Tangmoo (Thai for watermelon) needs to get into my room for some reason.
The Gold Mine in World Travel
I was able to escape California for Singapore on March 12 which was pretty lucky for me. On the 17th I flew from Singapore to Thailand just one day before Singapore shut down flights and Thailand and Malaysia shut down new entries into the country.
As many of you know I am now stuck in Thailand with the only other country available being the US. But I have spent way too much time there and have absolutely no interest in going back right now. Maybe sometime I’ll go visit the national parks.
I had a bank account in Thailand and thought I should probably change all that old, diverse foreign currency into Thai Baht in Singapore, where the exchange rates are good, and take that cash with me to deposit in the Thai bank so I could use my ATM card in Thailand instead of using the debit cards from foreign accounts which incur rather high withdrawal fees in Thailand.
So, going up to the foreign-exchange counter, pulling out my international currency wallet and going through the currencies the exchange company would change for me, which happened to be a much more excepting number of older bills then what a Thai bank would exchange, I was surprised to find that about 3/4 of all the foreign cash I had extra from visits to different countries had exceeded US$1,700. They gave me an envelope with about 55,000 Thai baht and I vowed to make it last as long as possible.
When I got to Thailand I found that the bank account has been closed since the balance had decreased below a certain amount for a certain period of time and they did not allow tourist to open bank accounts anymore in Thailand so I was stuck with the envelope of cash. My hope was to make it last about two months if possible which was the longest amount of time I would be able to stay in Thailand with just a tourist stamp and without a visa.
To my amazement it turned two months a few days ago and I had almost made the cash stretch out to the limit except for about US$60. All of my expenses included hotels, food and anything else I needed. Of course the current health crisis has helped slightly with a decrease in hotel prices, the free use of the motorcycle where I am now and the free dogs and cats at the resort. Since I am the only customer, most of the time, the free dogs and cats for company is very helpful. Let’s hear it for free dogs and cats. Hip, Hip, Horranimals!
Raining Cats and Dogs
We are having some very unusual amount of rain here in the southern part of Thailand, Nakhon Si Thammarat, but that’s not really what this is about. It’s about cats and dogs. Or maybe I should say dogs and cats because the dogs are much more friendly and dogs have become much greater friends than the cats, so the cats come second.
The Place I am staying, I am the only customer now except for an occasional day stopper, has two dogs and three or four cats. I’m not gonna spend too much time on the cats, not only because they’re fewer numbe but also because of what they did to tease my dog, DC, when I was living in Phuket, Thailand. Late at night the cats used to stand on top of the truck and make DC bark for hours on end, teasing him, showing him how they can jump up on the top of the car and he can’t. Total neighborhood mafia.
But I am friendly to cats and with cats if they abide by my rules. I certainly am not going to bend to their will and to allow them to use their evil nature to control and subdue me. But since I already said they ranked number two in my book let me get to the dogs.
Most houses have dogs they keep outside mostly in the front as guard dogs. And most of the people really don’t take great physical care of their dogs so they tend to get all sorts of problems that don’t get fixed especially abrasions and skin problems like mange. In the countryside there are not too many of the small yuppie dogs that actually resemble large rats more than they do dogs. That shows some of my prejudice but then I’ve had some experiences that make me feel that way. The last yuppie dog I had a run-in with i nicknamed football for an obvious reason which I’m sure you can guess. When a dog bites you, that’s the last straw.
So most of the dogs in the countryside tend to be medium size dogs, bigger than a beagle and smaller than a Labrador. That’s what they call the typical Thai dog which has blood lines from several different dog breeds including Ridgeback. But almost all the dogs here tend to be very mild tempered, kind of like the people, with A few exceptions.
Since I have been in Thailand for a number of years (not recently) I have some kind of sense of how to manage the typical dogs kept outside. They tend to be very friendly on the whole and there is a way to manage certain problems such as the motorcycle chasers.
One way to manage motorcycle chasers is to do what I don’t do and not what I saw a European fellow do a couple weeks ago and which I don’t recommend, is to kick at the dog and then stop the motorcycle and harass the dog. Knowing the dogs here tend to be very mild-mannered is the key to knowing how to manage dogs. Mild manner is also the general emotion of the motorcycle chasers. When I get one or two dogs chasing me and trying to bite at me I slow down and stop. The dogs stop pursuing me and sometimes slink away or in some cases just shy away slightly. If I see them slink away then I know they are not going to be easy to get to know. If they just shy away, I turn off my motorcycle, get off and crouch down, talking to the dog and holding out my hand palm upward. Most of the time the dog will come to me so I will pet it and find a place it’s itching and scratch it, and then we become friends. Sometimes we get down to Exchanging cat jokes and that is always hilarious. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard of a dog laugh it’s belly off at the joke about the three cats walking into the bar.
