North America 2021 Roadtrip #11 – Nashville, Bangkok, Hua Hin
To spare you the anxiety of worrying about my current status, I assure you I am home safe and sound! I’m happy to be home but sad the trip is over.
Let me recap the last few days prior to me setting foot back in the land of Pad Thai and $8 coconut oil massages.
In Wapakoneta Ohio, I entered the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum as soon as it opened and I was actually impressed. The efforts to show “local boy does good” turned out well, including a lot of Neil pictures, newspaper writeups, uniforms and other memorabilia, but also many items and displays and videos of the US and Soviet space programs. It’s well worth a visit.
I hit the road for the last time, arriving in Nashville late in the afternoon, greeted by the barking mad duo of Lily and Luca. I had a day with them until Jordan, Sami and Wavey returned from Boulder. I bought last-minute things to bring back including three “Family” size bags of Cool Ranch Doritos – who are they kidding? I had lunch at Chuy’s and then got take-away from there for dinner the next evening. Jordan and Sami must have been delirious from lack of sleep but they trusted me with a baby for about an hour while they went shopping. It reminded me of a comedy routine I heard while on the road – the guy was gently tossing his niece up into the air but then walked into another room and tossed again only to find a lower ceiling. Oops. Luckily I had the sense to not do anything more than tickle her little feet and tummy and help her identify body parts. We learned Italian and she shared some interesting hypotheses on the nature of Dark Matter that I think warrant further study by CERN.
Now of course in life I always wait for “The Final Insult” in any situation. Just when you think everything is going OK – wham! So I need to create a ThailandPass online by uploading my life history, and that came back in time. I also need a PCR test taken within 72 hours of boarding my flight. Yes, this is it. Many days before I booked an appointment at Walgreens for a Sunday at 10am, just 3 hours inside my 72 hour window, giving me the maximum time to get the result back. After I did the deep-brain self-swabbing routine at the drive through, the lady casually said “Since it’s Sunday, the lab won’t pick up the sample until tomorrow evening.” I just stared at her, completely losing my shit in my mind. It’s true what Joe Pesci says in Lethal Weapon 2: “Don’t go to the drive-through! They fuck you at the drive-through.” I drove home and got online and booked an appointment for 3pm at a CVS just down the road, and for good measure another one at 9am tomorrow at a Walmart. I hate Walmart, but Buddha forgive me I was desperate. The CVS lady says they do have a pickup on Sunday and the 9am one went off without any issues, so all fingers were crossed. I got the CVS result back in 24 hours, the Walmart at about 48 and the Walgreens just after that. I’m sorry for the unnecessary burden I placed on the crappy profit-driven American health care system, but this is on you. Bastards!
In super happy good news, my solar buddy Tim has decided to buy my electric Porsche 914. After 8 years in storage it will now have a good home, cruising the sunny streets of Huntington Beach California. It does need a new battery pack and charger so I’m working with Mark C Brems of EV West and Jason Arnold of EV Underground on the best design strategy. It’s looking like 6 Tesla modules are the way to go, which will be a fitting addition to the car.
I woke up at 4:15 AM to prep for my 7:10 am flight. I see for the first time on the news that the Omicron variant has popped up and I pray to little Tony Fauci that my flights aren’t cancelled or I’m blocked or additional testing is required. My prayers are answered, no issues.
I had three flights: Nashville – LAX, LAX – Tokyo, Tokyo – Bangkok. The LAX – Tokyo flight was an old 777 where the foam in the seat had gone rock hard. Just imagine the torture my bum was in for 12 hours. Ugh. Luckily I was on the window in a group of 3 seats with the middle seat empty. The guy in the other seat was an early-60s American who met a Thai lady online and was on his way over to meet her. He’s looking to retire to Thailand in a couple of years, so I gave him a 4 hour brain-dump about all things Thailand that he needed to know. He thanked me for opening his eyes, it’s always best to be fully informed to make good decisions. Best of luck to you Richard, wherever you are! When I got on the Tokyo – Bangkok flight, guess who sat next to me! Yep Richard again. Small world. This flight was completely full, a good sign for expats and tourists starting to flow back into Thailand again.
