Great finds and Loy Krathong

Nov 2

Score! On today’s exploration we covered a lot of territory. There
was a cloud cover for most of the trek which makes the heat bearable, barely. Our superb find was an espresso café that is air conditioned and has GOOD Americanos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is a great discovery for folks from the NW where coffee is an art form. We also found a good stationery store.

On the way home we stopped at the fresh market and go some salad ingredients, fresh raw shrimp on ice (hard to find ice in these parts).and fresh flowers for Pa Cha An. We came home and arranged the flowers and took them up to the big house. Tim  was here tending to her mom, Pa Cha An so we rushed back to the market and got 25 miniature roses as today is Timm and Tumm’s 25^th wedding anniversary. Back to the house to make another arrangement and up to the big house. As luck would have it, Tumm was there as well as their daughter Pair and their son Pon. We had given Pair a birthday card with some money in it for her birthday. Timm and Tumm seemed genuinely surprised and pleased with our recognition of their anniversary.

We got back to our house and it was 2:00 so we made some sandwiches and had our lunch. I boiled the shrimp after removing parts we aren’t used to seeing in the US then spent a lot of time removing the shells and cleaning them. Our dinner will be green salad with shrimp, hard boiled egg, bell pepper, broccoli, baby corns, and olives. No cooking!

Nov 5

This morning we Skyped with our friends Jim and Jane Burke who live most of the year in Italy and are now at home in Bandon OR. We try to have regular ‘visits’ with them via Skype. The four of us worked for the City of Portland at the same time back in the early 2000’s.

We have been spending some time on the computer making changes to our Mexico and Central America itinerary. We now plan to explore two cities in Mexico: Puebla and San Miguel de Allende and two in Panama: Panama City and Boquete. We have made reservations everywhere except Costa Rica and may end up at a cool hostel I found this morning on line. We will have a private room with en suite bathroom in an old colonial house across the street from a park. Sounds great. We first started to use hostels in New Zealand. Actually I first used hostels when I hitched across W Europe and N Africa in the mid 60’s.

After our chat we went downtown so Ron could get a haircut, then we had lunch at a place where we eat every year. It is an old traditional wooden guesthouse and it sits right on the river. Today the food was better than we remembered it. Yesterday we tried another place where we have eaten in the past and the food was a little better but the noise with the TV AND radio was rather unpleasant. Thais seems to tolerate loud chatter better than I do. When a store has a promotion or a sale they will put huge speakers in front of the store and blast with incredibly loud ads and music. I have to literally plug my ears for fear of hearing loss.

We continue to have frequent rain but not everyday. It helps to clear the skies and to keep the heat and humidity down. It is possible to sweat in the rain in this climate however. Ron is finishing up the painting that was necessary after cleaning the mold off the outside of the house. Today he is painting the porch railing then he has the two sets of doors to repaint; but we’ll have to buy some more paint.  He says we’ll do that when we return from Sri Lanka

Last night I made spaghetti with marinara sauce. When I was in the store in Hua Hin I had a yen for marinara. I was beside myself when I couldn’t find canned tomatoes and thought I would have to resort to commercial sauce. Being a scratch cook I have NEVER used a store bought sauce if you can believe that. Anyway I went around the aisle and found what I needed and put the sauce back on the shelf. Making the sauce came together nicely. I had to substitute cilantro and something called Thai parsley for Italian parsley. The Thai parsley looked like a giant blade of grass but it worked. The water for the pasta took one hour and 15 minutes to come to a boil. We are at sea level here so I think it has to do with the power of my two burner electric  stove top. I couldn’t believe it. Before I ate dinner I decided I would not make this meal again. BUT it was so yummy I decided I would start the water at 5:00 instead of 6:15 and it would be just fine. Just another chapter in this adventure.

We have been cooking more than usual here and for the most part I enjoy it. If it is real hot it isn’t much fun. I do have to plan well in advance to make sure I can get the ingredients or an adequate substitute. But frankly our meals out usually run $1-$3 person so we might as well go out to eat. It is just sometimes we want to stay home or we want something we can’t find in an eatery. There is a dearth of restaurants here. There is no shortage of places to eat but 90% of them are carts with a few plastic stools on the sidewalk. This morning Ron and Ae went out on her motorcycle at 7:00 and got 10 orders of khao mun gai for all of us on the property and it cost $10. This dish is boiled chicken breast in thin slices on top of white rice with sliced cucumber and a fabulous dark spicy sauce that has a hint of Worcestershire and red chili peppers. Yummy!

