Friday, 2 December 2016 to Thursday, 8 December 2016
I found a cure for insomnia, not that I was looking for one – but I found it nevertheless – and here is the magic formula. Download an audio book, any audio book, onto one of your devices, plug your ear-bud headphones into that device, plug its buds into your ears and get ready for sleep. Don’t worry about the title; it won’t matter as you will fall asleep before the book matter starts to matter…

It was Friday afternoon and I was once again listening or rather trying to listen to an audio book of a mildly interesting topic. It was a mere 10 minutes later and I was fast asleep. Adri popped into the room which woke me up with me pretending to have been awake all the while. When she popped in again an hour later she commented “Did you have a good sleep?” My cover was broken and that’s when I pulled the plug on those buds and continued on my hazy journey.

With us having taken two days out at the Golden Triangle this week there was no way I was ready to publish the weekly post today, even though I “attempted” to try.

We have not had Thai food for a while now and were craving it, specifically massaman and Penang curry respectively. You don’t interfere with a winning formula. Supper was spent at the Oak and Awe Coffee House where we had supper the very first night when we arrived in Chiang Rai. These ladies sure know their stuff.

On the way home we drove past the clock tower, it was 20:00 exactly and the tower was lit up, changing colours from mauve to green to turquoise to red to blue to… it was a wonderful display to watch, while some classical music was being pumped out into the ether. We subsequently found out that this is a daily phenomenon at 20:00 and it continues for about five minutes.

We watched a movie called A Perfect Day starring Benicio Del Toro, Tim Robbins and I also noticed a guy by the name of Morten Suurballe. Now who would want a surname like that? In Afrikaans it essentially means sour cajones, I rest my case. Anyway, the movie is described by IMDb as “A group of aid workers work to resolve a crisis in an armed conflict zone.” It was not a bad movie if you like darkish humour. It was just before midnight when we doused the lights on our own perfect day.

Saturday we got up really late, I’m too ashamed to mention the time, had breakfast of oats and banana discs and a fruity yogurt after which I attempted once again to blog. It did not come easy so I gave up.

After spending most of the day lazing about we decided to take our lazing to a lower level and go walk the streets in search of food. Adri wanted to interrogate the street stalls and decided that the very large Saturday market with its hustling and shuffling was not to her liking tonight, a mindset probably instilled by the day of laze. She opted for the daily street market which was okay with me; I had no choice in the matter anyways.

Arriving at the market of Adri’s choice I installed myself not at the market’s open eating area, but at the large open air Larn Klang Wiang Restaurant with its terracotta-type tiles and heavy wooden tables and chairs, while Adri stalked

the stalls. The lovely live lute and flute music gently filled the early evening air, the temperature outside was just south of neutral, the Wi-Fi was super slick, a large ice cold Singha was at my beck and call, life was good, very good..

While whiling away some time I cast a wary eye over the glossy menu. My eyes always seem to catch the miss spelt English words which can sometimes be rather amusing. I found only four tonight which was a pleasant surprise. As far as cocktails go, there was a vergen colada, a torpido cocktail, a bloody marry and to eat there was the clup sandwich.

The live music stopped after which three girls did Thai dancing to some cheesy English pop song. Now I’ve seen plenty Thai dancing to traditional music and I have always enjoyed watching it, but this was the first time I have seen it danced to a pop song. And these three girls were amazing, their moves smooth and effortless, truly mesmerizing. Adri came back just then and asked whether I enjoyed the lady-boy show… taking the wind right out of my full blown sails. Anyway, lady or lady-boy, the show was great!

CNN reported today that President-elect Donald Trump told Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte that he was going about his controversial fight against drugs “the right way” A while ago I reported that one only has to look at Duterte to know what a Trump presidency would be like. Hmm… going about it “the right way” has caused the deaths of 6000 people since Duterte came to power on 30 June 2016, in excess of 1000 people per month. Is that really “the right way”?

It was rather cool tonight and riding home I was having thoughts that I should have brought my leather jacket along for the ride home. On the bike it was cold, really cold, I was gnashing my teeth, if I didn’t they would have been clattering. I chose the less severe option.

We watched a movie called The Call starring Halle Berry and which IMDb describes as “When a veteran 911 operator takes a life-altering call from a teenage girl who has just been abducted, she realizes that she must confront a killer from her past in order to save the girl’s life.” This was a rather watchable movie.

Sunday we again lazed about most of the day, reading and blogging and just after 17:00 we made a beeline for Singha Park which would turn out to be our last visit there, sad to think about it that way. We arrived with the sun just setting behind the mountains in the distance, people were all around, walking, jogging, bicycling, sitting, lying, chatting, eating, drinking, we’re really going to miss this place, we really are.

