my first full day

as most of you who read my post from yesterday know it was an extra long day since i was up way too early. we this morning is really no different. i beat my wakeup time from yesterday by an hour. so at this rate in a week i will be waking up when the sun is actually up. yesterday was kind of a explore the city and try and learn some of the landmarks. bill is leaving us to go get a knoxville rotarian this weekend. so the purpose of showing us around was his hope that we would venture out into the city ourselves... which may or may not occur. right now i think i have a moderately good hold on the citys layout since it is a simple grid. but the truth is there are no street names and everything looks the same because well all of the shops have pretty much the same stuff and almost the same semi rundown exterior. but yesterday chris and i finally got up and decided it was time to go explore the city at around 10:30. so we ventured over to bill's room where he was finishing uup some laundry in his wash bucket. we grabbed him and made for the main part of campus where we could catch a #8 truck/bus into town. we walked along the road waiting for one but none came so we just explored one of the buildings on campus for a little while. the building we went into was alarge 3 story building that had food vendors, shops and a post office. which reminds me anyone other than cousin erin who wants a post card or letter please leave commenti and i will be sure to get it too you. a letter or post card by air mail is somewhere around 50-70 cents. so i will have no problem sending a good number if necessary. we left the building and found a #16 truck/bus taht goes into town but not to the exact location we wanted to go but we jumped on it anyway and road into town no problem. we got off the bus and bill began to show us some of the good places to rest if you are hot, and a large decrepid building that was never finished. the large building itself plays a role in our navigation because it is the tallest and it is for the most part in the middle of the city making navigation somewhat easier when you can see it. there are two hotels neither of which i can remember the name of that do not mind if foreigners come in and rest in the air conditioning. both of the hotels have english newpapers that they allow you to read for free. we stopped at both of these yesterday but both times i wrote in my journal. yesterday had 4 pages of entry so i do believe it was a good day. another thing he showed us are the machines that refill your bottle for 1 baht. which to me is very important i go through water like a camel.we stopped to eat at the same grocery store we had eaten the day before. the grocery has a small but clean food vendor in the back where for 80 25 baht or 80 cents you can get a full plate of rice topped with whatever dish you want. today i got somekind of chicken with mussels type thing, and it was very good but the museels were a little too chewy for me
i really hope i dont get sick from the mussels either. we finished lunch and walked upstairsout of the grocery. the grocery is fit into a building where all the top floors are clothing and other vendors and the bottom floor is the grocery. if that makes sense?. but we wallked upstairs out of the grocery to see what there was and i never thought that khon kaen would be infected enough to have a starbucks(hssssss). its the devil. other than that the upstairs had a kfc which i am suprised to learn thai people absolutely love. but other than those stores there were the usual traditional thai food,clothing,and ice cream vendors. we left the builing and headed
toward the nicer hotel where you can sit in the AC. We cane in through the bakery
which just so happends to be the best bakery in town. and let me tell you it is well deseerved. we had just eaten lunch before we arrived and i ate a piece of orange mousse cake. definitely the second greatest thing i have eaten while i have been here. we left there and basically walked arounda little while stpping in little shops to just procure what they had for the most part. on the way back to the road to catch a #8 back to the university bill stopped to get a traditionally brewed thai coffee that they mix with two kinds of condensed milk and is supposed to be more like a dessert than anything. considering the price of what he bought was 20baht, and taking into account how much he got and how elegantly prepared it was. i say we burn down all the starbucks. we sat at a picknick table under a tarp and talked as Bill and Chris drank their coffees. by the time we left the table the clouds had rolled in and it lookled like it was going to rain. we were lucky to finda #8 quicly because about 2 minutes after we had gotten on it started absolutely pouring. it rained very hard for the whole ride back to the university but by the time we had gotten off the truck the rain had slowed and become very light and comfortable to walk home in. Chris and I wanted to go back to the bokstore so bill headed on back to the room. we explored the KKU accessories and such. KKu being Khon Kaen University. we left without buying anything and from there Chris went back to the apartment and i just explored campus for another 40 minutes. i just started my walk back to the apartment but explored all of the side streets along the way. there are many internet cafes where students can rent a computer for a set amount of time and play online game with their friends. something like world of warcraft? i stopped at a little conveinence store on the last leg home and got a soday and candy bar to tide me over till dinner and then walked the rest of the way with the rain still coming. i got back to the room and put the candy and drink in our room's minifridge. then i laid down and after that i woke up. and what do you know its 4:40 in the morning. well i will write again tonight or tomorrow. but today we are going to meet Bills connection in water purification. I dont know how to spell is but im going to sound out his name. chu-lum-chai. aparently he is very wealthy here and for a thai increadibly rich. he drives a BMw which is very diffeicult being affording the car would be hard enough but thailand has a luxury car tax. which here means the price of teh car just tripled. so imagine paying $40,000 for a Bmw in america. we here would be $120,000. and if you multiply that by thirty. that is about how much it would cost in baht. but yeah i just thought that was a fun fact. oh and to get to we will call him Mr. C. to get to his buisness we have to take a 2 person motor scooter. so wish us luck. last thing i got a phone card so i will call soon.