Monday, May 12, 2008

Day Eight
27th March

We went out in the morning to visit Snow’s cousin, who lives in Bangkok not far from Kriang and Numphu. They have a townhouse in a private neighborhood. Its not a large town home. She has two children with her boyfriend, who was originally form Norway. He told me when he came down, that he started a business online with some friends, that did online betting. Then they sold it to a large company. Now he has a business in Bangkok. Aunt Moo brought the youngest son, Pau. At one point, he and Alex were both eating goldfish crackers. Pau tried to take a drink of juice from Alex’s juice cup. She was not happy with that. She did not want to share her juice cup. She got very upset at him, taking it away from her. She demanded instant justice.

We invited the couple to come up to Udon Thani for our wedding celebration on Sunday. They said they were coming to see us. On the way back we stopped at a noodle shop for lunch. We were already mostly packed for Udon. Our flight was at 6 pm. We were going to head out at four. We got in two taxis at four pm. One with Snow Alex and I, the second one with Snows mother and brother. We needed two taxis to carry all our bags. When we got to the airport, we got a shock. Our flight was at 440pm, and it was 435 when we found out. Snow hadn’t brought her printed itinery, and her mother had told her it was at 6 pm. We missed the flight. We had to buy two more tickets to get to Udon Thani, the next flight at 745 pm. We had to sit in the airport for 3 hours. Thank heavens for the goldfish crackers to help keep Alex happy. During the flight, there were some spectacular lightning on our side of the plane. Alex was upset before we took off, but Snow cleverly made her happier and calm by pointing out the balls, the blue lights lining the runways. We arrived in Udon at 845 pm, where several family members were there to greet us and take us to Snow’s grandparents house.

We arrived after 915 PM. Alex hadn’t been up that late all week. She hadn’t had dinner yet. She was cranky. When we got out of the pickup, there were nearly a dozen cousins and uncles outside, all coming up to see her. Some were loud, a few were already drunk. This naturally terrified her. She cried and clutched her arms around Snow’s neck. In the house were Snow’s grandparents, aunts, female cousins. It was all a bit too much. She was too tired. She cried and wasn’t able to be social in her state.

Luckily she soon fell asleep and Snow moved her to her grandparents room where she slept on top of the bed. Snow and I had dinner, a nice macaroni dish with pork, eggs, tomatoes, in a tomato sauce. We went back to the Charoensri Grand Royal hotel. it’s a nice hotel, pretty western, a bit old but they have decent amenties. Free breakfast buffet, a few Western TV channels, internet access in the lobby at one space, for $1.00 an hour. We got a room on the 14th floor, due to superstition, there’s no 13th floor in the hotel, and 14th is the top floor. We got two full or twin beds. So Alex slept in one with Snow, and I slept on the other.

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