August 18, 2024
Day T11: The Local Entry
Feeling incredibly refreshed after a great sleep and dip in the pool as well as the Japanese style onsen at the hotel it was time to start biking again. This hotel is really top notch, if you're in the area it is Nikkhon Amata.
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It also happens to be quite near the famous Ninja Food Market which has an abundance of local choices.
It was while eating that I experienced a major breakthrough on this trip, perhaps one of the biggest. For years I had been trying to identify the people or groups that at some point had talked me down or made me feel ashamed. It's not like from an early age I understood all there was to know about the Matrix and social expectations etc... the movie didn't even come out until the early 2000s and laid things out rather explicitly. But I was already hardwired from a very early age to reject the social script before even understanding what it was. That was in my DNA. That was also guaranteed to attract the haters.
After not being able to identify said haters, it occurred to me that in itself is a fruitless exercise. Furthermore it made absolutely no sense to please a group of people like this by developing and maintaining a negative self image just so that they, whoever they were, could drag me down to their level. This Bangkok counselor was actually worth a lot more than I was paying him if he got me to begin understanding and applying these kind of principles. I would make sure to give him rave reviews.
At one session, he did explain in detail about the famous Asch experiments on conformity which almost every psychology major is certain to know about. The conclusion is rather simple: people are much more prone to conform than they believe they might be. He explained that based on the results of the study, nearly 3/4 of test subjects will agree with the group even when they clearly see the group is giving a wrong answer.
So it's certainly not as simple as saying, "Screw everyone else I'll just do my own thing". You see this play out daily in the cycle touring, where the vast majority of infrastructure (at least in the countries I travel in) is geared towards cars and they hate bikes. Even in Thailand it's absurd just how much of a car culture it is. The more tours you do, the better you get at ignoring this "group" as it were and simply riding. It's like the famous scene in the Matrix where the training program has people walking against the crowd endlessly. The more they do it, the easier it gets. But it never really becomes automated. This is in contrast to those mindless idiots walking with the crowd who never question what they do.
Setting off a late hour as usual, it was going to be around a 70km ride to Pattaya proper. There wasn't much of a rush, and this ride had been done countless times already so, dare I say it, this was starting to feel boring. Almost like a commute.
I made a stopoff at Si Racha Central to top up my Thai bank account. They treated me like a rock star as usual, after all this is the home branch location. It's amazing that they're open seven days a week from 10:30am to 7:30pm, you could literally live in this shopping mall.
Unfortunately, a lot of the funds had been drained due to the counseling and medical appointments. My goal was to keep the Thai bank account in excess of a million baht. This meant withdrawing from other accounts and topping up, basically shuffling money around.
An errand I wanted to do the next day was stop the autopay electricity bills since the new owner of the condo was effectively getting a free ride. The bank couldn't do it today but they said it was a "simple" matter of just going to the electricity office in Pattaya. Nothing is ever "simple", but what can you do.
The last 30km to Pattaya passed by rather quickly and then it felt strange. I wouldn't be going to my condo, but gasp, an actual hotel. This was recommended by the guy Mike back in Bangkok and everything he said was true to form.
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It was a strange twist of events. Here I was now doing what most tourists do -- booking hotels to stay a few days. It was as if the condo never happened. But in fact it did, and all the local knowledge gained from that over the years was sure to come in handy. It was basically like reinventing the whole Pattaya experience. Some of the more fundamental things don't change. So you keep all that, discard the old parts no longer needed, and then add in some new components. We'll call it Pattaya 2.0
The first feature of this reinvention was the fact that everything was within walking distance. This location was the most central. You could hit the beach in a 10 minute walk, the shopping mall, the Central Festival, and of course the main Starbucks on second road. There were also more laid back bars in this area with the people far less pushy. It was exactly as what Mike had said.
Today's ride: 72 km (45 miles)
Total: 987 km (613 miles)
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