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!
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).
Churches – Modena and Bologna
