The Move In Between Moves

 

Our trip started on Monday the 24th of this month. We had originally planned to move our belongings, furniture, appliances, and other items to the house being built in Rattapoom. The house isn't yet finished and on top of that, the contractor took ten days off to go to a funeral in his home province of Sukothai, a northern province. It took us five rounds with our car and a pickup truck between our old home in Ban Pru to the new home in Rattapoom. By the time we had finished moving things, it was 8pm and we were tired. However, due to a feeling of wanting to hit the road, we left Songkla province.

That night, we didn't get very far and we hadn't planned to get very far to begin with. We knew from the beginning that we had a short distance to cover before leaving the climb to the central region of Thailand for the following day. We stayed at Ananta Resort, a familiar guesthouse that we had stayed at before. In fact, here is the blog post of our trip to Pattalung in which we stayed at the same guesthouse. That was in September of last year. 

We later realized that our plan of leaving Monday night after moving our things wasn't the best. We were tired and it made us start the trip on the wrong foot. I couldn't even sleep that night which led to us waking up much later than planned and leaving the guesthouse around noon. It's not like we hit the road and drove for hours after that either. We had to refuel, both our car and our bodies. After multiple starts and stops, we finally got on the highway going north. 

Empty is how we left our old home in Ban Pru, Songkla. 

Emptiness doesn't necessarily resemble something negative. In this case, emptiness symbolizes our most recent adventure and the beginning of a new chapter.

Our old home now waits for its new tenants.

The last of our belongings arrive at the site of the new house in Rattapoom. It took five rounds of going back and forth.

As the contractor working on the mainframe of the house wasn't around, the only developments were in the bathroom. Another contractor is building the concrete bathroom. This is as we last saw it.

Go To Where You Feel Most Alive

Waterfalling

Being in a relationship is being in a constant state of sharing with one another.

Then, we arrived in Chumpon, the northernmost province of southern Thailand. We stayed in a lovely hotel called The Mercy Hotel. The photos from our trip reveal a few things. One is that our trip to the north wasn't for fun. We weren't travelling for the sake of travelling. We were in and out of hotels and driving on the highway in between. Of course, we stopped for certain necessities like fuel and food but apart from that we made no effort to see the country. The fact that there's a pandemic going on influenced our decision to keep in locked between the highway and various hotels. Perhaps under different circumstances, we could have spent even more time exploring various regions. Another revelation the photos give away is that we tried to make the best of it given these circumstances.

From Chumpon, we drove to Chainat province. I have to admit that, I hadn't even heard of this province before. Obviously, I have a lot more to learn. I spent nearly all five years in Thailand in the south. I've been to every southern province and even though that doesn't mean I've been everywhere in the south, I've seen quite a lot of it. My regular trips here and there in the southern provinces were also disrupted by the pandemic. Travelling needed to be limited. I still want to explore more of the south but for now, we'll be staying somewhere quite far from the south. 

In Chainat, I couldn't sleep once again. Ying was feeling a bit sick and we made a late-night run to 7/11. Not too long after we got back to our room, she fell asleep and I tried to fall asleep. It was around 4am when I finally accepted that it wasn't happening. I went into the little bathroom and sat on the toilet seat playing chess online for about 30-45 minutes. Then I went back in the room and it must have been around 5am when I finally got some shuteye. Ying woke me up around 8am. I asked her if she was fit to drive. She had only driven for about two hours up until that point. I had done most of the driving until that day.

The King's Daughter

As these photos show, our trip was marked by hotels and highways.

Good thing she was ready to drive because there was no way I would've driven with only three hours of sleep. That was the first day in which she drove for most of the day. I only drove for about an hour in the afternoon on that day. She drives safely and slowly which contrasts how I drive. Of course, I drive as safe as possible and make an effort to never hog the passing lane - you can count the cars who hog the passing lane by the dozens along the way. However, I drive considerably faster than she does. And yet, speed isn't the greatest determiner in how soon you reach your destination. The amount of rest and whether you slept enough the night before are much greater determiners. 

Chainat is the last province in the central region of Thailand. After that, we step into the southernmost province in northern Thailand, Nakon Sawan, the Heavenly City. I like Thai city names. Nakon Sawan means the Heavenly City or the City of Heaven. Next is Gumpang Pet which means Diamond Wall. There are remnants of an ancient wall there. That name is similar to Petchaburi which means Diamond City - we passed this province on our trip as well. Most of these names are romanized into English with different spellings than my own spellings. However, I don't believe that spelling Gumpang Pet as Kamphaeng Phet, following the official spelling found on Google, is more accurate. The second word is supposed to be pronounced as /pet/ like pet animal, not fet. There are plenty of examples to be found but I don't want to digress. 

