Friday, February 25, 2022
4:45 a.m. Room 1102, Phannu House
Mae Sot, Thailand
The day is here. The day of my departure. I’m not in the greatest mood this morning, I have to admit. I’m not quite feeling the way I imagined I’d feel as I embarked on this little journey. But that is often the case. No matter how organized I am, I always have trouble sleeping before I leave for a trip. And I’m always tired and half-wishing I wasn’t going anywhere on the morning of departure. But I do it anyway because I know that my mood will shift dramatically once I’m on the road. I just have to have faith.
Part of the problem is that the last-minute preparations are always more complex and time-consuming than I’d planned for. And yesterday was a Skinny Doug Fasting Day. I don’t know if I can really blame it on the lack of food, but I found it difficult to focus and get things done. I needed to sort my gear into two piles: the bring-with-me pile and the leave-behind pile. And I had made plans to leave my bag of extra gear at Eddie’s house. However, as time passed, the leave-behind pile grew until it reached an alarming size and weight. I found that kind of depressing if not oppressive. Where did all that stuff come from? I had already reduced my clutter to a great degree when I left from the Green Guest House. At least I thought I had. But somehow, it had multiplied and grown in size.
I wrote earlier about the special luggage bag I had purchased. And I thought I had gotten one that was far too large. Sadly, I needed that extra space. The medium bag would not have been large enough. My plan was to take all this extra gear over to Eddie’s house on my scooter. That’s what I did last time. But I could see that it would be a challenge to carry this bag to Eddie’s house by scooter or by any other mode. I decided to ask the good people at the Phannu if I could leave the bag here. And to my delight, they were fine with it. That’s a major advantage to staying at a place that caters to foreigners. They become accustomed to how we operate. I explained to the woman at Phannu House that I was returning here in three or four weeks. And I could tell by the way she was looking at me that I was wasting her time by explaining. She had likely been storing backpacks and bags for foreigners for decades, and she didn’t need the explanation. And she didn’t charge me anything. I can only imagine what would have been involved had I tried to do this at the Green Guest House.
I was happy with my decision to leave my gear here at the hotel. It makes more sense than leaving it at Eddie’s house, even if it isn’t quite as secure. It wouldn’t have been so easy if I’d had a cardboard box and a collection of separate bags. But since I’d taken the time to get one large bag and put it all together, it was convenient and easy to just leave it here.
The woman at the Phannu was a delight to deal with about all of this. I also had to settle my end-of-the-month electricity and water bill. At the Green Guest House this was a major undertaking, and it even spilled over into the morning of my departure and made my life very complicated and difficult. But here, the woman told me to just drop by the front desk between six and seven, and we’d settle up. I was a bit worried about that, because there really is no functioning front desk. There is a desk, but no one is ever there. And the house seems generally empty and impenetrable. I saw myself going to this front desk at the appointed time and then having no clue how to contact anyone. Me being me, I’d probably sit down on the nearby bench and then humbly wait for an hour for someone to just show up. But I implemented my What Would Harrison Ford Do? approach. And I went there with confidence and I knocked loudly on the only available door. I normally don’t like to do that. I don’t like bothering people. It’s not like a door in Canada where you know there are people on the other side of the door who can hear the knock. This was an open door. It was more like a gate than a door. And there was no one in the cavernous rooms I could see on the other side. In order to get someone’s attention, I had to bang hard on the door and get the noise to really travel. And I dislike doing that. But I did it. And the woman appeared.
From that point, things were fine. She had all the information prepared in advance. She had taken a picture of the electricity meter when I checked in. And she had taken a second picture at some time this afternoon. With those two numbers, she could calculate how many “units” I had used. That came to 110 units. I knew in advance that they charged 7 baht per unit. Therefore, my electricity bill was 770 baht. The water bill was a set amount of 200 baht. And my utilities bill came to 970 baht, which is about $30 US.
When this woman made these calculations, she wrote everything down on an official receipt. And she signed and dated the receipt. She was incredibly organized. On top of that, she was willing to settle up this bill on the night before my departure, since I had plans to leave early. And that would mean I would get a night of free electricity. I could run the air conditioner last night and this morning as much as I want and not have to pay extra. At the Green Guest House, my landlady refused to cooperate with me to the extent of settling the bill beforehand. She simply dug in her heels and refused. I had no choice but to pay her in the morning when I left, and that meant I could not leave early. I had to wait around until she was ready the next day. And I’m positive she did that because she wanted me to pay right up until the very last second.
I can also factor in the extra night or even two extra nights that were included in my monthly rental here. I thought I would have to pay 350 baht for one night or even 700 baht for two nights in order to stay here until Friday morning. But that was all included in what I had already paid for the month. And that little benefit covered the electricity bill.
And now I am free to go whenever I am ready. I just poured myself a second cup of coffee. When that is done, I will pack up my backpack, strap it to my scooter, and hit the road. I don’t have a huge distance to cover. It’s 140 kilometers to my home for the night. But I want to arrive there in the early afternoon, so I still want to be on the road early. I want to have some leisure time so that I can stop at various places along the way.
It will be interesting to see if my backpack really is lighter than before. I definitely left out a lot of things that I brought with me last time. In particular, I left out my large and heavy cooking pot. And with my cooking pot came a couple pounds of pasta and even pasta sauce and other food items. I won’t be doing any cooking on this trip. I left out my mosquito net, too. Other than one night, I didn’t really have a use for it on my last trip. I hope I don’t regret leaving it behind. And I left behind a range of items that actually are convenient and make my life better but which I don’t absolutely need. I have a really nice waterproof Bluetooth speaker. But I didn’t bring it with me this time. I didn’t even pack my flip flops. I’m going with my sandals and that’s it. No other footwear. And I left behind a tank top and a shirt and items like that. However, I added back in my Panasonic camera and an extra lens. For all I know, the things I added will cancel out the things I left behind and the backpack will be just as heavy and unwieldy. We’ll see in a few minutes.
I definitely could pack a lot lighter for a trip like this if I really wanted to. My backpack itself is a lot of extra weight. Since I just strap it to the scooter anyway, I don’t actually need a backpack with its thick and heavy shoulder and waist straps, suspension harness, and many zippers and straps and pockets. I could use a much lighter and more simple duffle bag. But I don’t have a duffle bag. The backpack is all I have. But it does add a lot of unnecessary weight. And I do have an excessive amount of technology. I could get by with about half of what I have. I have a laptop and a tablet. But I don’t really need both. I could get by with just a laptop. I LOVE the tablet, but I could live without it. I also have three smartphones. And I could survive with just one. But it’s so convenient to have three, especially when one of the phones is very powerful and is used exclusively to edit video, one is more basic and works well for Google Maps and general Internet and social media, and the last is just my old phone, which serves as nothing more than a podcast player and bedside clock. I could go on at length about all this stuff that technically I don’t absolutely need. But I do like having it. In any event, the scooter is going to be carrying the weight again. So it doesn’t matter a great deal.
I could go on and on with more thoughts, but it’s time to shut down and start packing up.