We just read the election results and are so very bummed.  I feel so badly for Obama. He will not be having any fun now.

Nov 6

Before lunch we headed to our new coffee discovery, Pagoda Café which serves an excellent Americano. We took our readers and enjoyed just relaxing in the AC although it wasn’t too hot at the time.  One of the staff members gave us two brochures. One featured restaurants located in the town core with a background story, a description of the dish or dishes they served and a great map showing the location. The second brochure featured businesses located in traditional wooden shop houses, again with a great map. It was just what we have been searching for. As you have read, we have spent about a week walking the downtown core and mapping our progress, identifying street names and seeing what businesses are located on each street. So we spent some of our time reading these great brochures. We decided to try out one of the restaurants located on the street where we were having coffee and man oh man, what a find! They are famous for their khao kha moo, rice with pork. The pork was flavorful and melted in your mouth, the hot sauce was addictive and the Chinese broccoli was crisp, the soup was tasty and full bodied. It was a perfect meal and we will be returning there. We can hardly wait to try more of these restaurants. Some are carts. This one was outside seating only which is much more typical here than one with indoor seating. The cost for two plus bottled water was 80 baht (30 baht =$1.US). This restaurant serves three dishes, all pork.

Today is Loy Krathong, an important day in Thailand. It is a festival held on the full moon in
November each year.  It pays homage to the goddess of waterways and rivers, Mae Khongkha. In the evening people gather at rivers, lakes and ponds to float krathongs made of slices of banana tree trunks that are completely covered in decorations made from banana leaves and flowers.

So today four of the women of the household, including me,
worked on making nine floats. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun. Ae did the floral decoration, making each float unique and gorgeous.

After dinner we met at the big house and shot off some fireworks then each
gathered a float and brought them down by our house which is right on the Phetchaburi River.

Neunge went into the water (where Noy had spent the day clearing a pathway) and set each float adrift on the river. Afterwards we came back to the big house and Ron took photos of the beautiful full moon with great clouds and of the sky lanterns that are part of the festival., These are paper lanterns that had a small kerosene burner which you light and it fills the lantern with hot air an drifts it off into the sky. They are beautiful to see but not environmentally friendly.  Ron and Hope who is seven played various games. It is such a joy to hear Hope’s delightful giggles.

Nov 7

Today we went back to enjoy an Americano at Pagoda Café. We decided for lunch to try another restaurant featured in the brochure mentioned above. It turned out that the restaurant we chose had been one we have seen two or three times and it always has a lot of customers. It turns out that they have been in business for 60 years and in the same location!! They have two noodle soups: beef or pork with wide or thin noodles. Let me tell you the pork noodle soup was to die for. The place was filled and there were others waiting for a seat the entire time we were there and we can see why. They have noodle soup down!

We came home for about an hour then took off to pay a phone bill

and headed to Cha Am for Tricia to have a therapeutic massage from a woman we met when we were there earlier in the week. Afterwards we treated ourselves to an extravagant meal at a seafood place where we have eaten twice before that is just north of Cha Am. OMG what a culinary experience. We had crab curry with rice, stir fried broccoli with garlic and fried fish with a ton of fried garlic. The helpings were huge which is not normal here but I think the menu is designed for groups of 4-6 or more. Well we didn’t want anything to go to waste so we indulged and enjoyed each bite immensely. We will return at least one more time before leaving in January.

Life in Phetchaburi

Oct 27

While we were traveling in Laos we decided we really did need to get to know Phetchaburi better. We know three places to eat and that’s about it. So today we got up and did some maintenance chores. Ron repainted an area outside under the eaves that had been water damaged when the roof leaked and I pulled a vine out that was invading a group planting. I threw the compost into our compost barrel and washed out our kitchen garbage can as it was smelly. Due to the heat here the compost and garbage need to be emptied frequently. 

We waited until 10:00 to leave, since not much is open before then. We parked the car on a main street in old town and started walking. In Asia I find the density of population is much greater than at home. The sidewalks are narrow, uneven, and at times treacherous, so I watch my feet the entire time. Here it is complicated by the fact that many mini businesses encroach on the sidewalks. Shops will put their wares out on the sidewalk and there is always a number of food vendors with carts. 

Oh, you can always count on motorcycles and cars being
parked on the sidewalks. Signage is another problem. Big signs in metal frames can completely block the sidewalk, forcing you into the street where there is heavy traffic. So we can’t just stroll along, as it were. We thread ourselves around various obstacles in our way. Today I noticed that many shops have canvas awnings that hang down below shoulder level to protect their goods from the sun , adding to our dodging. I always carry a sunbrella to keep the sun off and frequently had to maneuver it so that it wasn’t bumping into anyone or anything.

