My passport only had one more page left in the "Visa" section. I got up, had coffee at the guest house, checked the operation hours of the American Embassy on the Internet and took a taxi to the Embassy.
I flashed my US Passport and said the word "pages" and was directed through security, leaving camera and cellular phone at security, to American Citizen Services. Speaking of cameras, I almost got in trouble at the American Consulate in Chang Mai, Thailand, two years ago, as I took a picture of the front of the Consulate.
The next thing I knew, an armed guard was standing next to me telling me I could not take pictures and to come with him. We walked to the front entrance and I was handed a telephone to talk with a man that explained that pictures could not be taken for their safety. He than asked if it was a digital camera or a film camera. I said digital so he ask me to delete the pictures of the place. I did and showed the guard and everything was okay, no arrest, no terrorist charges, no jail.
I had been in the American Embassy in Bangkok before so I knew a little of my way to the where the American Citizen Services area was. I did have to pass through the visa section with hundreds of people waiting for visa interviews. That brought back memories of getting Daeng's visa to America.
I filled out a form and turned it and passport in to a very helpful man who told me it would be ready within a hour. I hung out in the waiting room and read some of the BANGKOK POST, an English newspaper. While I was waiting I saw a man I had met Saturday night on Soi 5 (Soi is a word used for lane.) while I was getting something to eat.
His problem was the picture page on his temporary passport was delaminating. It looked like someone had been tampering with the picture. To cut this part of story short, he argued that they should make him another one or relaminate it. The lady at the window told him he needed to apply for a permanent one which would take a week.
He said he needed it tomorrow as he was traveling. After asking for a supervisor and talking about it for almost 15 minutes the supervisor said she would make him an other temporary and have it ready tomorrow morning before 9:00 AM if he applied for a permanent one at the same time. That was something he should have done when he got the temporary passport five months ago after swimming with his original one.
The nice part of the whole thing was it gave me something to do, listen to all this, while I was waiting. My passport was ready and returned to me.
I took a taxi back to guest house. Daeng was dress and packed so I called the taxi man that had agreed to take us to Pattaya for 1000 TB. He said he would pick us up at noon. We walked out to the street and had some barbecued chicken, sticky rice with deep fired chicken liver and onions for breakfast.
Pong, the taxi driver arrived a few minutes before noon and loaded our luggage while I paid the guest house bill of 2100 TB for the three more pays. We had paid the first night, already. By the way, the exchange rate is now down to about 34TB to 1 USD. That means the exchange rate has gone down, or up depending if you are American or Thai, about 6% in the last three months.
The trip to Pattaya of about 1 hour and 45 minutes was pretty uneventful. The driver, Pong, was from northern Thailand so he and Daeng talked a lot in a dialect that was only used in northern Thailand.
At the Honey Lodge Hotel we check into a room on the second floor overlooking the pool. the hotel is an old hotel but of good value for 600 TB a night. Clean sheets,
towels, a bottle of drinking water everyday with toilet tissue, western toilet, air conditioning, refrigerator, hot water shower, English speaking television and fresh water swimming pool. If I mentioned a few thing that you normally don't think about, here you think about them. Always test the bed before you commit, too. Some are just hard boards for mattress. We ate around the corner in a little Thai stand and took a nap, well I slept until 2:00 AM but that's tomorrow's story!
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