Wednesday, April 20, 2022
6:04 a.m. Phannu House, Room 1102
Mae Sot, Thailand
I’m awake at a more regular time for me, but I really shouldn’t be. I can feel that I need more sleep. I’m going to be tired today with only the amount of sleep that I’ve gotten. But I just had a lot of things on my mind, and I wasn’t able to shake the thoughts and get back to sleep.
I’ve had a few interesting and somewhat social days lately, and they all involve Travis, the guy from Australia that is doing a scooter tour of northern Thailand. The first time I saw him, we had dinner at Borderline. He treated me to a set of some of my favorite dishes. I had the Shan Potato Salad and the Vegetable Spring Rolls and a Lime Basil Drink. I think I’ve always been able to hold my own when it comes to a good conversation over dinner or coffee or a beer, and Travis more than met me halfway. It was a very enjoyable dinner as we talked about every topic under the sun. Partway through the meal, a woman showed up at our table selling some snacks from a basket. Some bags of homemade potato chips caught my eye, and Travis and I bought a handful. I think I ended up with four and Travis with two. We both stuffed them inside our respective knapsacks. I don’t know if Travis enjoyed his as much as I enjoyed mine, but by the time I got back here to Phannu House, I had forgotten about the potato chips, and it was such a pleasant surprise to find them in my knapsack. I tore into them and munched my way through all four small bags. That was a perfect way to end the evening. I’m craving those potato chips now that I’m thinking about them. I wish I had a bunch more bags.
After that meal, Travis got on his scooter, and he headed toward Sukhothai. We had been chatting about this upcoming trip quite a bit, and I had been sending him links to Google Maps pins to indicate places that I found interesting. I also still had my Sukhothai tourist map and the various graphics that I had put together for my videos, and I sent him copies of those. Personally, I had found Sukhothai confusing, and it took me a day or two to figure out how the place was organized. I didn’t want to hijack Travis’ trip and try to make it my own, but I thought it would be helpful for him to know some of the things that I had figured out while I was there, such as how the different parts of the park were structured, how you bought tickets, and where the Visitor Center was located and things like that. I also talked about some of the places between Mae Sot and Sukhothai, such as the pedestrian bridge, the musuem, and the historic Ban Chin Alley in Tak City.
I heard from Travis while he was in Sukhothai, and I’ve met him in person twice more since he returned to Mae Sot, so I’ve now heard a lot of his stories, and it sounds like the trip worked out quite well. He stopped at the Muser Market for a coffee on Highway 12. And I found out later on that he also stopped at the Chao Por Phawo Shrine. Being the middle of the Songkran holidays, the place was busy, and he got to see lots of people setting off their long strings of firecrackers. In Tak City, he did go to the pedestrian bridge and the alleyway, and he was quite impressed (as I was) at the stately flow of the Ping River. He didn’t stay in Tak but continued on to Sukhothai that day, and he took a room at the Orchid Hibiscus Guest House, the same place where I had stayed. In fact, he was assigned bungalow #2, which is the neighboring bungalow to the one I was initially shown. I was given the choice between bungalow #1 and room S5 in the back. I chose S5 because it was quite a bit larger and newer and contained a fridge and a kettle. The smaller bungalows closer to the front and the pool didn’t have any of that and were quite a bit older. But it appears that Travis wasn’t given a choice. However, it sounds like he enjoyed his stay there despite the lack of a fridge and kettle, and he took great advantage of their nice swimming pool and breakfast.
Travis has a lot more energy than I do and moves a lot faster. So instead of waiting until the next day to visit the Historical Park (or the second day, as I did), he went straight to the park for sunset after settling into his room. And it sounds like that sunset experience was the highlight of his time in Sukhothai. He sent me a couple of pictures taken at that moment, and I saw that he was near the main temple ruins, Wat Mahathat, during sunset. It must have been quite atmospheric. I never saw the temple ruins at either sunrise or sunset.
The next day, he returned to the official Sukhothai Historical Park and he went around all the various sites on foot, just as I had done. And then I believe on the very same day, he went to Wat Si Chum and Wat Phrapai Luang and the Thuriang Kilns. From how he described his experiences, I think he was as interested in the kilns as I had been. I meant to ask if he had visited some of the temples that had impressed me in particular, such as Wat Si Sawai, but I forgot. However, he went beyond my experiences and saw and did many things that I had missed completely. In particular, he visited a temple ruin outside the city walls for sunrise. Apparently, it is a quite well-known temple in Sukhothai, and it’s on the list of places that one should visit while there, but for some reason I had never even come across it. It’s called Wat Saphan Hin. It not only contains a beautiful standing Buddha image and the remains of many laterite pillars, it also sits on a hill, providing a perfect vantage point for viewing the sunrise and the old city itself down below. Considering how much I love getting up onto a hill to get an aerial perspective of my surroundings, I’m surprised I never stumbled across Wat Saphan Hin in all my research. It sounds like the type of place I would make note of and make plans to visit.
