Pattaya, Friday, October 9, 2009

I stayed up til about 2:45am last night working on the blog and reading, after watching the NFL Patriots/Ravens game with Roger. The netbook connects easily with Roger's wireless network.
This morning I woke up about 8, drank some juice and ate a small yogurt, then took photos of the interior of the house and some views from the rear deck. I read a little from one of Sumano's 3 books. And I read some of the Let's Go guidebook and some internet sites about snorkeling from Pattaya. I planned to ride down the coast to Ko Samet or Ko Chang to find good snorkeling sites. A boat out of Pattaya takes divers and snorkelers to 2 dive sites off the Pattaya coast, for 1600B for snorkelers, about $50, and this includes snorkel and fins, and a lunch. It might be a better deal than the ride to another area and the other costs, including a room, even if I could walk into a good coral area rather than take a boat.

I started uploading all of my 460 photos onto Flickr. The upload speed is slower than I expected. After about 10 hours about 42% of the photos are uploaded. There are at least 6 photos that didn't upload, possibly because of power fluctuation.

Roger has a lot of entrances to his house and all are securely locked, with a padlock on each of the sliding metal gates and the garage gate. They are all keyed alike and I could not get my key to open the locks. So I didn't want to leave, in case Roger left after I did and I could not get back in. I read and took some photos of the house interior. Roger came down afternoon and tried my key. It works fine. I was just pushing it into the locks too hard.

I walked across the street to take a few photos, including this one of Roger's condo, then went into the FamilyMart Store and bought a small carton of milk and another of orange juice, for 107.75B, about $3. The store is a franchise owned by Roger's girlfriend's family. Roger paid for the franchise, and gave it to her family.
About 2pm Roger wanted to do some shopping and show me the beach area. The car engine wouldn't turn over, and it is a loaner, so he called the body shop and they sent a mechanic. In a half hour the mechanic jump started the car. Roger and I went to the body shop so he could check on the progress of the customization of his Suzuki Vitara. It is being rebuilt to look like a concept version of the car, base on a photo from a recent car show. Roger discussed the design with the body man and was told it would take another month to finish. Roger doesn't need the car til the end of next month, so he is happy about it, but they needed more money to keep getting the parts.

Next we went to a high rise mall along Beach Road. An upscale food court on the ocean side has a great view of the bay and beach from above the tree tops, on the 3rd floor. The building has an attached parking structure. The air over the bay was hazy, probably from an earlier light rain. The bay looked busy for the off-season, with many sport boats, tour boats, jet skis, paragliders, and people on the beach and crowded sidewalks along Beach Road, plus all the car and scooter traffic on the road.

Roger had a Vietnamese salad and a sandwich, and I had a Korean dish of River Prawns and fried rice, with basil, and a lemon grass drink. The food was very tasty. Came to 185B, about $5.50, more than a meal from street vendors, but a real treat. After lunch we looked in a few of the stores in this 5 story mall. When we left, the car wouldn't start, so Roger called the body shop again. Took nearly an hour for the 2 mechanics to find us. They went to the wrong mall first. They changed the battery 3 times, finally using the battery from their pickup. The car started.

We drove to a Foodland store for some groceries. I recognized a few items. None of the fruit looked cheap enough to buy. I found some strawberry jam, loaf of white bread, cornflakes, 2 liter of Pepsi, 4 pack of strawberry yogurt and a small bottle of Listerine, for a total of 322.25B, about $10.