Lee n Tan

Lee got up early about 7am as he hadn’t slept well. He grabbed his book & pillow& headed to one of the hammocks near our room, I on the other hand had a great night sleep. It was cooler and there was fresh air coming through the windows, I didn’t get up until around 10am. We had some brekkie then made it our mission to try and find Tai.

Well what a mission it was! Firstly we spoke with the lady at the guest house and showed her the address, she passed it onto the tuk-tuk driver out the front and they spoke in Thai for about 5 minutes as she was trying to explain to him where it was (not a good sign). Off we went and he dropped us god knows so we chatted to a receptionist at the hotel and he gave us some direction and we headed off on foot. Still lost we asked another lady on a road stall but she couldn’t read English, then we tried a young guy in a convenience store, he thought he knew so he gave us some different directions. Still walking we found an internet cafe and hopped on line to confirm the address we had as it was about 6 years old, it was correct. We asked the guy looking after the internet the address of his cafe, he didn’t even know where he was!!! Finally we found a landmark on Google maps and flagged down a taxi and we arrived at our destination.

Tai was not in the office (of course) but the staff member rang her at home and she came over within half an hour with her whole family to see us. We took the twins to dancing then we went to a local shopping centre for a drink and chat in the air-con. She was so pleased to see us she thought she had done something wrong as she had not heard from us in such a long time. We told her we had sent a couple of emails but she did not receive them. We made some plans together so hopefully they will come off.

If she does not get any work she will take us up to her village for Songkran to spend a couple of night with her family – her extended family included. She said her mum would be so pleased to see us, she had rung her mum a couple of times when she had not heard from us & asked what she had done wrong her mum said nothing they will be in touch. Then if her husband can get time off work on the 20th we will head down south to the beaches with her family for a week. 3rd time lucky, hopefully it all falls into place!!!!!

We spent probably 4 hours just sitting and chatting, her husband does not speak English so we just sat with Tai and chatted about all sorts of things. The economy here has turned really bad since the protests in December, Tai has not had any work for 3 weeks and if it keeps up they will have to give up their Hilux and also ;the girls dance 7 days a week so that will have to go to for a while. So they are having a tough time of it lately. Kong dropped us back at the guest house and we chilled out for a while.

Dinner was fantastic!! We paid a tuk-tuk to take us round the moat to spy something for dinner and we came across heaps of carts on the side of the road selling all sorts of treats. We had chicken with Basil and Chicken Curry, both with rice and a Somtam salad which is a green pawpaw. We had all this for 75 Baht under $4 plus 2 x 500ml cans of Heineken for 100B ($4) cheap cheap cheap and the best meal we have had so far.