Just a few days ago I slowly passed by a house with a larger Labrador sized dog I made friends with, one that was chasing my motorcycle several times before. The dog came over and greeted me I started scratching her behind ear and places where I knew she was itchy. She proceeded to climb onto my scooter, standard 100 cc motorcycle in Thailand which in other countries is 50 cc (More about that later), and so, well, of course you know this wasn’t going in my planed direction.
By this time the little boy who’s dog it was came out of the house and was trying to talk with me but my kid Thai is not that good so I just said to him, a mistake, “go together“. Since I haven’t been in Thailand for a While, my Thai is a little rusty and I sometimes don’t say everything I mean to say. I was meaning to say “I can’t take her with me“. But all the words didn’t come out. So I think the little boy thought I wanted to steal his dog. Ever since I haven’t seen the dog outside. Well I got the dog off the motorcycle, scooter, and proceeded to the beach for my daily swim.
That’s kind of the long story of how to manage motorcycle chasing dogs in Thailand.
I have two good dog friends here, one small dog and one larger dog. The larger dog is very very friendly, a short hair, so when I help her get that shedding hair out, which is very itchy, she just keeps asking for more. But there are limits to every good thing. Remember what happened to Oliver when he asked for “some more“?
The smaller dog is noisier than the big dog, which is very often the case with smaller dogs, from my experience at least. She’s a very good guard dog but sometimes even the slightest sound, A bird on the other side of the wall, will have her imagining thieves coming to steal her food and massacre all her friends.
I think I made a mistake and took a walk to the end of the dirt road with the two dogs. A couple days later they seem to get into their head that this was going to be a routine thing. But I found out later they normally just walk as far as next door which is a relative’s resort and then come back again. The problem is, even without me, they start going down the opposite direction to the end of the dirt road and encroaching on other dogs territories which means only one thing, mayhem. And now the small dog will walk ahead of the big dog, strutting her stuff and showing how powerful she is. But when another dog comes to clean the territory she runs way behind the big dog. So then the big dog gets into a conflagration. It turns into something like a typical Bar brawl where nobody gets really badly damaged, just damaged enough to feel they protected their precious reputation and territory.
So now I see the owner of the dogs walking the big one on a leash and not allowing her to go in the opposite direction. That’s what tipped me off, I had created an issue. So I just keep my mouth shut and stay friends with the dogs here inside the bungalow resort.
As for the cats, the black-and-white one doesn’t like to be touched but she will come into the room, sleep on my lap, and be content as anything. I like it best when cats are sleeping. We all know the end of the world could happen when all the cats decide to wake up and cause trouble.
The tabby, evidently, has been replaced. She is still here but the owner went to the temple and for some reason wound up with a new kitten that nobody wanted and the tabby became jealous and doesn’t want to be around the owner so the tabby wants to spend time with me. She loves to be petted and held and comforted but so far she hasn’t tried to sleep on my lap. The behavior of the two cats is tolerable and that’s the only reason I write about them. I am not hoping for a franchise hamburger shop to be set up in the small town. Not yet anyway.
To end on a Happy note, “As long as the roots are not severed, all will be well in the garden“. If you know that phrase you are truly an eclectic comedy lover. Hint – nope, not today.
USEFUL NATURE
A very simple thing washed up in large numbers on the beach, something called a cuttlefish bone. it isn’t really a bone it’s cartilage on one side plus some other softer substance on the other. But it IS the internal skeleton of the cuttlefish. When the cuttlefish dies this is all that’s left and it is light so it floats to the surface and washes up on the beach.
A Cornell college friend, Francis Wu, told me when he was a kid his mother used these to scrub the dishes. One side of the “bone“ is smooth, hard cartilage. The other side is a softer and abrasive substance. When he told me what his mother used them for I tried peeling off the outer edges of the cartilage and using the softer side to scrub some dishes. It’s not only does an excellent job of scrubbing the dishes it also is a biodegradable substance that can be washed off, taken back to the beach and let to wait for thousands of years to become a new substance.
