Wednesday, February 9, 2022
8:52 a.m. Room 1102 Phannu House
Mae Sot, Thailand
My walk to immigration and back went off without a hitch. I enjoyed it very much. I got my extension-of-stay stamp within five minutes without any problems. And I learned that I’m very much eligible for the next extension of stay. I simply have to return to this office to submit another application on or before March 25th. And that 60-day extension of stay will allow me to remain in Thailand until May 25th. After I left the immigration office, I spotted a lone motorcycle taxi underneath a nearby tree, but I decided to just keep walking. So I walked both ways, and the experience was quite a pleasant one. There was lots of food for thought along the way.
Not to get too crazy with this idea, but I ended up thinking about this habit of writing letters or journal entries as it relates to an experience like that. The thing is that that stretch of highway has to be in the running for the ugliest and perhaps most unpleasant stretch of human construction in the world. Thailand is known as a beautiful place. Tourists come here for the beauty of the beaches and the mountains. However, there is nothing beautiful about the standard town and the standard style of construction. It’s ugly and dirty and rundown in general. And a piece of highway like that one, leading to a border crossing, is an extreme example. It’s ugly and nasty and unpleasant and uncomfortable.
And you’d think that in order to have a good day, your instincts would be to avoid ugliness. You should look for beauty and go there. Stay far away from the ugly. Beauty in any form is pleasant. Beauty and quiet and cleanliness bring pleasure. Ugliness and noise and dirt lead to the opposite. They’re unpleasant. From that point of view, Eddie is quite right. I should get a ride to immigration and skip all that ugliness. Why subject myself to it? But if you are a conditioned letter-writer or journal-keeper with specific habits, there is much of interest everywhere. The idea of beautiful versus ugly is irrelevant. Even pleasure versus pain is irrelevant. It’s all about the story.
The first part of the story in this case concerns the time. It was relatively early to be out walking along the streets of Mae Sot. I left the gates of Phannu House at exactly seven-thirty, and Mae Sot at seven-thirty is quite different from Mae Sot at ten-thirty or even nine-thirty. People were on the streets that wouldn’t normally be there. And people were doing things that they wouldn’t necessarily be doing later. The monks, for example, were out in force. You don’t see them during the day. But in the early morning, the streets are filled with them as they walk from door to door and collect alms. There is much chanting and the giving of blessings. There are young novice monks and elderly monks. There are groups of monks carrying gongs that hang from a large pole balanced between shoulders. They sound the gong as they walk. Some have a tricycle with them with a sound system loaded onto it, and they play loud temple music as they walk. Songthaews went by jammed with novice monks going to temple or to school.
The recyclers are also out in force, and I’m always interested in them. They roam around the streets of Mae Sot with specialized bicycles that have large sacks hanging from them. Each sack has a different purpose: one for paper, one for plastic, one for metal, etc. I think I see them as kindred spirits. These recyclers are usually refugees from Myanmar. And as such, they are always friendly and open, and we greet each other as I walk by.
The streets are also full of migrant workers from Myanmar. They are easily recognizable by their demeanor, their dress, and the bicycles they ride. I’m not quite sure where they all work, to be honest. Their lives are mysterious to me. I’m only aware of one large factory here in Mae Sot. It’s just a short distance from Phannu House, and it manufactures women’s undergarments. They have a lot of workers, but from what I can tell, they are all women. The migrant workers I see racing by in groups in the morning on their bicycles are all men. They ride the same type of inexpensive bicycle with a basket on the front for their lunch. They are also quite friendly, and I get lots of waves and smiles when I am out early in the morning. Perhaps they recognize me as a fellow outsider in this land of the Thai people.
Dogs have become a large part of my life again as I have changed from a scooter guy to a walking guy. I’ve had to remember where all the problem dogs live, and I jog from one side of the street to the other to avoid them. I’m not worried about being bitten or anything like that. It would never come to that. But I’d rather not disturb them, and it is sometimes difficult to spot them. They might be lying underneath a parked car or a low table, and then they will jump out with a savage bark and scare me. I don’t need ten of those jump scares every time I go out for a walk anywhere. So I avoid those potential trouble spots. I also remember which of the street dogs come off as scary and dangerous but are actually friendly. If you withstand their savage attack and allow them to get close, they will suddenly turn into squirming puppies that delight in a good scratching and petting.
