Head out on the highway

On Thursday some of my coworkers hired a taxi to Rayong to go shopping after work. I didn't need anything, but it was a trip out of Ban Phe and there was talk of tasty pizza! The first thrill of the evening was that the taxi was a pickup truck, which means that I got to sit in the back of a pickup truck all the way to Rayong! Annie and Jeremy were back there too, and I tried to get us all to sing Christmas carols or something, but as with any attempted sing-along, we quickly found that everyone only knows a verse here and there. It was tragic.

The mall wasn't so dissatisfying as before, since I wasn't trying to find clothes or anything, but I did discover that the grocery store there (Tops, an exciting change from our local TESCO,) had Pepperidge Farm cookies! Now they didn't have milanos or chessmen or brussels, but they did have the big crunchy chocolate chip cookies (Sausalito!) and other Western goodies.

And there was pizza! Pizza Company is a lot like any of the pizza chains you find in the states, but real cheese melted on bread is quite a draw on its own. I had a shrimp cocktail pizza which had shrimp, pineapple, mushrooms and tomato. It was tasty and it provided lunch the following day.

Saturday was fairly slow. I attempted to ride a bicycle, an endeavor which the security guard found amusing. I am very grateful to Autumn for her patience, and though I have no pictures of my floundering, the next morning I did have this to show for it:



So we rented a motorbike, and got to use the shiny new gas station at the bottom of the block!



That's not red Fanta; it's gasoline. A mistake I hope to make only once.

We went to a beach and laid around and swam, and came back to town and were windsurf groupies. It was a good day.