We walked almost two hours. My biggest find was a huge fresh market with scads of fresh veggies. I am thrilled even though we don’t cook much, as I mentioned before. But every now and then I love a plate of streamed veggies. We only have a stove top so steaming is my only option. We eat an enormous amount of rice here so having an alternative is super. We found where Ron’s barber is located and found several others too. We always fumble around trying to find it and now we can get there easily because we walked the entire area where the barber is located. I would have to admit those were the only real fines today.

We marvel as how many tiny shops all sell the exact same merchandise. After two hours we were wringing wet from the heat. I suggested we go to our fave lunch place which is cool and has a bathroom. It was good to get off our feet and chill for a while. The eatery is open air but always cool with big fans. Next, we went to an internet café to have our bank statements printed and a change of flight time from Vietnam Air. Right down the street was our massage place so we went in for a foot massage. Next we went to get water for our water dispenser but no one was there, so we got some fruit and headed home. Now we are in our bedroom mid afternoon chilling in the AC. The rest of the house feels like a sauna. Hopefully tomorrow we will continue exploring our town and discover more finds.

We had a toasted ham and cheese sandwich for dinner. I found some nice ham at the high end market in Hua Hin when we got in from Laos on Saturday. After dinner we played scrabble. Ron won big the first round and barely beat me the second game. Life is good.

Oct 28

This morning we cleaned up the sidewalks in front of Noy’s and our houses. He is in BKK for a medical checkup. There was a big wind storm last night that blew open our double screen doors and when I went into the living area to get some water I was astounded by how much leaf debris had blown in. There were leaves against every wall and on the floor in the living and dining rooms. 

After breakfast and showering, Ron went to get our water: two five gallon bottles and take some sewing up to our little village, hemming pants for both of us. When he got back we headed out for more exploration. We did the cross streets today of the streets we covered yesterday. We scored: another DVD store that has rentals as well as DVDs to buy. We rented two and bought one. We also bought veggies for tonight and some flowers for Pa Cha An at the fresh market we discovered yesterday. We came home after a couple of hours of walking in the heat. After lunch we took a siesta. The heat is quite draining here.

Oct 29

We had planned to get up and weed before breakfast. Ron doesn’t enjoy yard work but volunteered to help. When I opened our bedroom door I discovered it was raining. With the AC on we usually can’t hear the rain unless it is pouring which happens here frequently. I teased Ron and said ‘no wonder you volunteered. You knew you could get out of it with this rain’. Ha! So we showered, ate and did some computer work. Then it stopped raining so we did some weeding. Make hay while the sun shines as it were. Or maybe I should say ‘weed while it isn’t scorching hot’.

We decided it would be a great day to explore more of our town since it was cool from the rain and the sun didn’t come out. We found a new store we have never seen, large with a parking lot no less. That is a very rare event indeed. We went inside and walked every aisle. It may sound strange but some things are hard to find here so we tend to explore new stores in case we can find some needed or wanted item. The really good hardware store ala Hone Depot is 45 minutes away from here as an example. We bought a thermometer so we could see how hot the house really is and a few food storage containers.

After the store, we walked to the AIS store that is the service provider for our Thai cell phone line. While there, the sky unzipped and we had to wait 45 minutes for the rain to let up. As I sat looking out onto the street I noticed the storm drain in front of the store. Initially it kept up with the deluge but after a while I noticed the street starting to fill with water. Before the rain slackened the street was flooded with the water coming to the top of the curb, covering car tires above the rims. I don’t know if you have ever lived in a warm climate but insects rule. So as the rain increased so did the roaches coming out from the storm drain where they hide out. First we noticed big ones then a horde of tiny babies. Ick! 

Back to the car and a quick stop at a place down the street from our house. Here at 3:00 to 5:00 PM you can pick up your dinner. There is a covered area with four or five women and tables filled with pots of prepared food, probably 15-20 dishes to choose from. I point and a woman fills  plastic baggies with two or three large spoons of the item. Today, I got a beef/eggplant curry, chicken larb (a meat alad) and a stir fry dish of chicken, noodles and veggies for 90 baht, about $3. A young boy was there and helped translate what the dishes were that I had pointed to so I gave him my change and thanked him for the translation services. The women beamed. In BKK a 10% service charge is usually added to the bill in restaurants but not here. We frequently eat lunch at JM Cuisine, a noodle/stir fry place.  When we first started tipping the staff would run after us to let us know we had left money on the table.