There is one residence in particular that has two very odd dogs. It’s right beside the undergarment factory, in fact. It’s a home of some kind, and there is a yard and driveway with an open gate onto the street. The place is filled with junk and garbage and debris and overgrown bushes and trees, as most places in Thailand are. And the two dogs hang out in and among the debris near the wide gate that opens onto the street. Many times I’ve had the entertainment of watching an unwary person walk by this gate and be scared to death by the dogs. It can actually get quite serious, and in Canada it would take about one day before the police would be at their door because of complaints from neighbors. I say that because there are often very young children involved. Twice in just the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen young mothers walking with a young child at their side. And as they pass the gate, the two dogs will rush out and surround them and bark savagely at the child. The woman will quickly snatch up the child and hold him or her above the ground in her arms as she turns frantically to face one dog or the other as they attack. On one of these occasions, the woman was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t move forward. She was frozen in place. And two workmen from across the road spotted her plight, and they ran across the road to drive off the dogs and let her keep walking.
I always walk across the far side of the street when I pass this place. The road is so narrow and there is so much traffic that it’s impossible to carve a wide circle around this gate and driveway. You have to walk right past it, and it’s so overgrown it’s very difficult to see the dogs in advance. But even across the street, the dogs spot me, and they recognize me instantly as a foreigner and more of a threat. The two dogs will leap to their feet and rush to the street. One dog always stops at the street for some reason, but the second one will rush across the road barking savagely and come right at me. But then I hold out my hand and make a clucking sound with my tongue. And this savage beast instantly transforms into a puppy with a wagging tail, and it is all over me, bounding up to my face to lick me and rubbing against my legs and begging for scratching and petting. It goes from Cujo to a friendly puppy in a second.
This is rare, though, and most of the street dogs or semi-domesticated dogs aren’t this friendly. As I said, I’m not worried about them in terms of any real physical danger. They just like to bark and protect what they see as their territory. But it does get annoying sometimes to have them directly behind me as I walk along. A couple of times a dog has tried to bite me, and I get a little nip in my pants. And I don’t need the hassle of needing to get a dog bite treated to disrupt my day. So I do have to keep my eye on them when they are behind me to make sure that they keep their distance. And in those cases, getting rid of them is a simple matter of bending over. I don’t see other people doing this, so I guess it isn’t common knowledge, but I’ve been aware for my entire life that simply pretending to pick up a rock is more than enough to drive away any dog. You don’t have to pick up a rock. You certainly don’t have to throw a rock. There don’t even have to be any rocks on the ground. The dogs don’t know if there are rocks there or not. They aren’t that smart. But they are smart enough to know what it means when a human starts to bend over. We have those magical hands with fingers and an opposable thumb, and they know that we can throw things at them. You don’t even have to bend over that far. There is no need to actually reach the ground with your hand. You need only stop walking and then start to bend over a little, and the dogs will go running.
There is one place in particular just up the street that has four dogs that attack me often when I go past. There’s a simple vegetarian buffet-style restaurant there that I like. And just before the restaurant, there is a wide and open field or yard with a few dumpy buildings. And the four dogs live there somewhere. I think they are actually part of the household, because they aren’t always outside. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t. But every time they are outside, they run at me. Luckily, this area is wide open and there is a wide field of view. The dogs can’t hide, and I see them from far away. So I don’t have to cross to the other side of the road. I walk past them on their side of the street, and they come rushing at me in a group. And I just make a slight motion like I’m bending over, and all four of them turn tail and run away like mad. It’s actually quite amusing to see how fast they react and start to run away.