Don’t you dare kill a cuttlefish to get this bone or I will come after you. Joking aside, if you happen to be walking on the beach and see these in quantity, pick one up and try it out. It’s better than buying plastic and having it wind up in the ocean to kill animals and to degrade into microparticles we subsequently eat.
Tip, Commission, Bribe, or Scam?
In the previous blog I described the adventure trying to find a hotel, just someplace where I can sleep at least. During that adventure a few things happened that are kind of interesting and shed some light on Thai culture and business.
The driver of theThe taxi I took from the hotel I was staying at to the hotel at the airport where I had the booking kept talking with the hotel people about hotels open in the next province. I was not quite sure why
he spent so much time talking about it but I soon found out.
When we got to the airport hotel I saw the driver slope about 700 baht to the hotel owner and just after that the hotel owner keep huge prices on the taxi driver, how reliable he was and how much good information he had regarding hotels. I was assuming the payment was for the hotel owner to promote the taxi driver. I wasn’t sure if they knew each other and the payment might’ve been for something else. In fact, a lady who tried to check into the clothes airport hotel the day before could not check in since the hotel is closed and through the discussions with the hotel owner they told me the taxi driver had taken her on an hour and 15 minute taxi ride to the next province to a hotel that was open. So I think the 700 baht was Commission for either taking that lady the long distance to the open hotel where it was for my ride. 700 baht is about half of the taxi fare and a good daily income for anyone in this difficult economy.
Both the hotel owner and the taxi driver kept talking about the 1000 baht daily room charge I might face when I get to the hotel.
During the trip the taxi driver talked about how I could probably negotiate the daily charge down to maybe 650 bud.
When we got to the hotel the hotel owner said the room charge is 650 bud but I asked how long I would stay. When I explained that it depended upon the charge and that I might stay a week or even a month she reduce the daily charge to 600 but. Two days ago I pulled up to hotel booking websites and both of them indicated that the room I had rented was normally 500 but. So for the second week staying here I negotiated the price for the next week. It turns out that taxi driver is the one they use here at this hotel all the time to drive customers to and from the airport which, again, is an hour and 15 minutes away, a 1500 baht fee. Having lived in Thailand seven years I can tell you that the difference between 500 baht and 600 baht which in total was 700 but since the difference was paid for seven days, was a commission to the taxi driver. So you can see how the commissions were flowing.
When I explain what happened to a friend of mine who was a diving customer with me many years ago he kept saying, “oh that’s the old hotel scam”. What he was talking about is when you wind up someplace, not knowing any hotels and having to take a taxi and the taxi takes you to a hotel that usually increases the daily fee in order to pay commission to the taxi driver. That, of course, is one way to look at it, as a scam.
In my situation all of the hotels in the province were closed and the Airbnb were rejecting people as well so there was no place to stay . I did have to pay 1500 baht and another 700 baht for the convenience of being able to go to a hotel that was open in another province. I look at those differently from my friend, based on my experience. I didn’t see it as a scam, I saw it as a convenience, a fee for a very friendly emergency advice in guidance. Some kinds of these commissions I look at as very much like a tour guide for you. And in a difficult economy I was not angry that the airport hotel owner benefited, the taxi driver benefited, the new hotel owner benefited and I benefited. It cost a little money but everybody was happy.
And what about Groves? Well, you might pay some cash to policeman when he catches you in a traffic violation. If you didn’t pay the money you would have to go to the police station and fill out forms and go through a bureaucratic fit process while paying a smaller fine. Paying the policeman is clearly a bribe. But the policeman will try to explain to you that he’s trying to save you time and hassle going to the police station and going through the bureaucratic process and a very friendly way.
When you’re moving to Thailand and your personal effects come to the airport and you have to go to the airport to clean them in customs, you have probably done enough research to understand there is no import duty on those personal items. But you go with a tight friend who knows how to do this process and when the customs officer leaves the office you are currently in your friend will direct you to putting a certain amount of cash in a desk drawer. With the customs officer comes back in the office, he will open the drawer to “get the appropriate forms to fill out”. He will see the cash in the drawer, you will fill out the forms and there will be no duty imposed on your personal effects. This is also clearly a bribe. But in the case with the policeman and the customs officer the amount is not very high and the benefit of getting things done quickly and smoothly it seem to benefit everybody. Everybody complains about the system but it is not really changing. Everyone knows the appropriate amount to pay as if it were a menu in a restaurant.
