Daily Report: Day #7 of Vacation

For our last day in Petchabun, we didn't too too much. First, all of Pui's friend's and family came over for lunch.

A vacation up to the village would be a relatively inexpensive undertaking, except for the fact that Pui wants to feed everybody she knows at least once a day — which isn't terribly expensive in the grand scheme of things, but comes out to about 1,000 baht a day. That's before I decide that beer would be a good way to get through the evening — which isn't terribly expensive in the grand scheme of things until you realize that everybody else will be having beer too, and comes out to 1,000 baht a day.

During the afternoon, Pui and I drove into Petchabun to buy our bus tickets, buy some pants for her mother (she heretofore owned no pants), have lunch at KFC, and browse through the Tesco Lotus. In Tesco Lotus I met a nice fellow from Oregon... name of Bill, I think... who lives half of the year in Petchabun. Walking through the market to buy pants, I passed another 3 or 4 farangs. Considering that on my 2 previous trips to Petchabun I had seen only 2 farangs total, the 10 or so that I saw on this trip was quite remarkable.


New baby in Thai-style crib. Mom has
a string in her hand that she pulls on
to rock the baby back and forth.On the way back from Petchabun, we stopped in at a friend of Pui's who had had a baby recently. Then it was off to a neighbor's of Pui's where we enjoyed donuts that Pui had bought. Then we walked back to yet another farang's house... a man by the name of Frank... to visit with him, but unfortunately he had left for Pattaya earlier in the day. He has tried his hand at pig farming, but the price of pork lately has hurt his business, according to his wife.

The village (3 pictures spliced together):
We spent the evening relaxing at Pui's parent's home, and then at about 9:00, the same yellow Datsun pickup truck that had driven us from Lom Sak to Petchabun 4 nights ago drove us to the bus station. We hopped on the big double-decker bus, at 10:40, and rode the whole night through to Pattaya.