All of this is happening when I am still in Mae Sot proper walking along the main street where Phannu House is located. Eventually, this street joins up with the highway and the atmosphere changes. There are always dogs, though. During the entire distance to the immigration office, I’m dealing with dogs in some fashion. I think Mae Sot has more dogs per capita than anyplace in Thailand. Just before the immigration office, there is one place that has four fluffy creatures. I can’t think of the breed name, but they are miniature dogs and are just fluffy cutie pies. Very friendly. And I greet them every time I go by. They are crazy affectionate and they jump all over me. I always enjoy that encounter. I think of them as my good luck puppies. They give me puppy power just before I get to immigration and apply for my various visas.
I had an amusing yet unpleasant moment related to dogs as well. You could call this a “Doug Your Enthusiasm” moment. I say that because I recently saw an episode of Curb in which Larry was dealing with something similar. In the episode, Larry was being bothered by another man who had the habit of giving overly intimate hugs. Larry backed away from this man one time as the man was coming in for a hug, and Larry stepped off the sidewalk and onto a large pile of dog poo. Is there anything more nasty than that? That happens to me a lot. Larry, being Larry, reacted in an extreme way and he just removed his shoes and threw them in the garbage. Even if he cleaned them, he could never wear them again. He happened to be on his way to a museum with a holocaust exhibit, and he just went in barefoot. As part of the exhibit, they had a pile of old shoes that belonged to people who had been killed in the camps. And, Larry being Larry, he took a pair of shoes from the pile and put them on when no one was looking. Nothing good came of that, as you can imagine.
I was walking along happily and just thinking about dogs and how interesting they were and all the techniques I’d developed to deal with them in Mae Sot. And I had just arrived at nearly the end of my walk. Just before the immigration office, there is a cluster of buildings and shops, and there is a 7-Eleven there. And during my entire walk, I was planning to stop at this 7-Eleven to get a bottle of milk. That was to be my reward for making the long walk. I was looking forward to this cold bottle of milk so much. And I suddenly spotted the 7-Eleven ahead of me. And mentally, I started patting myself on the back for this smart decision to walk to immigration. I was thinking, “That wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t that far.” And I was busy congratulating myself, and right at that moment, I stepped in a big pile of dog poo. I couldn’t help but reflect that if I’d accepted Eddie’s offer of a ride, at least there would have been no risk of stepping in dog poo. It was like I was being punished for mentally patting myself on the back for the wisdom of walking.
It was really disgusting. It was the type of dog poo that gets deep into the treads of your sandals, and no matter how long and how many times you scrape the sole of your sandals against the curb or against the pavement, you can never get rid of it all. It’s something that can haunt you for the rest of the day as you try to get rid of it. You feel contaminated and disgusting. I can understand why Larry would simply throw the shoes away. It’s a kind of sensible reaction.
Oddly enough, this poo encounter connected with two other elements of my morning walk to immigration. The first is that on the way, I spotted something that I found very exciting and very interesting: a coin-operated power washer! It was a small unit at the side of the road, and it was something that I’d never seen before anywhere. It was essentially a vending machine. You popped in a few coins, and then you would get two, or four, or six, or ten minutes of power washing from the hose.
And the funny thing was that I’d been thinking about something like this for all the months that I’d been roaming around by scooter. The scooter kept getting dusty and covered in mud and covered in tar, and I always wanted to wash it. But I couldn’t figure out how to do that. I never have access to a hose. I never saw anyplace that washed scooters or motorcycles. This didn’t make any sense to me because Thailand is filled with millions of scooter and motorcycles. Surely all these scooters were being washed by someone. But by who? And where? For whatever reason, I was never able to track down a scooter-washing business or anything like it.
I had a small adventure related to this in the final town on my Mae Hong Son Loop trip. In that town, I made a special effort to find a place that would wash the scooter. I knew I was returning the scooter to Eddie when I got back to Mae Sot. And I was about to ride 630 kilometers back to Mae Sot in one trip. So I wanted to get the scooter tuned up and checked over. I wanted to get the oil changed and have the brake fluid topped up and the brake pads checked. And I wanted to get the scooter washed. I wanted to return it to Eddie in tip-top condition. And after much frustration and effort, I found places in Chiang Dao that could do all this. And the scooter was gleaming and shiny and looking brand new again.