.When we got home I weeded some more and Noy came over to help me. I can only bend or stoop so long so quit after about 30 minutes but the two of us made great headway.

Shops here are very casual for lack of a better word. Frequently shop clerks eat in front of customers. They don’t really go out to lunch so much as grab something nearby and bring it back to the shop and eat it at the counter.

Our town is small so there are only motorcycle taxis and some bicycle rickshaws, not cars. In rain

and sunshine we see motorcyclists steering with one hand and holding an umbrella with the other. Sometimes the passenger will hold the umbrella. Because Thais prize light skin they will wear windbreakers to keep the sun off. I can’t even begin to imagine how hot it must be. Street workers who sweep or clean the streets and construction workers with wear long pants, long sleeve shirts, a hat that has a mask and scarf to cover the neck and gloves. Geez I would pass out in all that! See photo.

Oct 30

We started the morning with Ron working on the pump for our little water fountain and me continuing to weed. Ron joined me after he discovered the pump had died a natural death. I am pleased to say we basically are finished until the tiniest weeds grow big enough to pull out.

After breakfast we went into our third day of exploration, this time to the west of the Phetchaburi River. We didn’t make any new discoveries other than seeing a huge wat being remodeled and it looks like no expense is being spared. After all the rain yesterday it is sunny and hot, hot, hot today.

Wat Mahathi Worawhan

r

Wat Khi 

Oct 31

Today we drove to our fave hardware store ala Home Depot south of Cha Am and got a new pump for our water feature. We found some regular sponges for the kitchen. The only place I have been able to find them. Mostly what we see here are the foam sponges which are useless for wiping down counters or sopping up spills. We got some other items we needed like a sprayer to use with bleach water to clean up all the mold on the sidewalk and sides of the porches and house. Next we drove to Hua Him, another 15 or 20 minutes south and ate a bowl of duck noodle soup at our favorite soup place. From there we picked up some items at the super grocery that caters to foreigners where we can get granola. I even found some oregano and canned tomatoes so I can make marinara sauce for spaghetti when the heat isn’t overwhelming me. We ended with a foot massage at a place we haven’t used before in Cha Am. I had a good one but Ron’s tech was in OJT and he wasn’t pleased.

Happy Halloween! Here are some photos from our yard: a huge

butterfly drunk on nectar and one of the many banana trees in our ‘orchard, also one of several papaya trees. There are also mangoes which will ripen in April long after we have left. There are a few other trees with fruit that we have yet to identify.

Flower in our yard

Butterfly gathering nectar in our yard

View of the Phet River from our yard

Vientiane to Luang Prabang

Oct 23

We were up at 6:30 to grab a quick breakfast, no leisurely coffee run this morning, as we caught a plane early for Luang Prabang. It was a 50 minute flight and we were met by a shuttle service to our guesthouse. Luang Prabang is at the juncture of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, a small town that was the former royal capital of Lane Xang and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are temples, art deco shop houses and colonial facades. We checked into our charming guest house with its six rooms. Ours was huge, with a king size bed and large bathroom. We unpacked and took off to explore our neighborhood. We immediately got disoriented as one of the guesthouse employees gave us the wrong name of the street on which the guesthouse was located. and as a result we had trouble with our map. We bumbled around and asked someone at a tour agency to give us some directions. We quickly realized how small the town center really is and that there were four streets that took us where ever we needed to go.

Our guesthouse is two blocks from the Mekong and about three from the Nam Khan river. We visited a wat with a 5 tiered roof that symbolizes bird wings; then headed up the hill to visit the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Center. They had a display of traditional textiles, mostly clothing from the four major ethnic groups in Laos and how the traditions are changing. For instance the women now buy black cloth instead of weaving it or they use plastic beads instead of glass and they use aluminum ornaments instead of silver. The clothing was ornate and exquisite cotton. The colors were bright reds, oranges, pinks and greens often on black backgrounds. Headdresses, turbans and hats decorated heavily with silver or aluminum baubles or stitchery. The gift shop had items made by people from the four groups and half the proceeds is returned to those to made the textiles that are being sold. When we couldn’t find anything we thought would work as a gift,  we made a cash donation to support the important work the center is doing to help people maintain their lifestyle.

