Sunday, December 5, 2021
5:48 a.m. Room 3
Retro Twin Home
Mae Sot, Thailand
I’m still in Mae Sot. In fact, I am less than a kilometer from the Centra. I spent a few minutes after breakfast yesterday looking over hotel listings on Agoda, and I settled on a small but friendly-sounding place called Retro Twin Home. It comes highly recommended in the reviews. But its main attraction for me was the price. It came to about 350 baht per night with all taxes and fees included, and that is the same as the Phannu, which I was also considering. I was happy to find a setting in the Agoda app where I could set it to show the final price including all taxes and fees rather than just the base rate for the room.
One problem with all these booking apps, however, is that they still seem to be unclear about how you pay. The Retro Twin Home listing said that I would pay at the hotel. And I like that. I lean towards hotels where this is possible. But when I reserved the room, the app charged my credit card. And this happens frequently. I must be missing a setting somewhere where I can select the payment method. But I’ve looked for it, and I can’t find it.
And, as often happens, right after I reserved this room for three nights and paid for it, I saw a more attractive listing at a cheaper price. I suddenly saw a listing for the Mae Sot Siri hotel that was cheaper than the Retro Twin Home. Had I seen that earlier, I probably would have reserved a room there simply because the Siri is larger, and I was in the mood for a larger hotel with a more anonymous or impersonal experience. But everything worked out quite well in the end. When I first saw the building and the location for the Retro Twin Home, I was a bit disappointed. It was located in the middle of a residential neighborhood, and it looked quite small, more like a homestay than a hotel. And I wasn’t in the mood for a lot of human interaction and being part of a family and all that stuff. I just wanted to be left alone. And hotels or homestays like that usually come with quite small overstuffed rooms and not a lot of privacy.
But I needn’t have worried. I’m very happy here at the Retro. The key to my happiness is the room. By luck or design, I ended up with a room that is perfect for me. It is large and spacious. It has a single king-sized bed. It has a little table and two chairs. Of course, it has all the usual luxuries, such as a private bathroom with hot water, a mid-sized fridge, and air conditioning. It even has a balcony, where, as the young man at the check-in counter assured me, it was possible to smoke. I will not be smoking, of course, but a room with a balcony is always preferable to one without. But best of all, the room is very private and quiet. It is located at the very end of a hallway at the top of some stairs all by itself. I don’t have any neighbors that I’m aware of. As I walked up the stairs to this room, I spotted doors leading to other rooms on the main floor, and though I wasn’t able to see inside them, those rooms struck me as being in less appealing locations. They looked a bit like doors to bedrooms in a regular house, kind of jammed in and surrounded by the rest of the house. My room is separate and feels very private.
But even MORE important, the Wi-Fi is fine. I can’t say that it is blazingly fast or anything like that. I haven’t done any technical tests to get exact upload and download speeds. But I’ve been happily uploading videos to YouTube, and the uploads just hum along as normal. I even uploaded a 30-gigabyte video, and it finished no problem. It was such a relief to have reliable and fast Internet after my brief interlude at the Centra without.
And I needn’t have worried about my anti-social tendencies. I found myself enjoying the small, personal, and cosy feeling of the Retro Twin Home. It has the decor and the atmosphere of a youth hostel. There is a hip kind of living room filled with the usual wall-sized maps of the world and traditional arts and crafts and guitars and things like that. Guests are encouraged to insert a pin on their home city around the world. I haven’t had the experience of a place like this in a very long time. And the young man at the check-in counter was not cool and professional, like the staff at the Centra. I thought I wanted the cool, professional and impersonal touch. But when it turned out that this young man spoke English, I found myself warming up to him and enjoying the home-like atmosphere of the Retro.