And then on my walk to immigration, AFTER I had returned the scooter, I saw a coin-operated power washer! It would have been so awesome to know about this before. This machine had clearly been there a long time. But I had never noticed it on my previous walks down that highway. And it was after I saw this power washer that I stepped in the dog poo. And I instantly thought that as I walked back to Mae Sot from immigration, I could stop at this power washer and use it to clean my sandals. It would be perfect for that. When I first spotted it, I made sure to test it. I put in a five-baht coin, and it gave me two minutes on the meter. And it worked perfectly. It wasn’t as powerful as professional power washers I’d seen at businesses. Those power washers could practically cut through cement, but it was far more powerful than a normal garden hose, and it would be perfect for washing dog poo off sandals and washing dirt and tar and mud off scooters.
As it turned out, I didn’t really need the power washer for the dog poo, and that relates to another small event on my trip. Since I had taken an hour and a half to walk to immigration and it would take another hour and a half to walk back, I thought it would be a good idea to pop into the bathroom while I was there. The immigration office is in the middle of a large complex of buildings, and I knew that in the far back corner, there were some toilets. On my previous visits, I found them to be a bit rough around the edges. Kind of dirty and old and smelly. But they were functional.
I was surprised on this visit to see that the back corner of the complex had been renovated. They’d torn down some old buildings and cleared away a lot of thick growth and garbage and junk. And it looked like they’d made an effort to fix up the bathrooms. But when I stepped inside a large stall and closed the door, I saw that it was extremely dirty and muddy inside. Most public or even semi-public facilities in Thailand border on disgusting. They don’t get cleaned regularly. And, as is often the case with me, I end up pondering human behavior, particularly as it relates to cleaning up after yourself, something which many or most people don’t do. Certainly not men.
And I pride myself on cleaning up after myself. I think it’s important. It’s one of those things where if every single person just does a little bit to clean up their immediate environment, the net result would be a much nicer and cleaner world. And these bathrooms in Thailand are generally of the squat variety. And they are usually outside. And there is much water and dirt and other nasty stuff being tossed around. And the end result can be pretty disturbing. One aspect is that squat toilets are flushed manually by scooping up water from a nearby water tank. The tank can be an actual cement tank or a simple plastic garbage pail. And what often happens is that the tank or pail will go dry. There will be no water in it. And the next person that uses the squat toilet will see the empty tank and then not bother to flush the toilet at all. And the next person that comes in encounters an even worse situation. And so on and so on until it is a horror show. And it all starts with the water tank being empty.
I consider it a courtesy to make sure that the water tank is full when you leave the toilet. The first thing I do when I enter one of these toilet stalls is turn on the tap. There’s always a tap right there. All you have to do is turn it on and let it run the entire time that you are using the facilities. And then you have all the water you need to flush the toilet, and the next person who comes in will happily find the water tank full to the brim. It’s not like it is hard work. All you need to do is turn on the tap. And it is even a good thing, because the loud sound of water pouring into the tank can cover up any somewhat embarrassing noises you might make while in there. It provides a kind of privacy curtain of sound.
At immigration yesterday, the tank in the toilet stall I entered was bone dry. And the toilet was pretty dirty and the floor was extremely dirty. It was caked in mud for some reason. And this is always a tough situation for someone like me. There is no way I can leave the toilet looking like that. I didn’t dirty the place, but if I simply use the facilities and walk out, I’m now responsible for how it looks when I leave. I didn’t make that mess, but I feel responsible for it now because I was the last person there. As I always do, I turned on the tap first. And this actually turned into a long process, because the tank was quite large and it was completely empty. So it turned into quite the project, kind of like filling the swimming pool in the backyard. You think water is coming out of your hose pretty fast, but you soon realize that filling a large tank takes time. And I settled in to wait. I didn’t want to fill it up a third or even half way. I wanted this tank full to the brim.
