It started off well, with me cutting the grass in the garden, and P’Chai coming round and helping until about 10am. At this point, it started getting hot, so I went in to check my e-mail and start my (computer) working day. On lifting the receiver, I get a polite message (in Thai) that I haven’t paid my bill. Also, Mee comes back from the post office, where they’ve been keeping our mail because they say they don’t know where our house is yet. It seems that I need to put up a big sign with our house number at the end of the drive. In the post, there’s a letter from the ‘Thailand Post’ service, saying that I have a parcel awaiting collection in Prachuab Kirikhan (100kms north!).

So today, in the middle of one of the hottest days we’ve had all year, Mee and I rode up to Thap Sakae on the CBR, where we settled an outrageous phone bill. We then went on to Prachuab Kirikhan to collect a garden fork and spade sent from England from customs, where we were charged slightly over 20% import tax on the value of goods we’d already paid 50quid for in the UK. And while we were there, we stopped at the ‘Kon Sorng’ where you sort out vehicle documents and driving licenses. I was lacking a doctor’s certificate for my driving license, and a note from immigrations ‘allowing’ me to own motorbikes and a Thai driving license and the CBR was missing a tax payment and a vehicle examination certificate, so I’ll have to go back next week.

We stopped by the Prachuab Kirikhan immigration office too, as my visa is about to expire next week. I was hoping to apply for a non-immigrant ‘B-A’ type visa. I have survived the last year on a normal ‘B’ type, which only permits you to stay 90 days at a time, so I have to leave the country to do a ‘border run’ every 3 mths. Apparently a ‘B-A’ visa allows a stay of longer than 90 days at a time, as long as I report in to my local immigration office every three months. However, I’ve only just found out about the ‘B-A’ type visa, and I don’t know if one week will be enough to apply for it. Hopefully, it will be enough and I won’t have to go to Malaysia next week to sort it all out.

So, I get back from all that, and a guy turns up with a chainsaw to chop the fallen tree over. Luckily, all he wants for his efforts is a beer. Eventually, I get hooked up to check my e-mail, and I have an inbox full of problems that have cropped up since I was last on yesterday afternoon. And, I can’t maintain a connection for longer than about 20-30 mins, which could be due to the electrostatic crackle that intermittently appears on our phone line, or it could be due to my ISP’s local point-of-presence freezing during LCP, or just plain being engaged (oversubscribed?!).

So, today’s been a bitch. More money out of the window, another day wasted, and still no prospects of income until I can settle down and get my current project completed. I’d better crack on…