I wanted to buy a bus ticket to get to the church.
There is a website for this, I visited it and started the booking.
This is not the first time I have written that I sometimes feel cursed. As a digital nomad IT professional, for whom for some reason what should work does not want to work.
I will tell you.
The bank says yes, the bus company says no
I don’t need much information to buy a bus ticket. What’s strange is that it also requires my passport number.
I selected my seat in the back row of the bus in the corner and was ready to pay. I approved the transaction on my phone, and a green checkmark appeared.
The bus company didn’t accept the payment.
I tried to buy five times, and on the fifth time I couldn’t get into the back row because the system took into account my previous attempts and marked the four back seats as occupied.
I gave up after the fifth unsuccessful attempt. By then, I had tried 3 different bank cards, checked the limit, spelled my name differently, etc. Nothing worked.
I went to buy a ticket
The next day – Saturday – I went to buy the ticket in person. I didn’t want to risk any problems if I left it until Monday, before departure.
I’ve mentioned countless times that I like to walk.
The bus station is 10 km away, so I decided to walk 20+ km that day.
I wanted to read all day anyway, so I grabbed my audiobook and the current paper reading material and set off.
I stopped for coffee, meditation, and lunch. It was a nice trip, I wasn’t in a hurry.
The internet also went somewhere
When I arrived at the train station a few hours later, I prepared myself by typing the ticket details into Google Translate. But I wanted to change one word in what I had written.
And at that moment, my mobile internet plan ran out.
I tried speaking English to the ticket seller, but I was already afraid, because they might think Monday is today, or that eight o’clock in the evening would be seven in the morning.
The lady routinely showed me the ordering interface that I was already familiar with. She selected Monday 20:00 in front of my eyes and I was already able to show her the right back seat.
We were one click away from buying when she asked me where I was going. So I told her that my destination was Mae Hong Son, but I was actually going to Wat Pa Tam Wu.
Then he said I couldn’t buy a ticket for 8pm and started showing me to choose from the morning tickets.
But he didn’t answer why I couldn’t buy a ticket for 8pm when the bus was almost empty. Then he left me there.
Why Monday night?
I had to leave my rented room on Tuesday, the 10th, so my plan was to move into the temple on the 10th.
However, the temple was a good 5.5 hours away. So I figured that even if I took the earliest bus, it would still be late afternoon by the time I arrived. I didn’t want that.
So I made a decision to take the last bus at 8pm on Monday. That way, I’d be in a typical small Thai village of 5-6 streets around 1am. I saw that it had a shop and decided to spend the night there, sitting in front of the shop and sleeping if possible.
The temple opens at 6am, so I’d have to spend 4-4.5 hours at the shop, hopefully without the company of dogs and snakes.
This is my decision, but I didn’t have a chance to find out why I wasn’t getting a ticket for the bus I wanted, or even to say yes, I know what’s coming.
While I was trying to think about what to do, another lady came to the counter. Taking an earlier bus, despite all my flexibility, didn’t appeal to me. In this case, Monday would be completely wasted traveling and sitting next to a shop with my back against the wall for about 10 hours.
But once the lady was there, I told her that my mobile data was out. There’s no wifi. Simple answer. They weren’t nice either, neither she nor her colleague. I asked hopefully if she would share a hotspot with me for two minutes. She thought about it for two seconds, then said no.
Then, luckily, I noticed that there was a café 10 meters away. And there was wifi. So I had a coffee, finished reading one of my books, and bought my next eSIM package in the meantime.
Then I was able to buy the ticket without any problems. For Monday. For 8:00 PM.
It’s okay that the online ordering interface didn’t work, after all, my day turned out exactly as a perfect day should be.
On the way home, I had an authentic dinner, and then at home I had a long conversation with my older daughter about the topic of the next post.
Beware, conflict is coming!
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