8/10/10 (chiang mai)
Jon Carr
Chiang Mai
I knew at 2am that I was in trouble. I was pressing hard to finish the New Zealand recap video. I had been at it for days and I was just finishing up the sound design and it would be ready to upload to the world. This project had been bittersweet for me over the last five months. I was excited about the wonderful video captured but also stressed out due to the vast amount of footage and less than ideal working conditions. I had buckled down with Annie’s encouragement and I could taste the end. Then my computer started acting up. In the Mac community they call it the beach ball of death. It is a rainbow colored ball that spins as your computer freezes and I was seeing this ball on a frequent basis. My editing software was freezing and the audio was acting very strange. I ran the disk utility, which often fixes problems but it came back with an error message and suggested I needed the install DVD disk to fix my corrupted hard drive. The install disk was buried in a dark San Francisco basement along with a thousand other things Annie and I packed before we left the states. It was out of reach but I quickly came up with a plan. Being a Mac nerd, I had seen an authorized Apple service center as we explored Chiang Mai two days prior. My plan was to wake up early and borrow an install disk from the service center to fix my problem and then get to the bus station for our departure to Chiang Rai at 10:30am.
I got a few hours of sleep and then woke Annie up early and explained the situation. We quickly got ready and explained everything to Mr. Sak who suggested we speak to the bus company to see if we could get on a later bus. We agreed and before heading to the service center, we stopped at the bus terminal. Annie explained the situation to the bus agency and they informed us there were no more buses on this day and the small bus was booked for tomorrow. There was availability on the larger bus that stopped more frequently and took a little longer. We agreed this would be okay and then watched as the agent sold our bus tickets to a Westerner and a Thai. We purchased tickets for the following day and felt thankful we were able to get our money back.
Our next stop was the Apple service center. We explained the situation and after a few tests, I received a lot of cryptic looks for the staff. I had a sinking feeling. Fortunately while I was in Bangkok, I had backed up my entire system including all the photos from our trip. The unfortunate part was this drive was on the slow boat to America and would arrive in October. No easy restore in my near future. The problem turned out to be the hard drive, which was failing. After running the diagnostics, my system wouldn’t even boot. We decided to replace the hard drive and that would have me up and running within a few hours but I would lose my music, photos, and specialized video editing software. We left the computer and returned to explain the situation to Mr. Sak and ask if it would be okay to stay an additional day.
Mr. Sak is one of the most upbeat people I know and he quickly informed us we could stay an entire month if we needed to. We joked about me doing the dishes to earn our keep. He sensed that moral was low and quickly decided to take us on a site seeing trip of the ancient city of Chiang Mai. We hoped into his vintage gold Mercedes and raced down the super highway. Mr. Sak arranged for Annie and I to tour the ancient city via horse and buggy and took a special pride in seeing our reaction as the carriage rounded the corner to pick us up. We squeezed into the tiny carriage and both of us felt a little self conscience from not yet having the opportunity to shower for the day. The driver spoke very little English but had a laminated map with the highlights our our tour written in broken English. The ancient city dates back to the time of the Cambodian temples of Angkor but are not in good shape. The only remnants are the foundations and these old temples were only recently excavated in the last twenty years. We spent the next hour exploring the ancient city and the highlights of our trip was provided mainly by our undersized horse. The horse had separation anxiety and when other carriages would leave to visit the next temple our horse would get very anxious and would rush to catch up with his friends. At one point he stood up on his two hind legs and bucked, it was like something you would see in an episode of the Lone Ranger. Annie and I got some good laughs out the experience and enjoyed learning more about the history of Chiang Mai. When we finished the tour Mr. Sak promptly picked us up and took us back to our accommodations. Annie and I rested for an hour and then returned to the service center to retrieve my computer.
I spent the next few hours working to recoup as much data as possible until we realized it was getting late and both of us were quite hungry. We drove for ten minutes debating on what to eat until we settled on Duke’s, a Western focused restaurant that was opened late. Duke’s specialized in everything from pizza, pasta, seafood, steaks, and Thai food. This is always a dangerous combination and something we will discuss more in depth in an upcoming food tip post. The food was average and the highlight was the delicious Greek salad dressing.
I felt fortunate to have backed up my computer the prior week and a second copy I could rely on. I was pretty bummed not to have been able to finish the New Zealand video but realized that I was pushing pretty hard and everything happens for a reason. Maybe I needed to spend a little more time vacationing.
Reader Comments (3)
The picture of the ruins looks surreal.