Monday, October 11th, 2021
3:45 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
I don’t imagine I will be up and awake for long, but here I am enjoying an early cup of coffee. We will see how long my eyes let me keep them open to stare at this computer screen. The thing is that I woke up around 3 a.m., and my brain started thinking about ten different things at once, and falling back to sleep became impossible. Instead, I turned on a podcast to perhaps lull me back to sleep. And then this podcast was so fascinating that my brain ended up on fire with thoughts and ideas.
I continue to be astonished at how many new things there are to learn. And in this particular podcast, I learned something completely new. It introduced a concept that, until this morning, I had been completely unaware of.
The podcast was from 99% Invisible, and the episode was called “Corpse, Corps, Horse, and Worse.” From the name, it was a safe guess for me that it is about the strange and inconsistent spelling in the English language. This, of course, is not a new idea. However, the podcast was based on a book that went in-depth into many different reasons behind English having such irregular spelling. And these reasons were generally brand new to me.
The book is by Anika Okrent, and it has a very long name: Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme, and Other Oddities of the English Language. In the podcast, Roman Mars interviews Anika Okrent, and you can hear just how delighted Roman is with everything that Anika talks about. And I was equally delighted. The book, and therefore the podcast, was jammed with new ideas for me.
However, there was one idea in particular that felt brand new. It was something that I don’t think I’d ever even remotely heard about. And this idea was that much of the chaos in the English language came about because of the timing of the introduction of the printing press to England. According to Anika, languages routinely go through major changes. The language will reach a point when it will experience a monumental shift. It will enter a period of dramatic change, and this change will continue for a while until the language settles down into its new form, whatever that is. And that would be just fine if this change occurred before the introduction of the printing press or after the introduction of the printing press. Under those circumstances, the language would be etched into its printed form at a time when it was settled and not undergoing dramatic shifts. And this, Anika argued, is why European languages are more consistent and regular in their spelling. They were in a settled form when the printing press appeared.
English, however, was in a state of extreme flux just as the printing press was coming into its own. Plus, the man who brought the printing press to England just happened to be using Flemish workers for his press. And as they chose all their letters for the printed books, they were faced with having to choose how words were actually spelt. And with so much change occurring in the English language, the spelling of English got frozen at a time when there was a large amount of variety. English was being transformed and had not yet reached a settled state, and the printing press captured the language at that precise moment – like a snapshot of linguistic chaos.
How absolutely true this is, I don’t know. But as an idea, I found it captivating. And Anika went on to describe all manner of other ways in which English ended up with such variety in the spelling and pronunciation of words. Nearly everything she said was a new idea to me, and I found the podcast a delight.
Yesterday was equally a delight. I already mentioned the wonderful morning I had. And that continued with another wonderful breakfast down at the Awake Owl. I brought my Pocket 2 camera down to breakfast with me, and I spoke to the camera as to a friend and outlined my plans for the coming day. I’m more and more pleased with this camera as I become more familiar with it. I find it to be a pleasant and easygoing companion, particularly in a setting like the Awake Owl.
As I explained to my Pocket 2, my discovery of the road through the countryside, and my idea to visit the Muser Hill Tribes Market combined to encourage me to get on the road earlier rather than push things right up until checkout time. My original idea was to relax and lounge around in my room at the SOHO for as long as possible. However, with the thought of some small scooter adventures awaiting me, I decided to simply start packing up right after breakfast and leave whenever I was ready.
As it turned out, I took my time with packing, and my methodical approach meant that I still wasn’t riding out of the SOHO parking lot until 11:30 a.m. My change in plans hadn’t really changed the time of my departure by very much. I ended up leaving perhaps an hour earlier than I would have had I stayed in my room right up until the noon checkout time.
Checking out was as equally pleasant and stress-free as checking in. I simply handed in my keycard at the front desk. I think the woman might have scanned it on a machine, but that was it. I was free to leave as soon as I handed over the card. There were no formalities at all. They did not hold me there until someone had been dispatched to check the room for damages or missing items.
I found my way out of Tak City and onto the small country road quite easily. I had the Relive app running on my Galaxy Note 10+, and I made sure to take pictures from time to time so as to add them to the 3D map later on. My country road took me to the water reservoir I had spotted on Google Maps. This water reservoir was not a very astonishing or even interesting sight, but the route to get there was enjoyable. And the route from there to the main highway was equally pleasant. I ran into just one spot of trouble, as a work crew was busy laying down some new tarmac. Having experienced this on a recent trip to Umphang, I was more aware of the consequences of riding on wet tarmac, and I made sure to ride slowly and aim my scooter’s wheels to avoid as much of the wettest tarmac as possible. And as soon as I reached a spot where I could turn off onto an even smaller country road, I did so. I did not want sticky tarmac all over the scooter again.