While I was checking in, a second man engaged me in conversation. He also spoke English, and he was telling me about how the breakfast worked. Apparently, my Agoda booking didn’t come with breakfast. That was part of the deal for the low price: no breakfast. But, as this man explained, I could pay for breakfast if I wished. It consisted of simple toast and coffee and fruit, and it cost only 25 baht. The way this man was explaining things to me, I assumed he was simply a friendly guest at the hotel trying to help out another guest. But I found out that he was the owner. He was also very personal in his approach, and I enjoyed talking with him and finding out about the hotel. By the time I had checked in and moved my luggage into my room, I had been told by him and by the young man to make myself at home at least ten times. That is the vibe here at the Retro. Just make yourself at home. And that vibe, combined with this large and private and comfortable room, is perfect. The place is so friendly and personal that the owner of the hotel volunteered the information that he had contracted and then recovered from covid.
I had a pretty good day yesterday overall. Despite my noisy neighbors and the irritating Internet, I slept well at the Centra. That was thanks to my earplugs and the comfortable bed. I have no complaints about the bed. I woke up early and I spent some time writing and working on videos and doing other things. Then I had breakfast. Overnight, the hotel had gotten very busy. I counted over twenty vehicles in the parking lot, and the dining area was buzzing with activity. It was so busy that many of the tables in the comfortable, shady area were taken, and rather than dive in with the crowd, I just took one of the tables sitting at the window being blasted by the sun. Those tables were free. The sun made sitting there uncomfortable, but they had the advantage of being right beside the buffet, and I was able to more easily bring food and drinks to my table. I was sitting right beside the all-important drinks and toast section, and I even got a latte from a special coffee-dispensing machine. I remember on my first morning thinking that I wanted to try out the coffee machine, but it was so far away from my table that I just didn’t bother. It would have been a major trek to get there and back. I’d probably spill the coffee along the way. But my new table was right beside where all the action was, and I had a better experience despite the bright and hot sunlight.
While I was getting my breakfast, a woman came up to me and asked me if I was Doug. I knew instantly who she was. She was the other person who had replied to the question on Facebook about the Wi-Fi at the Centra. She had said that the Wi-Fi had been good before, but just in the last few days, it had gotten bad. She told me that she works for the United Nations with the refugee camps, and she planned to stay in the Centra for up to six months. Because of that, the Internet is just as important to her as it is to me, and she encouraged me to speak to the hotel staff about it. If more people tell them about the problem, then the chances are greater that they will fix it, and this would help her out. She even brought the manager of the hotel over to my table to speak to me so I could provide my feedback. And when I checked out and handed in my room key, I told the desk clerk about the problem again.
Since it was not a travel day, and I was, once again, simply moving from one hotel to another, I stayed in my room at the Centra right up until the exact minute of checkout time. I was in the mood to get caught up on my Behind the Scenes videos, and I set up the Pocket 2 camera to record myself reading from my journal. Packing up was fairly painless. I’m sticking with my new packing system that involves putting a stuff sack inside the helmet compartment of the scooter. I’m not sure that this really helps. The problem is that I still had the Dromedary Bag to contend with. And if I don’t put that into the helmet compartment, I then have to strap it to the top of the backpack. And the hassle of doing that kind of negates the convenience of putting the stuff sack into the helmet compartment. It would be different if the Dromedary Bag was empty. Then I’d simply put it flat inside the backpack. And then putting a stuff sack of luggage into the helmet compartment would be efficient. But if I’m going to be packing several liters of water in the bag and take it with me, it’s probably best to put that into the helmet compartment as I did before with the big plastic water bottle.
Once I finished moving into my room at the Retro and unpacking, I continued with my various video projects. I recorded more of my journal. And I recorded a new video about the Mor Prom app. I may or may not take the time to edit and upload that video. My idea to make that video stems from my idea that I can’t continue to make full video journals about my travel days. There just isn’t enough time. And I thought it would be better to simply abandon that idea and instead make specific videos about certain topics and places. Rather than making my days the subject of the videos, I would choose more targeted subjects, such as the Mor Prom app.