July 14, 2019
Back to Bangkok
In his book 'Failing Forward', John Maxwell states that "In life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with them. Stop failing backward and start failing forward!"
Maxwell says that if you are like him, coming out of school, you feared failure, misunderstood it, and ran away from it. But what exactly does he mean to 'fail forward'?
Here's the grim reality now: I had failed to protect my belongings, someone else pickpocketed my shit and got away with it, and now I have to deal with the consequences. The only thing to do now was find a way to replace the passport.
The best advice I got was to be focused. It's easy for the mind to go in a million different directions after something like this happening. Rather than lose sleep over this, what's the point? Another thing is to approach failure as a lesson. This is an opportunity to learn something new. "The faster and harder you fail, the less and less afraid you become of it because you have come out on the other side of it and are usually stronger and better equipped for it."
In my case, I was more determined than ever to develop a system to organize and simplify my travel to minimize clutter and stress. Little did I know that over four years later it would turn into a full blown philosophy.
We awoke late and took advantage of the free breakfast. Since we were only a few hundred meters from the bus station, the two bikes easily got stored on the bus for 100 baht each. The bus trip was slow and arduous and the driver insisted he could only drop us off at Mochit station.
This wouldn't be any good because I'd be returning to the Sananwan Palace well beyond the new airport. But such is life, we had to take what they had. On arrival at Mochit, we cruised over to the weekend market to feast on whatever food was available. Someone decided it was 20 baht each to park the bikes which is the first time I've ever seen this happen in Thailand. Even so we didn't have much choice.
Later we hired a tuktuk to strap both bikes to the back and then drop off the Montague at James' hotel in the downtown area. I just sat by his poolside and chilled for awhile.
After that I set off back to the Sananwan Palace on the white Tern bike and it was a familiar route down the traffic choked Sukhumvhit Road and the Bang Na Trat highway. While riding, I saw a reckless food delivery scooter collide with another scooter in front of me. The food guy did a barrel roll and landed stading on his feet. The bike slid off sideways ahead of him. It was just another case of weird shit happening and nothing being normal. Speaking of which, the entire ride over I was drenched in sweat and the temperature was still well above 30 degrees at night which rarely happens in this season.
Eventually I rolled on into the Palace and the owners knew what had happened. Dick, the husband, said "Looks like you've run into a little bit of bad luck." I said, "Yeah you could say that again." The son at the reception desk said, "No passport, no problem". I would end up staying there until getting this thing sorted out. That's Thailand for you.
They helped store the Tern when I wasn't riding, and it now sits there to this day.
Today's ride: 25 km (16 miles)
Total: 716 km (445 miles)
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5 years ago