At our little restaurant come pub I asked for a Carlsberg, the lady reached for a Leo. The Thai guy next to me stopped her just in time and guided her hand to the Carlsberg. He was in the know, he himself walked away with three Carlsbergs. Before he joined his buddies he cheers’d me with one of his Carlsbergs, a man to my heart.

Now today I had the good sense to bring my leather jacket with me – and just as well – as the chill had already settled in to the early evening air by the time we left. My leathers kept me warm and sane on the ride home and also probably saved me a trip to the dentist

Back at home we started watching a Netflix series called Paranoid, described by IMDb as “The murder of a female GP in a rural playground in front of numerous witnesses draws a group of detectives into an ever-darkening mystery that takes them across Europe, aided by mysterious notes sent by the ‘Ghost Detective’”. Pretty good, we ended up binging on four episodes.

After yoga and breakfast on Monday we went shopping which would be our last shopping trip in Chiang Rai as we will be heading to Bangkok on Friday. The weather in Chiang Rai has been really agreeable during the last few days and I noticed that the average forecast for the next few days hover around a max of 28° Celsius. Today there was a breeze with more than a slight chill in its persona, very comfortable indeed.

It was mid afternoon when Adri started to cook as we had invited a guest over for supper. At 18:00 sharp there was a knock on the door, it was Paul who stays in the condo unit opposite ours. We had met on several occasions when we were either leaving or returning to our apartment so decided that we needed to get better acquainted. Paul was born in the UK and soon after his schooling he left for the US where he spent most of his working life, also becoming a US citizen. He has been in Thailand for about 12 years now and owns two condo units in our building and another unit in Pattaya. He divides his time almost equally between the cities of Pattaya and Chiang Rai and he had just finished his stint in Chiang Rai and will be going to Pattaya in the morning.

As Paul claimed, Pattaya – which is riddled with farangs of all kinds imaginable – can be a wild place if you want it to be, it can also be very relaxing, depending on your preferences. I shared with Paul the tale that Frank had told me about the farangs in Pattaya in that they all have either one eye or one leg missing. Paul considered this for a few seconds and then burst out laughing uncontrollably, nodding his head in agreement while trying to contain himself. Frank was right about that one! Anyway, I’m happy to report that Paul has all his limbs and both eyeballs intact; he’s definitely one of the few! We had a wonderfully entertaining evening with Paul and I was sorry that we did not get to know him better earlier on in our stay.

After Paul left we continued binge watching the Paranoid series we started last night and finally finished it in the wee hours of the morning.

It was Tuesday and it was that time again; we had to do our 90-day reporting. We were planning on performing this duty yesterday but it turned out to be a public holiday, it was King Bhumibol’s birthday and as expected the celebrations were rather muted due to the passing of the king a short while ago. I always get a feeling of dread around this time as each time that we have attempted this ominous task the requirements had been different, and today would be no different to that different.

We needed to do our next 90-day reporting at the Thai Immigration office by 17 December 2016. You may do this two weeks before or one week after your reporting date so we decided to do our reporting earlier rather than later, rather safe than sorry, or so the wisdom goes.

Now you may remember that we ran into issues aplenty with our last 90-day reporting in Chiang Mai and this time it was way worse. We pitched up at the Immigration office early, bright and breezy and the very helpful lady could not help us. We did not have a letter from our landlord stating that we were staying at their address, or that’s what we thought. The Chiang Rai Condotel where we stayed could not provide us with such a letter as we stayed in a privately owned unit. The owner, our landlord Kateh, was on holiday in the Isan area so this was going to test our resolve.

Thus our first attempt at reporting did not go well. When we arrived back at the condotel we contacted Kateh and she agreed to send us “the documents” by overnight mail although that mail ended up taking two nights and a morning to reach us, we only received it on Thursday which sparked our second attempt.

Still smarting from our failure at Immigration and not getting a coherent answer from anybody that would listen to our pleas, we decided to spoil ourselves with pizza for supper at the Pizza Company.

We ordered pizzas with a different base than last time which turned out to be great as well. Adri preferred tonight’s base, I preferred the previous one. We ate and we ate until we had our fill, there were two pieces left on the plate, we could no more. We waited for someone to fetch our plates and bag those two pieces of pizza in a doggy bag but no-one came, so we decided to finish the last two pieces as well. Overstuffed we rolled out of there, down the road and onto the bed for a peaceful night’s sleep.

Wednesday arrived but “the documents” from Kateh did not and we felt that we were starting to get into a pickle. Now you may think that we still had another 10 days and then some to do our reporting, and also we could do such in Bangkok, but we had other business to attend to in Bangkok.

You may recall that I mentioned in my post titled Zipping up my boots… going back to my roots, yeah! that we may want to make a detour via France before heading back to SA. This “may want to make a detour” has in the meantime become a “must make a detour”, so this morning we made an appointment with the relevant organisation to apply for a Schengen visa.

