back in Hua Hin

I'm in Hua Hin again, the resort town on the Gulf of Thailand a few hours south of Bangkok, where I was about 11 days ago. I'm staying at the same place I was before, Lucky Guest House, with the free internet. So nothing too exciting going on, I lucked out and caught a bus going directly here, 15 minutes after getting to the bus station, which I think was pretty lucky because that town isn't so popular that there are tons of busses going through there. Then I survived the 7 1/2 hour ride here, an hour longer than it took going the other way. Honestly, I'd rather just be driving myself at this point, I'm so tired of sitting there on busses staring at the seat in front of me. At least on the plane the seat has a TV in it! (Not to mention free drinks...)

Anyway, two notable news items come to think of it. One, I got the last of my film developed yesterday in Ranong, 7 more rolls. One place that looked pretty professional said it would be ready in an hour, so I tried one roll with them. It came out good, so I gave them the rest, they did a good job with them and then I also got coupons for 10 free 8 x 10s, so that was cool. The photos came out great, the hard part is going to be narrowing them down so that there aren't so many that you get completely bored of pictures before you get through them all. I think altogether I have 500 photos, including the ones I've sent back, and that's after taking about a third of the not-so-good ones out.

So the other thing is that I booked a flight yesterday from Lihue, Kauai back to Oakland, Calif. Hawaiian Airlines had added a new flight, probably in response to ATA Airlines going bankrupt and canceling all their flights, so it was now cheaper to fly into Oakland than Portland, and I'd wanted to visit my mom and step-dad on the way back, plus my aunt Chris if we can make that work. So it's good to have that taken care of, even if it cost me a hundred bucks more than the previous flight I'd had. But the upside about it is that I changed the date to May 12th, which gives me an extra 5 days there, which is good because I'd been thinking I'd given myself not quite enough time before anyhow. Well I'm going to keep this one short, but I'll most likely hop on a bus from Hua Hin back to Bangkok tomorrow, unless of course I'm really not in the mood for a bus ride tomorrow, which is of course possible. But at least it's only a few more hours to go either way.