Arriving in Bangkok at 11:30pm we were herded through several stations including scanning the barcode on our ThailandPass, confirming the PCR test result, and a temperature check. I walked straight up to an Immigration agent, through in under a minute. My suitcases came out about 5 minutes later. I couldn’t have hoped for better handling, thanks to the staff at the airport!
I walked out into the terminal and quickly found the shuttle for my one-night quarantine hotel. The driver went straight to a hospital running a drive-up PCR test station where they did the swab through the window of the minibus. He then drove me right into the hotel where my check-in was very smooth. The room was a kitchenette style, but all I wanted was a hot shower and a soft bed after 32 hours of travel.
They told me the next morning at 9:30 am that my result came back negative, so I’m out of quarantine and able to run amok in Bangkok. The city is far more lively than when I left, with a large part of the city vaccinated and restaurants allowed to serve alcohol for the first time in over a year. I went to my bank and my phone company and then to the electronics neighbourhood called Ban Mo. I picked up some sweet wire and connectors that I’ll use when I build a new custom battery pack for my current electric franken-scooter.
I then went to the massive Siam Paragon shopping mall to a shop that sells high-end gadgets including the superb Niu electric scooter that includes a Bosch motor and batteries. I talked with the staff and confirmed that they now had the one in stock with the big battery pack so I told them I would order it in January when I bring over my yearly bag of living funding. They will very helpfully bring it 4 hours to my condo and register it in my province, for a modest fee of course. The Niu will be my daily driver and the current one will go into science-experiment mode.
At 6pm I met up with my buddy Pete, a fellow Formula 1 aficionado for dinner and drinks. Due to jet lag, I had to pack it in about 9pm and walked the few blocks back to the hotel and I think I actually fell asleep walking a couple of times, that was weird!
The next day I got a Grab taxi, the Thai equivalent of Uber, to the Impact Challenger convention center where they’re holding the yearly auto show. It cost $7 for a 45 minute drive to the far north of the city where the center is located – oh I do love the cost of living here. I was expecting a lot of electric vehicles at the show but came away a little disappointed. I took some video and will post a report later on my YouTube channel.
I booked a lower-bunk sleeper train from Bangkok to Hua Hin. I was hoping that the new Bang Sue mega-train-station would be up and running but alas the 100-year old Hua Lamphong station is still operating for the next few months. I’ll watch the news and grab a train up to check it out when Bang Sue opens.
A small issue was with my laptop. A few days before my departure, Windows decided to apply a mandatory, un-me-approved, un-cancellable update. And guess what? Go ahead, guess. It broke my sound, Sleep mode and TrackPoint nipple mouse pointer thingy. Sob sob. I had flashbacks to Morocco on my last big trip when I voluntarily applied a Windows update and wreaked havoc on my machine. I swore I’d never do that again, but Microsoft in their infinite wisdom now says fuck you, you’re getting an update. Having safely copied all critical files onto my network-attached-storage box I started trying to apply driver updates. Then I remembered that I kept getting an “Update to Windows 11” popup. So, praying to the dead soul of Bill Gates, I let it fly. And it fixed everything! I kinda hate the new user interface but I’ll have to get used to it. A small price to pay for correct nipple function.
So here I am. Still a bit jet-lagged, still a bit sore from the flights despite several of the above-mentioned coconut oil massages. But I’ll get through these troubling times somehow.
Thanks for reading my rambling trip reports, I hope I gave you a bit of a vicarious vacation through my exploits. And massive thanks to everyone who generously opened their homes to me, I appreciated the comfy beds and the chance to catch up over the intervening years.
I still plan to make a few more posts, including a charging cost analysis, a TeslaCam supercut video of all of the crazy stuff the car saw along the way, a Tesla self-driving technology review and a few remaining drone videos.
Until the next adventure, stay safe my friends!