Daily Report: Day #6 of Vacation

I slept a good long time this morning due to the extensive drinking that went on last night at Khun Eddie's.

When I finally did get out of bed, I felt a little off. It was probably the fact that in my drunken fervor over the awesome Thai barbeque that Eddie put out, I ate some not-fully-cooked chicken off the grill.

In the mid-afternoon, Pui and I rode out to a nearby waterfall, but before we were barely out of the parking lot, Pui decided that hers was the stomach that would cut our trip short instead of my own, and we only made it as far as a nice bend in the river before turning around.

After driving back to Pui's neighborhood, we stopped and visited Pui's nearest farang resident, a man named Joe from the UK. He has built a nice little house just across the street from the tiny road that leads down to Pui's house.


$600K in Florida, $60K in Petchabun.
One of the nice houses going up near
Pui's hometown. Sign me up for one.I'm genuinely surprised at how inexpensive it is to build out here in the country. I'm also genuinely surprised at the number of farangs living close to Pui. (There are 23 by John's estimate.) There are lots of large houses being built by affluent and educated people in the area, the landscape really is gorgeous near Pui's house, being right in the foothills, and the price of land is around $5,000 per acre. Construction costs are very low too. You can build an entry-level, fit-for-a-farang house for $20,000.

Add to that the discovery of a bi-linqual school for Pot, a cadre of golf-happy farangs, and a good supply of Prego spaghetti sauce at the supermarket, and you know obviously what I'm thinking now... the only question is: When?

In the late afternoon, I met up with Joe, John, and Roger at the same table in front of the same store at the same market (which is one aspect of Petchabun that makes me hesitate to move there: It does limit one's choices of how to be entertained) for beers.

It had originally been my intention to get a hotel room in Petchabun tonight, and catch the early-morning bus to Pattaya on Sunday. Joe was going to give us a ride into Petchabun (and in return Pui and I were going to take him and his wife, Ngern, out to dinner), but his wife flatly refused to let him go. Both Pui and I found that quite striking, and we both thought that Joe's wife probably needed a good... well... a good something.

Anyway, what Pui and I decided instead of catching the Sunday morning bus, was to catch the Sunday evening/overnight bus from Petchabun to Pattaya, which gave us another full day in Petchabun. I was of two hearts about this, wanting to get home and get back to work, and versus another day in Petchabun. Therefore, we went back home, had some open-flame, open-air dinner, and then went to sleep.