We walked back down the hill and ate at a little Lao café where we sat outside. It isn’t quite as hot here as Vientiane. Then we visited the Royal Palace Museum. Unlike its former occupants the palace survived the 1975 revolution and was converted into a museum the following year. During the second Indochina War the Pathet Lao cut short the royal lineage, forcing   King Sisavang Vatthana to abdicate and sent him to a re-education camp in NE Laos where he, his wife and son died from starvation.

The French built the palace for the Lao King Sisavang Vong in

1904 in an attempt to bind him and his family more tightly into the colonial system of government. The palace is Khmer in style although designed by a French architect. The palace was left in tact just as it had been when occupied by the royal family. We toured the palace with the entrance hall which was used for royal religious ceremonies, the King’s reception room and the private apartments with the bedrooms of the king and queen and the children.  Outside the palace on the right of the entrance is a small room that houses the Pra Bang or Golden Buddha from which the city derived its name. The Pra Bang is 90% pure gold. We walked around back of the palace and saw the auto collection of the royal family. My fave was the Edsel! One of the workers there was selling some needlework, and of course we bought one. $2.00

We went back to our guesthouse, showered, napped and read. We walked to a Lao restaurant a couple of blocks from our hotel for dinner and sat outside and had a traditional Lao meal. Then we walked downtown to the night market. OMG it was swarmed. This is tourist town and they were out in droves as were the locals. Ninety percent of what we saw was traditional Lao textiles, absolutely beautiful but I need another textile like a hole in my head…not that would stop me from buying one I couldn’t live without.

Ron and I are reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt so we were eager to get back to our e-readers and our room. This is almost 800 pages that grips you from the first page and gets better and better.

Oct 24

 After a lovely breakfast where I told Ron I thought the owner, Vong, had traveled abroad  given the breakfast we had: baguettes that tasted like Paris, fresh pineapple, real fruit juice, a muffin that was flavorful and moist, eggs to order and surprise, GOOD coffee! It turns out he worked 18 years for a French company that owned a five star restaurant in Luang Prabang. He learned the trade well and we felt like we had a five star guesthouse. 

After breakfast Vong took us to the Kuang Si Falls about 30 km out

of town. What a treat! The countryside around LP is lush with mountains, forests and jungles. We passed many small villages and farms. The falls required a short hike to see them and they were gorgeous, cascading over a series of rocks and pooling into turquoise ponds, one after another downstream. Some people were swimming in the water but we opted out.

We also visited a bear rescue center and got to see a number of bears in large enclosed areas where they could roam, climb and sleep in a protected, covered enclosed area as well. I can’t name the various species we saw but can say they looked very different from our bears. One had a cowl of hair around its neck, one was thin but the information board said it didn’t matter how much it ate this was its normal size. Very unlike our fat round bears.

On the way back we stopped at a Hmong village. There was a sign posted

saying there was a project to help the Hmong to be self supporting. It manifested as a crude sidewalk that ran through the village in a semi circle, starting and ending by the roadside. Along the sidewalk were about 30 little stands, rough tables, staffed mostly by adorable children in traditional costumes. One must have been all of two years old but all seemed to know how to ask in English for the tourists to buy there wares. The poverty was evident. Some actually begged us to buy saying they had no money. Most stands had identical items: small bookmarks, coin purses, and some larger items such a bedcovers, pillow covers or wall hangings. It was heart breaking as it was impossible to buy from each person. We had a similar experience when we visited a village in Zambia, only it was grown men asking us to buy their carvings. We did buy an item and we did go through the entire village but we left feeling badly that we couldn’t do more. We had failed to bring any small denomination bills of kip or baht with us.

Before getting in our truck to go back to town, Vong was across the

road and encouraged us over to see a cotton demonstration. Here there was a live cotton plant, a small wooden device that had a hand crank to remove the seeds from the cotton. It reminded me of a ringer washer. Next the cotton was fluffed then spun and then woven.  A great couple showed us the process and of course we needed to buy something. The woman put a shawl around my neck and it was my colors so we bought it but required change. She brought a cotton shawl over that was manly and we bought it as well so no change was needed. We all went away happy.

We went back to the guesthouse and walked down the street and had another simple rice noodle Lao meal with chicken.

We proceeded to Wat Xieng Thong which is considered the finest example of a Lao monastery with graceful, low sweeping eaves, beautiful mosaics and intricate carvings. It was built in 1559 and is one of the few buildings to have survived the successive Chinese raids that marked the end of the 19 th century. The interiors were a brilliant red and gold. One of the chapels houses a rare 16^th century reclining Buddha in bronze. The exterior mosaics were added in 1957 to honor the 2500^th anniversary of the Buddha’s life, death and enlightenment. They are brightly colored glass in reds, blues and greens. 