And while I waited, I had time on my hands. So I started scooping up water and used it to clean my surroundings. At first, I didn’t make much progress. Even after splooshing water all over the floor repeatedly, it remained quite dirty. At first I thought that the tiles were stained and couldn’t be cleaned. But then I tested it with my sandaled foot, and I realized that the dirt would come off, but it needed a bit of scrubbing. You needed a mop or something to scrub with. But there was nothing like that in there, and I just started scraping back and forth with my foot. And all the dirt and stains came right off. So now I set about scrubbing down the entire toilet floor with my sandals and then rinsing it all off with buckets of water. And by using up all this water, it took even longer to fill up the tank. I kept emptying the thing.
And a happy result of all this scraping and cleaning is that I cleaned all the dog poo residue off my sandals. My feet and sandals and even lower pant legs were soaking wet by the time I got out of there, but at least my sandals were now presentable to the human race. And the next person who enters that toilet stall will be presented with a gloriously full water tank and gleaming floors and walls.
A somewhat related story just occurred a few minutes ago back here in my world at Phannu House. The problem was the showerhead. This is another ongoing feature of my life – fixing showerheads. The showerhead in this bathroom is actually a pretty fancy item. It is one of those showerheads with multiple settings. You can twist a dial around the outside, and it is supposed to change from a central pulsing massaging flow to a combination of central pulsing and medium gentle spray to a full gentle spray. However, when I moved into this room, and for the past two weeks, I wasn’t able to take advantage of this. The showerhead is so clogged that when you try to take a shower, the water just sprays out to the sides and in all kinds of crazy directions. I counted, and to achieve its fancy effects, this showerhead uses seventy-six small holes spread out over three areas: six slightly larger holes in the center for the pulsating massage, thirty-six smaller holes arranged in six circles of six in a ring around the middle, and then forty tiny pinholes in big circle around the outer edge. And out of those seventy-six holes, I’d say twenty of them were sort of working. The vast majority were fully clogged and blocked. And even those twenty that were working didn’t work properly. They were partially blocked, and the water spread out to the side in crazy directions rather than going forward.
This is such a common situation around the world that it speaks to what I mentioned earlier, this habit that humans have to get used to things. I can see someone living in this room for weeks or months, and every day when they take a shower, they get annoyed at how weak the water flow is and how the water is spraying all over the place. But they just accept it as the way things are and never try to fix it. Luckily, one of my quirks is that I’m well-adapted to the kind of methodical behavior required to fix this showerhead. And I’ve been taking the time to one-by-one unclog and unblock each of those seventy-six holes. The only way to do it is with a small sewing needle or, as in this case, a safety pin. I travel with a collection of safety pins and needles, and a safety pin worked well in this case. So I detached the shower head and gave it a solid scrubbing with some strong bathroom soap to get rid of the worst of the gunk. And then I started working my way through all the holes with the safety pin. The holes are so small that some of them are nearly impossible to see, and it takes time to even find the hole and then slowly dig out the gunk and clear it. I just finished the process this morning with the final set of holes, and now the showerhead is glorious. The water spray is perfect. It all goes straight ahead as it is supposed to, and the control ring turns smoothly, and you can adjust the settings easily. And I’m willing to bet that every single showerhead in this large hotel is exactly the same. They are probably all clogged and barely working and have been that way for years if not decades. I should go from door-to-door in Phannu House and offer my services as snail-poop remover, showerhead fixer, hinge oiler, light bulb replacer, wall scrubber, and organizer.
A few more of my quirks came to light on this long walk to immigration and back. A couple of them centered on my quick stop at 7-Eleven to get my milk reward. I noticed the second I entered the 7-Eleven that one of the clerks there fit a certain type that I’m quite familiar with. This type is always male. Always. And they are usually to be found in places like convenience stores where they work as a sales clerk and they often hold a senior position. These men fancy themselves as hard workers. Fast workers. Efficient workers who get a lot done. And you can see that in their body language. They make a big deal out of everything they do. Everything they do involves big body movements. They move fast and make it appear like they are working very hard and getting a lot done. Everything they do is like a mini-performance. They seem to see themselves as being on stage with people watching. They are more focused on the appearance they make than on the work they are supposed to be doing.
