(written by Nancy)

We took another day off in Kanchanaburi today in the hope that the flooding situation north of us will lessen before we get too close to it. No rain here today which is good news and the Highway Department map of affected roads does not show any additional problems in the general area where we are headed so that is good too. The situation looks a bit worse toward Bangkok, which is where the water is headed.

So another sleep-in for us – going to get lazy pretty soon. We ate breakfast at the guesthouse again – great pancakes for both of us. They have brewed coffee as well, which you can drink to your heart’s content until 10am so it’s a pretty good deal. We hung out on the terrace using the free wi-fi a bit trying to see if we could get any more information about the road ahead. It’s a nice spot to hang out though it gets a bit steamy by about 11:30 or so!

We cooled off in the room for a bit and then decided it was time to eat again (!) so headed out to have lunch – we ended up at the restaurant across the road again. We have eaten there twice – it has a big menu and really good food so it’s hard to go past it, especially when it’s nice and hot out. The plan after lunch was to make a run to Tesco to get some food supplies for the next couple of days.

Right next to the restaurant there is a little shop that rents motor scooters – we figured out that taking a taxi back and forth to Tesco would be more than the cost of renting a scooter so before I knew it we were sitting down renting a scooter! While Dave got instructions about how to operate the scooter I filled out the paperwork. When we got ready to leave we asked for helmets and they could only dig up on helmet. The proprietor said ‘Don’t worry, the police won’t stop you,’ which is not really what I was worried about! So we took off with Dave wearing the only helmet with the full knowledge that he had my life in his hands…

We made it to Tesco safely and very slowly! Many scooters went by us, we were going so slow but that was fine with me. Dave drove pretty well for the first time on a scooter – only a little bit shaky on the stops and starts. At one point he had both feet on the ground kind of pushing along and he was wearing his flip-flops. All I could think of was the time my sister Gretchen tried to stop her bicycle by putting her bare feet down and I hoped Dave’s toes wouldn’t suffer the same fate! All was fine with Dave though, thankfully. At one point he did start to use his arms to indicate when he was going to make a turn as though he was on his bike – hadn’t quite figured out how to use the turn signals at that point.

We picked up our supplies at Tesco and stopped at the Dairy Queen (!) in the shopping complex to have an ice cream cone before getting back on the scooter to make our way slowly home. We actually ran out of gas along the way, fortunately right across the street from a gas station so Dave pushed it over and put enough gas in to get us home.

The other exciting afternoon activity was to have a Thai fish massage. This is one of those massages where you put your feet in a big fish tank and these little fish essentially chew on your feet, eating all the dead skin off. Sounds weird I know but is one of those things to do when you are in Thailand. I convinced Dave to do it with me, reminding him of all those times I got out on boats and airplanes with him despite getting motion sickness almost every time. Well, I put my feet in and the fish started chewing away and Dave put his feet in for about a second, burst out laughing and pulled them right back out. He could not keep them in – too ticklish. No wonder they make you pay before you get up on the seats to put your feet in! Anyway, it was very funny and he kept the people sitting in the restaurant across the way entertained.
We couldn’t help ourselves when it came time for dinner, heading back to the pizza joint across the road. When you don’t get pizza for so long and you find a good one, that’s what happens. Tonight they were quiet and the owner (a Swiss guy) and his wife got their maps out to offer us some assistance on our route. I think we are more confused now than ever but it’s very hard to get good information about what is going on. We can go slow for the next three days and still be far from where believe there may be problems and we’ll have to time to check as we go. Dave wants to move on again – so here we go again.

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