So you can look at the extra fees being paid as a tip, a scam, a commission, or a bribe. As we say in Thailand, “up to you”.
Musical Hotels and Total Confusion in Paradise
About two weeks ago I had spent three weeks in Suratthani, the main town in the Suratthani Province and the port that carries most of the people to some of the very nice islands on the east coast of Thailand, Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao.
But a few days before April 8 the hotel rang the room and said the government told them to close the hotel on April 8. Since I paid until April 10 I could stay until the 10th. They help me try to find other accommodations which was very difficult. Once they found something a few days later the police went to the place and told them they had to close down.
I tried Airbnb and most of those were asking questions how long I had been in Thailand and in that area. Once they found I had been there for more than 2 weeks they refused to except me. One Airbnb host said there was an airport hotel allowed by the government to accept guests. So I called the hotel, they confirmed they would accept my reservation so I booked online.
On the 10th I went down to check out and the police were there with people from the health department. They wanted to interview me asking questions concerning my travel to date, how I felt and what I planed to do. They were very nice, I answered all the questions and I got in a taxi and went to the airport hotel. When I got to the airport hotel the owner came out of the entrance which had blacked out the name of the hotel on either side of the door, an ominous sign. The owner confirmed I had a reservation but said the police had been there two days before and told them if he did not close the hotel on the 8th he would go to prison for one year and be fined 40,000 Baht (US$1,250).
The taxi driver passed some money to the hotel owner which I described in the next blog and explained the next province of Nakhon Si Thammarat had a hotel that would except customers but the ride would take an hour and a half and cost an extra 1,500 Baht (US$47). After some discussion back-and-forth about the different possibilities I decided to take the taxi ride. I got to the very small hotel with six rooms in the middle of the jungle, very nice place and nice people and I’m very happy here. Evidently the governor of this province noted that there are very few virus infections in his province and so did not issue the hotel closure orders that Suratthani had issued. I am still here in this little hotel bungalow and find it very sufficient for just staying and waiting until, I really don’t know what. But at 500 Baht/night (US$16) and a family restaurant with delicious food next door I can’t complain.
HAPPY VIRUS DAYS?
When times are tough and when travel becomes a little bit more complicated very often the stories turn to difficulties, sadness and complications. But maybe I can just get around some of that and try to give you a little picture of what it’s like to commit yourself to traveling during a virus outbreak.
I left Singapore on March 17 to fly to Phuket to go diving with my godson, Dennis, the second generation of Bubbles, and to visit a few friends on the island. But what started out as a somewhat normal yet vacant vacation spot turned into what everyone realized was becoming a fairly dangerous situation. Too many people not taking care to keep distance or protect themselves from the virus. So after a week there I left for Suratthani to get away from the tourists in Phuket who were not observing most of the safety measures to keep from getting the COVID-19. The streets were also fairly crowded and Patong Beach is always a very noisy place to be.
Getting a 5 1/2 hour bus to Suratthani was not quite as difficult as I had expected since there were quite a few mini buses employed instead of the normal large buses to take large number of tourists here and there. But I got lucky and I got a big bus so there was a lot of space between passengers and it was very relaxing.
But upon arriving at a very nice hotel, costing only $18 a night, everyone found the government orders were increasingly shutting down the city. Now restaurants can only provide take-out meals, regulations even coffee shops need to obey. But there are plenty of little carts selling deep fried chicken, barbecued pork, sticky rice, mashed up fruit drinks and all sorts of other kinds of food so life was going on just fine if you are satisfied with fairly minimal survival necessities being plentiful.
Everyone is wearing masks and in order to enter many shops, especially department stores, you have to have a mask, get some alcohol and wash sanitizer and have your temperature taken with the laser gun. On returning to the hotel one time my temperature read above normal and above the recommended maximum so they asked me to sit down for a few minutes. After about two minutes my temperature went down to an acceptable maximum. It was the heat and the walking outside and the black hat that raised it above the allowed maximum.
After the first three days of just walking around, going by the docks and watching the people fishing and feeding the pigeons, and then going on to see the Thai temples and Chinese temples and open marketplaces, my tourist journeys were completed and it was time to spend the rest of my two weeks getting some work done, reading a lot of newspapers and information about the virus, protecting myself and getting some of the 7 to 8000 images of family photos and heirlooms organized, a job which will take several more months.