However, it doesn’t take much observation to see that this is all performance and not actually very effective. They think they are working hard and getting a lot done, but in actuality, they are quite slow and make a lot of mistakes. The women around them don’t make a big deal out of what they are doing. They quietly set about their work and get ten times more things done with minimal effort.
This particular man at the 7-Eleven saw me come in, and he raised his performance level to serve me. And when I showed up at the cash register, he bounded over with enthusiasm and grabbed the milk and scanned it and put it down with force. And he made a big show out of inputting the amount of money I gave him. My full purchase came to 45 baht, and I gave him 60 baht. And like a flamboyant conductor at an orchestra, he typed in 60 baht, hitting the keys hard and then lifting his hand in a wild flourish after he hit the last key. He was very excited, and he hoped everyone saw how fast he thought he did this.
But I noticed that he had typed in 600 baht, not 60 baht. And before I could point this out, he finalized the transaction, and the register told him to give me 555 baht in change instead of 15. He didn’t notice, and he gave me 15 baht. And now I wasn’t sure what to do. If I were in Canada, I might have pointed out the mistake. After all, the till float was going to be out by hundreds of baht at the end of the day. I wasn’t sure how this worked at a 7-Eleven, but maybe this was going to cause a problem and it would be helpful if I pointed it out and he could correct it. But since I couldn’t speak Thai, it would be difficult to convey the mistake. Most of the time if I try to correct something like this overseas, they always assume that I am arguing because I think they charged me too much. Most of the time, the real reason is that they gave me too much in change or they didn’t charge me enough. But my pointing this out doesn’t make sense to anyone, and they think I’m trying to pay less or get more money. I’m actually trying to give them money, but they think I’m upset at being charged too much. That’s always the assumption. So it ends up being a big confusing mess. I’ve learned that if someone gives me too much in change, I should just keep it and walk out. It’s too much trouble to try to fix the mistake.
And in this case, I knew this guy was so proud of the dramatic (and what he saw as fast and efficient) transaction that he wouldn’t appreciate me pointing out the mistake. He probably wouldn’t even recognize the error even if I showed it to him on the receipt. It would just be a big mess. So I let it go. And now I wonder what happened at the end of the day.
Something else that interested me occurred when I was outside the 7-Eleven in the parking lot and drinking my milk. I finished my milk, and I started to walk towards the receptacle where you put plastic bottles for recycling. Just then, another man came out of the doors, and as we passed each other, his receipt fell out of his hand and fluttered to the ground. Normally, whenever anything gets dropped by another person, I instinctively pick it up for them. I spend so much time alone, I think that I like to maximize any kind of human contact that way.
But this guy hadn’t dropped anything important. It was just a 7-Eleven receipt. Even so, I was standing right beside him when he dropped it. And I was just about to bend down and pick it up. But then he made a move as if he was going to pick it up himself. So I stopped myself and just kept walking to the recycling bin. When I turned around from the recycling bin, I saw that the man hadn’t picked it up. He had just left the receipt on the ground at his feet. He had ignored it. And then he started to walk away.
And now I was in another “Doug Your Enthusiasm” moment. From my point of view, that receipt was litter. And I hate litter. I wanted to pick it up and put it into the garbage container. I admit that it was ridiculous to do that from a certain point of view. It’s not like there was a shortage of litter around me. The 7-Eleven parking lot was filled with litter. The whole street around me was filled with litter. Why worry about that one tiny receipt? The difference is that I felt responsible for that piece of litter. It had fallen to the ground right beside me. I was going to pick it up but hadn’t. I had a relationship with that piece of litter. It was there because of me, and I had to deal with it.
But at the same time, I didn’t want to shame the man. He had moved away, but he was still standing nearby. And I didn’t want him to see me bend over and pick up his garbage. I didn’t want him to think that this arrogant foreigner was trying to tell him how to behave. And now I ended up in this ridiculous position of having to stand around in front of the 7-Eleven waiting for this man to walk away and get out of my sight so that I could bend down and pick up his garbage and put it into the garbage can. And I eventually did so.