Once I reached the main highway, I gunned the throttle (as much as the throttle on a 125cc scooter can be gunned) and I raced along the highway. Spirits were high. Throughout the day, I had a lot of opportunities for pondering the difference between large motorcycles and a scooter like mine. This was a Sunday, and this highway is a popular route for the local motorcycle enthusiasts to race along on their weekend outings. I was lost in my own sense of speed as I raced along on my scooter, and then I would encounter a group of ten 750cc motorcycles going past me like I was standing still. From their point of view, I was practically a scooter statue, unmoving. To them, I probably seemed a somewhat ridiculous figure. Yet, I reflected that speed was quite a relative concept. The sensation of speed depends entirely on your circumstances. And sixty kilometers an hour on that scooter felt, to me, like I was approaching the speed of light. It was exhilarating. The scooter’s wheels are small, and there is next to no suspension, so I felt every bump and irregularity in the road. The engine roared, and it shook and vibrated my body. And my helmet was little more than a department store plastic shell, and the wind roared inside it like a mini-hurricane surrounding just my head.
Those motorcycles had large wheels, sophisticated suspension, and smooth and powerful engines. The riders wore streamlined and sealed racing helmets and skintight racing outfits and leather gloves. They raced along the road and carved through the air as if floating. They would have felt nothing of the bumping, crashing, and roaring that I felt. They could be travelling three or even four times faster than I was, and yet feel not a bump in the road. My point is that even though they were physically travelling at a much greater rate, my sensation of speed might actually have been much more pronounced.
It probably goes without saying that I was not suffering in any way from motorcycle envy. I had no desire to ride one of those motorcycles. In fact, even if given the choice, I would reject a 700cc BMW and choose a small scooter instead. I like the scooter as a form of transportation. It suits me. It keeps me more in touch with the world and is more friendly overall. It’s so much smaller and lighter and easier to handle and to park. I had ample opportunity to ponder the difference when I stopped for a drink at a scenic lookout point. While I was sipping on my iced green tea, a rather dramatic and exceedingly large BMW motorcycle pulled up at the same place. This BMW was space-age and state-of-the-art in every way, and it was adorned with the brightest and most exciting of colors and racing decals. And the two riders, a man at the controls and a woman perched behind, were decked out in identical racing gear. The two of them wore complete matching sets of high-tech riding and racing gear with all the same colors and decals of the motorbike. From head to foot, they looked ready to conquer the race track or the farthest reaches of space and time. Joyriders or astronauts? It was kind of hard to tell. They hardly looked human.
I’m sure this couple looked at me and my humble scooter with something close to pity if not scorn. Yet, even given a choice, for a trip like this or even much longer trips, I would take one of these scooters over a giant and gleaming BMW every time. I guess the humble scooter just jives with my personality better. I couldn’t even imagine putting on the kind of clothing that this couple were wearing. I would feel a bit silly. I don’t have the personality to carry off a look like that.
My visit to the hill tribes market did not turn out as I expected. Based on my reading of the night before, I was expecting much more of a cultural experience. But other than the people looking and dressing a bit different from the majority Thai, the market experience was much like my experience of any market here. The market was full of people selling fruits and vegetables and other agricultural products, but that was about it. There were none of the arts and crafts that I was expecting.
I think this area really was quite distinct from the rest of Thailand, but I’d have to spend a fair amount of time there to appreciate it fully. Simply walking through the market didn’t feel much different from walking through Mae Sot’s regular market. I did, however, take my scooter behind the market and down a mountain road into the nearby village. And life there felt special. I had one funny moment when, quite a distance ahead of me, I spotted a pig lying on its side and a man giving it a good scratching with some kind of implement. Me being something of a dummy, I honestly had this idea that this pig was getting a delightful scratching with a broom and it had flopped over onto its side to more fully enjoy it. Of course, as I saw when I got closer, the reality was that the pig had just been slaughtered. And the delightful scratching with a broom was actually a brutal scraping with a metal hoe to tear off the outer layers of skin and hair. And to help with this, a second person was blasting the body of the pig with a flame from a powerful blowtorch. This was all taking place in the middle of the street.
From this point, my ride back to Mae Sot kicked into an even higher gear. I had no more thoughts of attractions I wanted to check out, and I simply rode with the occasional brief stop to take a picture for the Relive app. One interesting aspect is that large sections of this stretch of highway were being repaired. And all the traffic from one side of the divided highway was funneled onto the other side. Therefore, at one point, I suddenly had a bunch of traffic heading right towards me on what I thought was a one-way stretch of highway. For one mad second, I thought I was riding on the wrong side of the road. After some time, the situation flipped, and I was on the other side and myself riding against traffic. That was fun.
I arrived back in Mae Sot quite early. In fact, the timestamp on the picture I took in the guest house parking lot is 3:29 p.m. Therefore, my trip from Tak City to Mae Sot had taken exactly four hours. And according to my Relive app, I had travelled 96 kilometers. It had been a good, fast day, an enjoyable day.