but yesterday’s errands were also largely shopping errands. I spent most of the time working on videos and things like that. But I woke up with a mission, and that was to buy a sleeping sheet. I always travel with my own bedsheet. In the past, this sheet has been one of those cocoon-like affairs, a cotton liner that goes inside a sleeping bag. I use it as a sleeping bag liner, but then I just use it as a regular sleeping sheet as well. I’ve bought pre-made ones from companies like Sea to Summit, but I’ve also sewn my own. However, my last one wore out. The material got so thin and weak that it was not much stronger than tissue paper, and when I turned over in bed, I would end up tearing the sheet in half, like the Hulk ripping off his T-shirt. I tried sewing it back together, but it was hopeless. The sheet just tore apart in new places, so I eventually threw it away.
The issue here (and there is always an issue when it comes to my life) is that in Asia, most people don’t use flat bed sheets. Hotels don’t use them either. There will be a fitted sheet over the mattress, and then there will be a duvet. And that’s it. In the cheap hotels where I stayed most of the time in the past, you wouldn’t really call these things duvets. They are just small, rectangular sections of nylon. They feel nasty against your skin, and they are tiny. They are of no use to me as a covering while sleeping. If I wanted to endure that nylon against my skin, I could cover my chest or my lower legs. I had to choose one or the other. These things are so small that they won’t cover both my upper and lower body. And that’s why I always have to have my own bedsheet with me. Hotels don’t supply them.
But what I think of as a normal flat bed sheet is nearly impossible to find here. They aren’t considered normal at all. In all my time in Mae Sot, I’ve never seen one for sale. And yesterday, knowing that I was going to Sukhothai for a week and would be staying in hotels, I went out once again to see about buying a bedsheet. I went first to Mega Home. Oddly enough, despite my interest in places like that, I had never been to the Mega Home in Mae Sot. I passed it many dozens of times, but I’d never had a reason to go in. But I already knew that TESCO didn’t sell flat bed sheets. They carried only the standard set of a fitted sheet and two pillow cases. Every single store sells only that. And trust me, I’ve looked. But I had never looked at Mega Home. I rode my scooter there without much hope, but I thought I should check the place out. And it turns out that despite having an extensive section of the store dedicated to bedding, there was not a single flat bed sheet anywhere. All they sold were sets containing fitted sheets.
All was not lost on that trip, however. I was fascinated by Mega Home. That place is massive. I treated it as a tourist attraction and simply wandered up and down the aisles in a daze, pondering the fact that our modern lives required every single item for sale in that gigantic place. As I walked around, I played out in my head a hypothetical conversation with someone from a couple thousand years ago. And I’d have to patiently explain to this person that yes, in the modern world, all of these items had a purpose and a use. And most were essential to a normal life. This would totally befuddle a person from the past. I don’t imagine they could even get their heads around the concept that a normal person (and not an emperor) would require so many things. And in keeping with that theme, I bought a couple more adapters that I found. These adapters were nicer than the one I got at Mr. DIY. And they had two outlets, not just one. I already love these adapters.
After Mega Home, I returned to TESCO just to check to make sure that they also had no regular bed sheets. And they didn’t. Then I went to a couple other places that sold bedroom furniture. But their limited supply of bedding also consisted of just the fitted sheets. I was just starting to think that, once again, I would have to start adapting. I kind of figured from the beginning that I would have to do this anyway. There were times in the past when I’d used a fitted sheet as a regular sheet. I just jammed my feet into the elasticized corners and then pulled the other elasticized corner up to my shoulders. It worked in a way. The problem was that they weren’t really long enough. I thought perhaps I could buy two of them and cut off the elasticized corners and then sew the two parts together in some fashion to make a big flat sheet. Maybe I could get a duvet cover and cut that open and sew it back together. Something.
But before I did that, I found myself back at the guest house, and I sent a friend of mine a message to tell him this story, which I thought was kind of an amusing story. And he wrote back to suggest one other place in Mae Sot that I didn’t know about. This friend used to run a resort, and he said they got all their bedding from this place, and if anyone had a flat sheet, they would have it. I rode my scooter to this place and found that it was a kind of wholesale operation. And it was very busy with trucks and vans loading up with tons of bedding and other bedroom furniture going out for delivery. But they also had a small attached store that was open to the public. And in there, 99% of the items on display were exactly what I’ve been talking about: simple sets of a fitted sheet, two pillow cases, and what they called a bolster cover. But on the packaging, there was a list in English. And on this list, the option “Fitted Sheet” had been checked to indicate the contents. But at the top of this list (always unchecked) was the option “Flat Sheet.” This was the first time I’d even seen the words flat sheet used in Thailand. So that was promising. I took one of these packages up to the woman at the desk, and I showed her the listing for flat sheets. And she rummaged around in a back area for a while, and to my delight, she emerged with a couple of flat sheets. They didn’t really stock them on their shelves, I guess, but over the years, they’d gotten a couple here and there and just tossed them into the warehouse and left them there. And there they stayed, gathering dust, until the day I came in and bought one.
The jury is still out on whether I like this sheet or not. I’m not even sure I know what it is made of. There was no listing anywhere to indicate what it was made of. It’s certainly not 100% cotton, which is what I would prefer. It feels a bit thin and scratchy and not exactly warm and soft. But, for now, it is the best I can do. It’s also pretty wide, quite a bit wider than, technically, I need. But I can always cut it up and hem the edges. Or I can just fold it in half and double the thickness and make it warmer that way. We shall see.
And I think I will stop babbling here because I’m eager to do my final bit of packing and get on the road. If I have more trivia from my life to note, I can do that in Tak City when I get there. Time to get busy here.