When Travis left Sukhothai, he set off on what sounds like quite an epic cross-country scooter journey to Tak City. But instead of riding straight to Tak City as I had done, he turned southwest, skirting the mountain range, to Kamphaeng Phet. He didn’t spend the night there, and I don’t think he went into any of the sections of the Kamphaeng Phet Historical Park, but he managed to see and do a bunch of interesting things there that I knew nothing about, despite my staying there for a full week or more. In particular, he mentioned visiting a large teak mansion that served as the residence for someone famous. He showed me photographs of the place, but I forget the details now, and I can’t locate it on Google Maps. But it’s definitely something I would have found interesting had I known about it during my visit.
He also found himself on some rough and interesting country roads – the type that go across rickety wooden bridges, turn into rough footpaths, and then lead to a deadend. He mentioned that he was trying to get to a waterfall. I don’t think he ever reached the waterfall. The road dwindled away to little more than a rocky goat track before it got there. But it sounds like he enjoyed the detour very much, even if his scooter did not.
Back in Mae Sot, he took a room at the Picture Book Guest House again, and he was making plans to visit the Tak Immigration Office to perhaps extend his Thailand visa for another month. We had been chatting about that possibility earlier, and I had provided him with as much information as I could about that process. I wasn’t sure if he was serious about doing it or whether he would do it here in Mae Sot or wait until he was in Chiang Mai or another city, but he appeared to suddenly be gearing up to do it right away, and I was able to help him track down a shop in Mae Sot where he could get the necessary photographs and photocopies. I also told him about the requirement of submitting a photocopy of a receipt from your hotel. It took a fair amount of work on his part to finally get his guest house to produce such a receipt, but he got one. So I think I was able to help him and smooth out the process quite a bit. However, I led him completely astray on perhaps the most important point. I kept telling him about how getting the extension was a two-step process. I have to submit my application, get the Under Consideration stamp, and then wait fourteen days and then return to get the official extension stamp. And I assumed the process would be the same for him. But what I failed to remember is that this two-stage process only kicked in for me when I started getting the 60-day extension of stay. If you simply arrive in Thailand, get the standard 30-day visa at the airport and then apply for an extension, your first extension is also for just 30 days, and they issue it the same day. For that 30-day extension, you don’t have to wait 14 days to get it. So everything I told him about that was completely wrong. But it worked out in the end. Travis went to the immigration office the day before just to ask them some questions and get the forms and figure out the details of the process. Then he spent some time assembling all the necessary documents, and he returned the following morning to actually submit the application. The office was quite a bit busier on this day than it had been on his first visit, but all of his hard work doing the preparations paid off, and he was in and then out the door in twelve minutes with a fresh 30-day visa extension stamp in his passport. There was a bit of effort and some figuring out to do and some confusion, which is natural, but the whole process appears to have gone quite smoothly. The one major issue was something that is probably quite rare: the immigration office clerk stamped the wrong date onto his extension stamp. The extension was supposed to go to the end of May, but the stamp he got said it went to the end of March. And that made no sense, of course, because it’s April now. March is in the past. Luckily, Travis had the presence of mind to examine the stamp himself before he left (as I always do myself), and he noticed the mistake. And he was able to get the clerk to correct it. Of course, now it looks like he forged his own extension stamp. The original date has been blotted out with thick black marker and a new date stamped on top of it. It looks decidedly suspicious, but I’m sure it will be fine when it comes time to leave the country. The actual details and dates are probably recorded correctly in his computer record anyway.
I got in touch with Travis in the morning (this was yesterday morning) and I asked him if he was interested in grabbing a morning coffee if and when his trip to immigration was over. I was extremely curious to hear how things had gone, and I was eager to hear his story of his trip to immigration and more about his trip to Sukhothai. In fact, Travis and I had met for dinner the night before at Casa Mia. I had almost forgotten about that. I had a really good meal there of a chicken burrito, pad Thai, and a large ice-cold Leo beer. I was also treated to this feast by Travis. We sat at Casa Mia for hours and never ran out of things to talk about. While we were there, a strong thunderstorm moved through Mae Sot. It was a strong signal that the seasons are rapidly changing, and we will soon be back in the endless rainy season. Travis had told me a lot about his trip to Sukhothai while we waited out the rain at Casa Mia, but I still had more questions for him.