The Chapel of the Funeral Chariot housed the grand 12 meter high gilded wooden hearse, with its seven headed serpent, which was built for King Sisavang Vong, father of the last sovereign and used to carry his urn to the stadium next to the temple where he was cremated in 1959. Originally the urns would have held the bodies of the deceased in the fetal position until cremation.

We walked around the point where the two rivers converged and continued walking along the Nam Khan in search of a recommended restaurant. We preferred to find it in the light of day. We found it after about 15 minutes and made a reservation. From here we went to an internet café to catch up on emails. Then we went to a shop that sold baked goods as we would be leaving at 0 stupid 30 in the morning before breakfast and weren’t sure if the small airport would have any food service. Back to our guesthouse to rest and refresh before dinner. It’s a good thing we found this place earlier in the day because I got turned around and we went in the wrong direction at a critical turn. After stopping and asking for directions we got there easily. I am grateful we made reservations as we saw numerous people turned away. We ordered their ‘five bites’ which was a sampler of Lao snacks and it was delicious. I had a great cool drink made from fresh ginger and lemon grass while Ron had a lime drink. We also ordered a barbequed cured pork wrapped in lemon grass which was fantastic. Both came with sticky rice. Neither of us could fit in a dessert. We dined al fresco, my favorite way to eat. It was the perfect meal to end our brief tour of Laos. Neither of us would change anything about our week of travel…well maybe a lower temperature would have been nice but heck it is all part of the adventure. We ended the night with a really bad massage. Unfortunately the place that had been recommended by Vong was fully booked so we just picked a place and the technicians were not trained and the woman who gave me my massage was either pinching me or it felt like she was throwing me around.  When I asked her to lighten up, go easy, be softer she would look at me then go right ahead as before. If I hadn’t had a wonderful $6 massage in Vientiane I wouldn’t complain. It is a tough life Ron and I are living and now you can see just how tough it really is! HA!

Oct 25

We got up at 5:00. I had been awake off and on since 2:30 when a crazy rooster started crowing. He would stop then start up again. By 5:00 the neighborhood of roosters were going at it. We packed, and got dressed and one of the staff made us some coffee. We always tip the people who clean the room but we gave him a tip as well as he certainly didn’t have to make us coffee that time of the morning. Vong dropped us off at the airport and we boarded our plane at 7:15. After everyone was settled we were instructed to get off the plane because they couldn’t land in Bangkok because of thunderstorms. Fortunately about 20 minutes later we re-boarded and took off with no problems arriving in BKK. In BKK, we were once again the first ones in line for passport control. There have been times where we spent 45 minutes going through passport control due to the number of people in line. We were thrilled. After collecting our luggage we went downstairs and bought bus tickets to Hua Hin. We had about an hour’s wait and then boarded a large comfy bus that was mostly full. It took four hours to get to Hua Hin due to really bad traffic in BKK. We had picked up some ‘to go’ Thai food at the airport and it was really bad: processed pork...ick. One step away from Spam. I ate a few bites and gave up.

When we arrived at the Hua Hin bus terminal someone had mistakenly taken our luggage and left theirs. We were in a panic and told the attendant who ran out front to the taxi stand. I ran around the station to see if the person was still there with no luck. The taxi stand person called one of the drivers who had left and sure enough caught him and he returned with our luggage. The customer who was a Canadian got out of the taxi and apologized. He said his luggage had 30 steaks in it. He was so glad to get his luggage as were we to get ours. I preferred my dirty clothes to his 30 steaks any day! We called Avis who sent someone to pick us up. After doing the paperwork we headed to Tesco Lotus to shop for groceries and grab a quick bite (a salad bar at Sizzler no less) before heading to Phetchaburi, about 45 minutes north.

When we arrived home around 8:00 we were thrilled to learn Pa Cha An had returned from the hospital in BKK that day. We were amazed as we thought she would be in the hospital for two months. She must be like Ron’s mom who always healed in record time. The amazing thing is Pa Cha An is 91 years old! Go girl. We briefly visited with her and the family (lots were here this weekend) after we had put away the groceries and unpacked. We discovered that today was Ai’s birthday so we came back to our house and wrapped up the silk shawl I had bought in Laos and took it back up to the house and sang Happy Birthday to her. I went to sleep around 9:30 and Ron joined me shortly thereafter.