How You Find a Shop to Make Copies in Chiang Mai, Thailand

You get sixteen pages of copies printed for eighteen cents at Copyland in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

The place is on 2 Chiang Rai Road, which of course is just off Nimmanahaeminda Road. You couldn’t find a specific address for the shop. It might not have one. It’s just called Copyland and it’s on that road.

If Copyland doesn’t do it for you, walk in either direction down the street. Print shops are the only thing on it.

It’s a lesson you had somehow forgotten about life in Asia. Types of shops group together like schools of fish. This area is where all of the computer shops are. That’s the area with every hardware store.

You wish you remembered that before you had spent the day walking across the town and achieving nothing. If you want to find a print store in Chiang Mai, go to the one area with all of the print stores.

All you needed were a few copies of some travel documents so you could visit family in America. You figured it would take thirty minutes. Forty-five, tops.

But you didn’t follow the advice you gave to readers, did you? You figured you’d take the quick and easy path of using Google Maps. And look where that got you. Did you learn from this? I doubt it.

Google Maps pings a shop that can do prints called Kodak Films. It’s right across the river, just a ten minute walk. You throw your papers in a backpack, sling it across your back, and head out.

It’s hot. Every day is hot. This is Thailand.

After five minutes of walking, you let the backpack slip off one shoulder so your back can breathe.

You used to wear your backpack like this in high school because you thought it made you look nonchalant, and you tried very hard to look nonchalant because you were desperate for people to like you.

In reality, you are highly chalant.

You stopped wearing your backpack like that in university when your back began hurting. Still, carrying your backpack with one shoulder somehow makes you feel young. And you most certainly aren’t young. When you climb stairs and can hear your knees, you’re not young anymore.

Knee quality dictates whether a person is old or young.

Dripping in sweat, you get to Kodak Film. It’s boarded up, and looks like it has been for some time.

Now you’ve got a choice to make. Do the sensible thing and walk back home so you can ask the community where print shops are, or double down by walking to yet another print shop.

You already know it. We’re all in.

The next print shop is called AmnuayWit Printing Shop. Looks promising. It should have been five minutes away, but it takes you fifteen because you go on a detour through a local market.

You find these markets all over Thailand. It’s like they hallowed out a strip mall and filled it with a couple hundred street market stalls. They sell clothes or gold or children’s toys or phone accessories or books.

You wonder how each one chooses what to sell. You wonder how they get enough customers to make a living when they’re surrounded by so many other shops.

As you walk through, you look for anyone that might have a copy machine. You don’t see any. Or at least, you don’t think you see any. It’s an interesting place and you’re easily distracted.

You get to AmNuayWit Printing Shop to find the building full of massive, industrial-sized printing equipment. Like the sort of business that might print the daily newspaper, but not like a place where you’d make a couple copies on a copy machine.

On Google Maps, you find another print shop that’s on the route home. It’s called GoodSign. It doesn’t look hopeful. You no longer have hope. But it’s on the way, so why not.

This time, you don’t pass through a stripped out strip mall market. You pass by what looks like a mansion behind an ornate gate. The duality of Thailand.

Anyhow, GoodSign is boarded up also. Instead of a thirty minute trip to get copies made, you spent the entire day getting nothing made. Yet, you still had a good time. This is how you travel. You aren’t interested in the tourist attractions. You’re interested in the old couple working a shop that sells bracelets in the dimly-lit guts of a former strip mall.

The next day, you find another print shop. This time it’s Copyland, the print shop that works. You’ll need to take a GrabCar there, which is the Thailand equivalent of Uber.

Before going, you call the shop and someone picks up. They don’t speak English and you don’t speak Thai, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is someone picked up.

On Day 2 of your adventure to make copies, you grab your papers and hop in a GrabCar headed for 2 Chiang Rai Road. Again, that’s just off Nimmanahaeminda Road, of course.

As the pleasant staff at Copyland makes your copies, you take a walk around to look at the neighboring shops. To the left and right are two other printing shops. You step out into the street and look down the road. It’s all copy shops.

You remember that shops in Asia congregate. This is how you travel. You try, make mistakes, learn, make mistakes again, and relearn. You don’t travel for the sites. You travel to learn.