When I contacted Travis in the morning, he was just leaving the immigration office, so it was perfect timing, and we met at Braverly for coffee just fifteen minutes later. According to the messages we sent back and forth, we both arrived at Braverly at almost exactly 10:15 a.m. I ordered a hot latte and Travis had an iced latte. We took a seat in the corner, me in a chair and he on the cushioned sofa against the wall. And when we finally stood up to shoulder our knapsacks and leave, I was astonished (floored, in fact) to see that it was 4 p.m. We had been sitting there talking for six hours straight. In fact, I have no memory of Travis even getting up from his seat one time. And neither of us even ordered a second drink or anything to eat. We sat down with our first coffee, started talking, and then apparently talked non-stop for six hours. I got up from my chair once, but that was only to get out my laptop and briefly show Travis what DaVinci Resolve looked like.
I know that I can settle in for a good conversation over coffee. An hour or two can fly by easily. But even I was astonished that six hours had passed. As I’ve often thought, I wished I had had a camera set up to record our conversation. It would be quite something to have a video record of a marathon talk like that. And it was effortless. One topic flowed into the next, and without the need to actually do something else eventually with our days, we could probably have sat there and kept talking until the evening.
I believe Travis will be back on the road this morning. Perhaps even early in the morning. I think he has plans to go as far as Mae Sariang today. On a previous trip years ago, he had stayed at Above the Sea in Mae Sariang, and he was going to stay there again. Like me, he was fond of that town. And after Mae Sariang, he is going to ride around the Mae Hong Son Loop, taking in places like Ban Rak Thai along the way. He has been to all these places before, but on that trip, he had rented a pick-up truck in Chiang Mai. It sounds like that was a very different experience compared to riding a scooter. What’s interesting is that Travis owns an 1100cc motorcycle in Australia, and he is an experienced rider on big, powerful bikes like that. Therefore, puttering around the Mae Hong Son Loop on a 155cc scooter is a new experience. I think he is enjoying it very much, but sitting on such a small and lower-powered machine is definitely something he had to adjust to and get used to.
After the epic 6-hour conversation, I returned to Phannu House, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and then the evening preparing three more of my Sukhothai videos for posting as Premieres on YouTube. Two of them are scheduled for tonight. They are both shorter videos, and I decided to schedule one for 7 p.m. and the second one for 7:30 p.m. Neither are particularly exciting or even worthy of the Premiere treatment. But I started this project of making the Sukhothai videos a special series of Premieres, so I’m going to follow it through to the end. The next video in the series (after these two) is about my actual visit to the Historical Park. That one is a more typical Planet Doug video. In fact, I tossed aside any restraint in the editing, and it ended up being an hour and a half long. I suspect the experience of watching it as a Premiere will be similar to watching video #2: bad. I watched a lot of the video myself yesterday. I wanted to set up chapters and time codes for the video, so I had to watch it to do that. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really did. But I suspect that it will feel completely different watching it as a Premiere with other people. It will likely feel painfully boring and slow. I imagine I will schedule it for Friday night or Saturday night.
That will leave another long video about my visit to Wat Si Chum, the Thuriang Kilns, the Visitor Center, and Wat Phrapang Luang. And then I have a short video about Sukhothai noodles. Unfortunately, I don’t have any kind of a concluding video for the series. At the end of my trip to Sukhothai, I just rode my scooter to Tak City and then back to Mae Sot without recording any video of the trip. So my video record of my Sukhothai trip just stops suddenly. There is no natural conclusion. That’s unfortunate.
I haven’t done very much with my other plans concerning the Planet Doug website. I’ve been busy with other things. I still don’t have a clear idea of what form the website will take, so I’m holding off on choosing a theme. The choice of a theme and a layout really does depend on the type of content you post. So I was thinking that it would be a wise idea to just let some time pass and see how the content develops. I can follow my instincts about what kind of posts to make and how I use the website. And once it contains a variety of posts, I can then better organize them using an appropriate layout and set of categories and menus. At the moment, I’ve only posted journal entries as a daily blog and one post about the Premiere announcement. And that gives me two Categories to start with:
Daily Journal
News Feed
Over time, I will develop more Categories and create a list of other sections I want to have on the website. And once that takes shape, I can look for an appropriate theme. I imagine the theme will be a news theme with lots of dropdown menus. That’s the kind of website structure that I like.