A few years back France outsourced its visa application document collection process to a private company called TLS Contact Centre and it is with them that we made an appointment for next Wednesday at their offices in Bangkok. TLS has a Premium Service where you get assigned a consultant on the day of application to ensure that all the required documents are available and correctly completed. Of course there is an additional charge for this service but it was a no-brainer to make use of it. Part of the service includes the printing out and/or making copies of documents, something that is not easily achieved when you’re constantly on the move like us. In the meantime, we had a list of documents that are required by the French Embassy, and it is not for the fainthearted.

Now here’s the reason we were starting to feel the pinch of that 90-day reporting pickle. In order to apply for the visa we obviously have to hand in our passports and because we are applying for a long stay visa, the application process apparently could take between two weeks and two months, but we were told to bargain on at least one month. So, if we do not do our 90-day reporting before handing in our passports to the French Embassy next Wednesday we would be on overstay and would face charges of 500 baht per person per day and also may have our Thai visas revoked for overstaying. You get the picture of our pickle.

We spent the rest of the day lazing and relaxing and hoping that all will work out according to our carefully laid out plan which seemed rather brittle at this stage.

After a number of emails, calls and text messages we finally received “the documents” from Kateh in the “two-night” overnight mail on Thursday. “The documents” we received were merely signed copies of her ID card and bank account number, no more than what we already had. Man, this was frustrating! We decided to take a chance anyway and zipped off back to the Immigration office for our second innings.

We proceeded to the counter with a ton of trepidation resting on our shoulders which did not go totally to waste. The lady, within a minute of handling our meagre pile of documents, threw her arms up in exasperation and said something like “คุณจัดการกับจำนวนมากนี้” to her colleague which we assumed meant something like “You deal with this lot”, as walked off in a huff. This was not an auspicious start and it was about to get worse.

A friendly and hopefully wiser older gentleman took the hot seat in front of us and made some small talk about Mandela when he saw we were from SA. Then he launched into our petite pile of papers, referring often to his system, a deep frown etched upon his forehead which looked like a freshly ploughed field, furrows deepening with every mouse click. His final verdict was “You have to do your 90-day reporting at Chiang Mai”. “But… but… we’re right here in Chiang Rai… see”, I started to protest but I knew ek poep nou teen donderweer (I was farting against thunder).

He explained that our landlord was supposed to have reported our stay to Immigration when we initially arrived a month and a half ago, this so that they can keep track of their farangs. This was sadly not done as it was a rather new requirement for landlords. The Immigration system still had our address as Chiang Mai so reporting there would not have been a problem. There was no way that he could assist us and I fully understood that. Now at least we knew for certain what needed to be done but we would have to take our chances in Bangkok next week as we were leaving Chiang Rai in the morning. There was no time to fix this major mishap here.

On the bike ride home I thought about our ordeal and could not help but think that this was a lesson learnt, albeit a lesson too late for the learning, which reminded me of a song called You’re The Last Thing On My Mind. This song contains the words “It’s a lesson too late for the learning, made of sand, made of sand, in the wink of an eye my soul is turning, in your hand, in your hand, are you going away, with no words of farewell, will there be not a trace left behind…”. This is a song that was written and recorded by Tom Paxton in the sixties and was covered by dozens of artists since then. My favourite cover version is still the one by Neil Diamond; take a listen to it below.

It was the early 70s and I had just been exposed to Neil Diamond via his ever popular double live album called Hot August Night. Man, I still believe that it is the best album ever recorded, live or otherwise, simply stunning. My mother (bless her soul) loved Neil Diamond as well and it was for her birthday that we bought her another Neil Diamond album called Rainbow.

This album featured cover versions of songs that Neil loved, and this is where I heard the abovementioned song for the first time. This album contained wonderful covers of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne, a song my mother absolutely adored. Other covers included Both Sides Now, Everybody’s Talking, Mr Bojangles, If You Go Away and that wonderful He Ain’t Heavy… He’s My Brother, made famous by The Hollies. Dare I say, Neil Diamond’s version is better than the original? Take a listen below, you be the judge.

Lood advised today that he had sent off the package containing my Quality Street chocolates today but could not manage to sneak in the biltong (dried meat) and droë wors (dried sausage), you need permits for those… pity, but the rest was all good to go.

I had just opened a beer and was on my way to the patio when a bee made itself comfortable on my neck. Trying to get it to launch itself off my neck – like a plane off an aircraft carrier – I skulked forward, hunched over with my nose close to the ground, it seemed like I was looking for lost change but I wasn’t. After being coerced with a few self inflicted slaps around my ears it finally got the message and buzzed off. It was a close call.

And so ended our stay in Chiang Rai which was most enjoyable – highly recommended – and now it was into the unknowns of 90-day reporting and applications for French long stay visas in Bangkok. Even though I had these two heavies resting on my mind I had a wonderfully energizing sleep, ready for the challenges that were bound to be ahead.

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