So today I decided that since the hotel called me yesterday and told me that beginning today all the hotels had to close, it was time for me to go to immigration to try to extend my stay here another month as well as look for other accommodations. I have two more paid days at the hotel so they let me stay for those two days. Immigration was pretty easy since I was only one of two foreigners there. Immigration officers on the islands around seem to be extremely crowded since that is where the tourists are. Suratthani City is the jumping off point for those islands and so there really aren’t many foreigners here. On top of that the immigration office is way out in the countryside which discourages people from using that office to get anything done. Good for me.
So now that I have another month okayed by immigration I need to find a place to stay. There aren’t many options since all the hotels will be closed tomorrow so I’m trying to be a little creative. But the staff here at the hotel has been very helpful and has given me some ideas. If I can get to one of the islands Airbnb accommodations are available which seem to get around the regulations that shut down the hotels. I read in the Bangkok post today that a fellow from France was walking around Phuket without a mask and so was arrested. I am not only wearing a mask when I go out but when I buy anything and bring it back to the room I wash my hands and then I wash whatever I bring back in. Since I can’t see the virus I don’t know how much good this is doing but I know it’s a good practice to at least be doing my best to keep healthy.
The cleanliness in this hotel is exceptional. Every day they go into every unoccupied room and clean it as though it were occupied. They don’t take all the sheets and towels out but they do a fairly good once over. And of course they thoroughly clean and fix up all the occupied rooms. Today since they are closing they have taken a lot of the mattresses off the beds and have obviously put them somewhere, not sure where they went.
Well I think that’s enough for today.
PS I want to explain why Dennis is my Godson. I was at the Phuket hospital when he was being born. When I saw the 4kg (8.8lb) newborn I said, “God, son, you are big.” That’s the rest of the story.
The Smoking Hot Pot
Yesterday I bought a small hot pot to heat water for some hot beverages in the hotel room. It cost around US$9. I plugged it in, let it heat up the water and the area around the electric plug started smoking. I thought it might be just some new material that was not cleaned off when it was put in the box for sale so I tried it again. The second time it started smoking and smelling like some kind of plastic material burning. I looked more closely at it and it was the plastic bottom just above the electric outlet on the pot. The plastic was also starting to bubble which indicates it was getting way too hot.
I took it back to the shop and they pointed to the little sticker on the side of the pot that said that the electric connector to the pot has to be pulled out at a certain time or the pot will start smoking which is not a problem. But another problem was that the pot was making a popping sound as well which indicates that the plastic was burning. So I told him I didn’t want it because it was actually dangerous and after giving them another US$3 I got a more advanced hot pot which doesn’t smoke.
Italian Encounter in Patong
Last night with Kung (EBI-chan, 海老ちゃん）we sat and ordered at an Italian owned restaurant. The owner, an Italian woman, was totally drunk, taking our orders; coffee for Kung and garlic bread and deep fried squid for me. Kung got his coffee and bread and I got baby octopus legs with no batter and tough as a tire. The owner, still sloshed, came to talk to us. I used some of my very spotty Italian to explain Kung and I used to work together 26 years ago in the diving business, etc. She explained she was from Modena and I mentioned Ferrari. She said she is wearing a Ferrari red blouse because she is from Maranello, the HQ of Ferrari and the Ferrari racetrack. I mentioned Ristorante Montana and their famous tortellini. She was so happy to hear someone knew about her wonderful home town. I was there with a friend this last June.
Then she mentioned she was stocking up on food because “you don’t know what is happening tomorrow”. Then she mentioned her son and started to weep. I was not sure if she was referring to something happening here in Phuket or something in her home town in Northern Italy that is suffering terribly from the virus. I felt sorry for her.
So, I didn’t complain about the food, paid and thanked them. We need to be flexible, especially now, not knowing what others might be going through.
A “Stuck” Beijing Couple
Walking on the beach I came across a Beijing couple playing with a dog and turns out the husband studied in England for several years and was a very good English speaker. We chatted about (I listened mostly) his negative feelings concerning the conduct of the current communist party cadre. The have a Thai friend to house them, have been her a month and got permission from the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok to stay another month and then from Thai immigration due to the current Covid related problems. He and his wife want to stay here since he can do his internet business anywhere. If they go back there is a good chance they will taken to a hotel somewhere and locked up for 2 weeks. Being in Patong is preferable (hahaha, of course).