I’m not sure if it is actually fun to be living inside my brain. But it definitely leads to some interesting situations. I do wonder sometimes if noticing all these things and behaving as I do is unusual or not. I’m not inside the brains of other people, so I can’t see what they see. I can’t see the world through their eyes, so I don’t know how much or how little they are aware of their surroundings compared to me. Scanning my surroundings feels like a constant process for me. But maybe everyone is doing the same thing all the time. I don’t know. I find I’m constantly surveying the landscape around me and ahead of me and making decisions based on what I see. When I was at the 7-Eleven having all these little encounters, there was another moment when I noticed a group of five soldiers stop at a small shrine across the street. They did something there for a minute or two, and then they suddenly backed away and a long string of firecrackers went off. A bunch of the nearby street dogs panicked and they all came rushing into the 7-Eleven parking lot to escape from the noise. I watched this whole scene with interest and contemplated the implications and ramifications of soldiers setting off fireworks. There is nothing terribly wrong with that behavior, I suppose. Yet, I can’t imagine a superior officer in the Canadian armed forces being particularly pleased to see soldiers under his command setting off strings of powerful firecrackers anywhere, let alone on a public street. What of the imagery of loud bangs occurring around men with guns? What of gunpowder going off near men that are covered in weapons and ammunition? It just seems like a situation where lots of things could go wrong. And then when I left from immigration to begin my walk back to Mae Sot, I still had these thoughts going around in my head, and I was thinking about those soldiers.
My original idea was to walk back to Mae Sot on the other side of the highway. I had seen so many interesting things on the east side (things I haven’t talked about here) that I thought it would be interesting to return on the west side and observe what was going on there. But I delayed crossing over until I reached the 7-Eleven. I did that because the bridge to Myanmar and the closed immigration checkpoints are at the beginning. And as a foreigner, it’s always best to keep your distance from anything to do with security and border crossings. The entire thing is closed and locked with chains and barriers, so it didn’t matter, but as a rule of thumb, I like to stay far away from such things. And I was thinking ahead and I decided that I would walk along the east side until I got to the 7-Eleven, well past the bridge entrance, and then I could cross over to the west side.
However, when I reached the 7-Eleven, I noticed that those five soldiers were still over there near the shrine. And there is no reason on earth for me to be wary of soldiers here in Thailand. But at the same time, they are still soldiers. They are authority figures. They are men with lots of guns who sometimes think it is their job to protect the land from foreigners. And we were near the border with Myanmar where lots of people cross illegally. So, why poke the bear? Why cross the road so that I end up walking right past them? Why make them nervous or make them notice me? There was no advantage to doing so. There was no actual risk either, but why take the chance? I didn’t want a group of heavily armed men suddenly asking to see my passport and asking me lots of questions about what I was doing in Thailand. So, in scanning my surroundings, I decided to stay on the east side, as far away from those soldiers as possible. And I ended up remaining on the east side the entire way because the sun was still low in the sky, and all the buildings on my right cast a nice, cool shadow, and I could walk in the shade. On the west side, I noticed, I would be out in full sunlight, and it would be quite hot over there. Yet, if I had seen soldiers or police ahead of me on my side of the highway, I’d probably have crossed over to the other side.
I could go on for another long while about all the things I noticed and thought about during my walk to immigration. One thing, for example, is that I often think about food and drinks sellers and all the things they do or don’t do. And on a walk like that, I pass dozens if not hundreds of such places. There is much food for thought there. I often wonder about why these places don’t advertise prices. And I wonder if it makes any real difference. I know that it makes a huge difference for me. If I pass a place that has some delicious-looking clearly fruit juice in bottles over ice, the chances of me stopping and buying some are strongly connected to whether the price is displayed. If there is a little sign that says these bottles cost 30 baht or 20 baht, I am a hundred times more likely to stop and buy one. If there is no price on display, I am a hundred times less likely to make a purchase. That’s just how I’m wired. It seems to me that a person trying to sell food and drinks could increase their customer base by a huge amount simply by displaying a price. I see bananas all the time that I want to buy. But if the display has no prices anywhere, I just walk away. I keep walking until I come across a table where the bunches of bananas are grouped by price. Twenty baht for this bunch. Fifty baht for that much larger bunch. Show me the price, and I will buy some bananas. Don’t show me, and I walk on by. But am I unusual in that? Maybe having a price on display is irrelevant to the vast majority of Thai people. They probably already know what the price is. Maybe they don’t even have to be told or need to ask. I’m not sure.
