Escape Hatch
It’s been a long time since my last update, folks, which means there’s a lot of verbal spew that’s accumulated in my mind and needs to be released. This post comes with the usual warning labels attached about excessive length, and possibly excessive bitching. Ergo, read at your own peril.
Yesterday was my 29th birthday. I wanted to post something, but wasn’t able to craft more than two or three sentences before I either became disgusted with where it was all going, or was interrupted by some other task. In the end, my actual “birth day” ended up being rather nondescript and mostly depressing, with a bunch of busywork and meetings bookending my complete inability to accomplish anything satisfying. It was fortunate that we actually celebrated my birthday on Sunday, with a great dinner and ice cream cake, so as a result I don’t feel bad about yesterday clocking the schabbs. (Wow, that was actually an id Software reference from 1992. I’m completely regressing.)
A couple of highlights from yesterday included enjoying the evening air with Apple (during which we watered the plants, one of our daily chores), seeing the very cool blog my mom posted about my birthday, and talking to my grandmother on the phone after my work meeting. All day yesterday I was in the mood to write; I’ve been working on a new story that combines an old-favorite subject with a more mature plot. I was sort of in a funk yesterday evening, though — having had my mood ruined by the mainstream media for the umpteenth time; more on that later — and it was late in the evening before I worked up the energy to resume my tale. I was just getting into it when one of my bosses sidelined me for an hour as he went on with childlike giddiness about how he’s discovered Linux and how I should try it. I’d love to, actually — I always was fascinated by Linux — but until all of the Adobe Creative Suite apps work either natively or through Wine, I just plain can’t. By the time he was done talking, it was time for my ops meeting. Bye-bye story.
After the meeting I talked to my grandmother to thank her for the birthday gift she sent me (I still need to call my parents and do likewise, but it had been weeks since I spoke to my grandma so I gave her precedence). Afterwards I thought about writing some more, but got caught up in troubleshooting our Internet connection. Our DSL has been going out repeatedly in the last four days, and in fact it was down all last night until 10:00 a.m. this morning. Naturally, it went out while I was in my meeting last night over a VoIP line, so that was great fun. I was beat from having gotten a lousy sleep on Sunday night, so I forgot about the story and just went to bed.
If I thought Sunday night’s sleep was lousy, I clearly hadn’t expected Monday night to be worse. I tend to like to get up late — say, 9:00 or 9:30 — and work into the evening, reserving the late evening / nighttime hours for my own personal pursuits, since that’s when my creativity is at its daily peak. While I’m in Thailand, this “half-offset” schedule also has me online for a couple hours when our U.S. office gets to work, in case they need me for some emergency. Unfortunately, it doesn’t jive too well with the other occupants of this house — my brother-in-law and his wife and baby daughter — who collectively rise somewhere around 6 a.m. and leave for work at 7:30-ish. This wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the fact that somebody has a habit of slamming the bedroom door every time they go through it in the morning, which is repeatedly and often. The door-slamming escapades this morning helped ensure that both Apple and I were listless, exhausted — and in her case, suffering from a sleep deprivation headache — all day.
Run for the Border
Make a ruuunnnn…for the borderrrrr…Taco Bell! Okay, sorry. The ’80s just came back to me unbidden, as they so often do. Today Apple and I made our own run for the border: The border of Malaysia, rather than Mexico. However, what was going to be a fairly routine visa run and shopping trip turned into a bit more of an adventure than we expected.
Our Thai visas allow us to stay in the country for 90 consecutive days, after which we have to leave. If we re-enter, we get another 90 days. We can do this over the course of 12 months. Most people in our situation make quarterly “visa runs,” wherein they simply cross the border by car into a neighboring country and then come right back. So because our initial 90-day allowance was due to expire on the 12th, we arranged a trip to Malaysia.
Apple’s hometown is just 50 km away from Thailand’s southern border with Malaysia. Her mom and aunt came with us, with the intention of doing some shopping over there before coming back home. Malaysia is actually a more advanced nation than Thailand, with its own auto companies and everything, although I had the opposite impression somehow before learning the truth.
We set off this morning at 9 am, which was just as well because the house was going to be in an uproar all day (wiring repair, plumbing repair and the Sunday morning housecleaning all at once). It took a bit more than an hour to get to the border at Padangbasar, during which time we passed through some rural and fairly pleasant scenery, including great plantations of rubber trees, one of Thailand’s biggest exports.
As soon as we got to the border, however, we ran into trouble. Apple and I were all set to go through — we got our departure stamps and everything — when it became known that her mom couldn’t go through because she hadn’t brought her passport, which meant none of us could go through, since she was the only licensed driver. Apparently, Thai citizens don’t normally need more than their ID card to cross this border, similar to U.S. residents visiting Canada in the old days. But just yesterday, a big-name Thai judge went through without a passport, and when he got to the Malay side, they decided they wouldn’t let him through because of it. There was a big uproar, so now passports were being checked for everybody.
This presented a distinct problem: We’ve already been stamped, so now we have to finish the trip, but how? Fortunately, there were a couple of guys on motorcycles at the border who apparently serve as a for-hire shuttle service for people doing visa runs. So while Apple’s mom and aunt waited, we each climbed onto the back of a motorcycle, strapped on helmets and rode off toward the Malay border (which wasn’t more than about a kilometer away, I’d estimate).
It was my first time on a motorcycle, much less on the back of one in Thai traffic. But the whole thing was like an amusement park ride. I was reminded of the Honda Fourtrax 70 quad that I used to have, and I found myself contemplating (if only for a moment) the idea of getting a bike as a solution to our travel dependency problem here in Thailand. After a short round-trip, during which our passports were checked and stamped innumerable times, we were back on Thai soil with a fresh 90 days of entry. Cost of the for-hire motorcycle ride: About $1.50 per person.
After that entertaining new experience, we stopped for lunch at a deserted restaurant along the rural highways of Songkhla. This brief respite turned into another story to tell, as the proprietors of the restaurant seemed woefully ill-equipped to run a business.