In Gumpang Pet, we looked around for a particular restaurant right on the river. Ying wanted to take me there. She said it had a great view, good atmosphere, and good food. However, once we did find it, we were told it was closed. The lady there said all the restaurants in that area were closed. We had a feeling we could find an open restaurant. And in fact, we found several before sitting down somewhere. The food was delicious but about halfway during the meal I kept hearing the sound of nail clippers. When we got up to pay, we saw a guy clipping his nails in the kitchen. That was gross. 

The view from the 5th floor of our hotel in Chainat.

Highway To Heaven 

The Bridge of Diamond Wall

The Mountains Start Appearing

After Gumpang Pet, we passed Tak province before entering Lampang. The roads started getting very mountainous and also very interesting. Ying insisted on driving because she said she knew the roads well and wanted me to see them before driving on them for the first time. I was more than cool with that as I was feeling pretty tired from the sleepless night before. We drove through the winding roads until we got to Lampang where we sought another hotel. This would be our last night in a hotel before reaching our destination. I haven't given away where our final destination is yet. For those of you who know Thailand and especially the north, perhaps you can guess where. 

In Lampang, we settled in a wonderful little hotel. Then we went by car out to find a durian seller in the city. We weren't interested in buying any of the fruit because we had already bought some from Chumpon. We needed a seller to cut the durian open for us. Most hotels don't allow durians in the rooms but we didn't see any sign in our hotel in Lampang. We kept it in the fridge until we left the next day. That morning, we skipped breakfast in town for a local treat Ying wanted to introduce to me. However, we ended up stopping at a gas station that had a Pun Thai coffee shop. Ying gets a free drink with the purchase of any beverage since she has a membership card with PT gas stations. I also got us some Dutch Stroopwafels so we didn't go too hungry.

Finally about an hour after leaving town, we stopped in this market where Ying treated me to some of the local sausage. We ate it with sticky rice in the car. We passed Lampoon and finally reached our intended province. For those of you who know northern Thailand, the answer is obvious. After crossing into Lampoon from Lampang, there's only one possible province left in the north. And that province is a very frequently visited tourism hotspot for Thailand. When travellers on a limited schedule come through, they usually go to Phuket, Bangkok and this province renown for its mountains.

Friendly Forces

We really liked this art installation in our hotel in Lampang. 

Rockin!

"I see you!" 

Rock Village

Art Rocks!

Peace Doves

This is at the Pun Thai coffee shop of the PT gas station. We're waiting for our drinks and nibbling on the Stroopwafels.

Ying didn't know I was taking a photo of her as she waited to be served.

Kao Soy

Chiang Mai is the province in which Ying has built her dreamhome. The home isn't in the city but we stopped in the city to eat some more local food. Ying introduced Kao Soy to me. Normally, Kao means rice and the word Soy isn't talking about soy beans. Interestingly enough, the dish doesn't have any rice in it. It's actually a kind of noodles. It's like taking a certain strain of noodles and putting them over coconut curry. And I already gave away that the soy part isn't talking about yellow beans. So I'm not sure where or how it gets its name. I'd like to find out and post about it but not before eating another bowl of these delicious noodles.

We made a few stops in between Chiang Mai city and Ying's district outside of the city. In fact, the village that we're in is quite a distance to the district centre. It has a view of the mountains. Ying has asked that I don't share any images of the house for the time being and I respect that request. It's not surprising that somebody who had her dreamhouse built quite a distance away from her hometown doesn't want to share that information with the world wide web.

We had left on Monday and reached the house on Friday. Today is Sunday and we had an easy day in relation to the amount of cleaning that needs to be done. We found the house a huge mess. It had been terrorized by a mouse. We suspect it was the job of the lone mouse we found dead in the corridor. However, the amount of mouse shit is so high that you'd think a bunch of them made a nest in here. It seems to us that the lone mouse entered through the roof, fell in, started chewing up various plastic containers, and then got stuck in here. For example, we found a container of sugar penetrated by the mouse. 

We spent most of yesterday cleaning. An electrician spent his whole day here fixing up wires that the mouse chewed up. He also fixed the water pump so we could finally shower. We had showered at Ying's friend's house in the village on Friday night. After a few more days of cleaning, the house should come back to the standards of what you'd call a dreamhome. We'll be living here for now. We're both hoping to stay for at least one month but at best maybe we can stay for two or three months. The possibility of moving here completely is also on our minds. However, for now it's just a dream.

The state of these sandbags at Ying's house is appropriate symbolism for the situation at the house. The sand remains in tact but the bag itself is completely torn on the sandbag on the right. Meanwhile, the sand in the other sandbag has been reduced to half of what it used to be.