In any event, after all those small adventures, I now have a fresh stamp in my passport that allows me to legally stay in Thailand until March 25th, exactly 45 days away. And there is the possibility of getting another extension of stay and staying until May 25th. That is all very good news. And then some more good news came out of nowhere. This happened in quite a funny fashion.
It was funny because I had pretty much made up my mind to forget about going to Malaysia. It was time to give up on that idea. I was going to shift my thinking so that returning to Malaysia was no longer an option. Therefore, I could start making plans to do something else, anything else, ranging from a trip to another country like Sri Lanka or Pakistan or even returning to Canada. And to solidify this change in my head, I was going to start taking steps towards dealing with my stuff in Malaysia in some other way. I really hated the thought, but I had no choice but to reach out to people I know in Malaysia and ask them for help. I gave it a lot of thought, and I came to the conclusion that it made a lot of sense to ask the owner of the hostel to help. All the boxes are right there in her hostel. She and I know each other quite well and are on good terms. She’s young and energetic and loves to travel and is quite familiar with the world of boxing things up and shipping them and dealing with travel issues. And the main Malaysian post office building is just steps away from the hostel. It’s right there across the train tracks. It would not be a big problem for her to carry some boxes over there and ship them somewhere for me.
There’s no way she could deal with my bicycle or my bicycle trailer. That is too much to ask. But if we worked together, I could guide her through sorting through my gear and boxing up the more important and valuable stuff that I wanted to keep.
This is still a very delicate kind of situation. It’s a big favor to ask of anyone. A weird thing is that if the roles were reversed, I would be delighted to do it for someone else. I take a lot of pleasure in helping people out. And I often wish people would ask me for favors. And they almost never do. And if someone had five boxes of specialized camping and cycling and photography gear and asked me to sort through it and pack it up and ship it somewhere for them, I’d love it. It would actually be fun for me to do it. I’ve got a bit of Sheldon Cooper in my blood, I guess. He loves doing the taxes for his family and taking on any task that requires organizing and being methodical. And he doesn’t have any kind of life that this would interfere with. I’m the same way. I love organizing. And it’s not like I have this massive social life that I need time for.
But I can’t imagine anyone else feeling the same. I think of all the people in Malaysia that I could ask for help, and I can see dealing with my stuff being a chore and a burden for them. They have better things to do with their time. And with all that on my mind, I set about carefully composing an email to Natalya, the owner of the hostel. I wanted to ask her for this favor. But I didn’t want to freak her out. I wanted to point out all the ways that I could make it easy for her. And I wanted to emphasize that there was no time pressure. She could take weeks and even months to do it, and it would be fine. Of course, I would pay for everything, and I would even pay her for her time. I was crafting this email like it was an address to the nation. I wrote out this detailed email, but then I decided to let it sit for a day or so. I wanted to think this through and make sure I wasn’t making a mistake.
So I set aside the email, and the very next day, the news was filled with stories that Malaysia could fully reopen its borders by March 1st. This just came out of nowhere. There was no hint that Malaysia was even considering such a course of action. And then the governing body controlling their response to covid-19 suddenly said they recommend opening the border fully on March 1st.
Of course, it probably won’t be that easy. There will be a ton of restrictions and rules and testing guidelines and insurance requirements and on and on. And it probably won’t happen by March 1st. But the language in these articles was so strong and so positive and optimistic that it seemed like a real possibility, and then I was quite happy that I hadn’t sent that email to Natalya. My decision to wait just one day and sit on the email was a good one. I may be able to go to Malaysia myself after all. I don’t think I would attempt going to Malaysia as soon as it happens if it does happen as early as March 1st. I’d let the dust settle on the change and let things smooth out. But it seems promising.