torpor : a state of mental or physical inactivity

Which exactly describes me for the last week or two, or three. I have n’t had the energy or the inclination to do anything lately, which is my poor excuse for not posting anything since my trip to Dan Sai for the Phi Ta Khon festival at the end of last month.

I started editing the video from that trip but I have only got about 45 seconds of usable footage assembled so far, with many more clips downloaded onto my laptop but not yet viewed and edited or rejected. I just had a complete lack of motivation to do anything.

I blame my lack of productive activity on the weather. Hot, humid, energy sucking weather. Normally by now we would be well into the wet season  here in Bangkok, but it has been late coming this year. We have had plenty of hot humid days which would normally herald the late afternoon and evening storms and rain of the monsoon season, but it has only been the last couple of days that any real rain has fallen. Up-country some farmers even had to stop irrigating the rice paddies as the irrigation canals had run dry, something unheard of for this time of year.

The rain might be a nuisance, bringing flash flooding to some streets, and a drenching if you are caught out in the rain, but at least it brings a drop in the temperature and humidity and a comfortable night’s sleep. All we have had before the last couple of days has been energy sapping humidity during the day and sleepless nights, unless you want to run the air-con all night. And when I did do that I caught a cold

It is raining quite heavily now as I write this, so hopefully I will get a good nights sleep and wake up full of energy

I did have to get out and about earlier this week as my 90 day report was due (foreigners living in Thailand have to report their address every 90 days after arriving in the country). There is a new online system for this, but no matter how often I tried I could n’t get past the first page. Apparently the system is still full of glitches…..

Instead of trekking all the way out to the main Immigration office at Chaeng Wattana as I have done before I went to another office in Lad Prao. This office is mainly for migrant workers from Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia but it does have one counter for the 90 day reports only, no other visa stuff for westerners done here. It is in an old shopping mall, it must be about the oldest mall in bangkok, rather dingy and run down. It also used to be a “redshirt” HQ, so you have to go past several Thaksin/Yingluk aligned media offices and TV stations to get to the immigration office where you find signs everywhere in Burmese and Khmer, and hundreds, literally hundreds, of migrant workers waiting to do their visa renewals etc. There are no westerners though, so it is straight up to the one and only 90 day counter where the officer greets me with a smile and sawadee ka, takes my passport and paperwork, and hands them back 2 minutes later. Finish, she says….

Honestly, afterwards it took longer to get a chocolate sundae at the Mcdonalds downstairs  than it did to get the 90 day report done. At the main office you might have to wait 2 hours or more, then they hand your paperwork on to somebody else, wait a while and back again, never a smile to be seen. If the online system still is n’t working for me next time I know where I will be going.

Actually I probably will not need to do one for a while as I am going back to Sydney in 3 weeks time, I have a wedding to attend, and I am hoping to go to Hong Kong in late November or early December and tentatively planning a trip to Vietnam for early next year. Each time you leave and then re-enter Thailand the 90 days starts again so if these trips come off I will not need to deal with Thai officialdom for a while !