Sunday morning we were dodging rain drops and were at the bus terminal close to 7:30 a.m. We, Ken, Samai and I, where met with two women from Chiang Mai’s Boys Home and two women from the Viengping Childrens Home. We are on a day trip – we hope it is 11 hours long, to Khon Kaen. The bus is air conditioned and fairly comfortable. This daytime trip allowed us to all enjoy the countryside, but rain for the first couple of hours did not allow me to take any pictures from the bus window … I will just have to keep special pictures somewhere in my mind.

All of us dozed some of the time. Most of us had an extra jacket or shirt to put on when the bus’ a/c was too cold. It is really puzzling for me to determine why they keep the temperature on all of the buses in Thailand at such a cold and/or freezing temperature! Anyway, it seems to be a common way of doing things here.

The bus made quite a few stops the closer to Khon Kaen we got. In doing so, it actually took 13 hours (not the 11 hour night time trip) to get to Khon Kaen. Of course, it did not help that an engine fuse went out and it took the driver and driver’s helper 25 minutes to “fix” (actually jerry-rig) to make the engine work correctly. ALL of us were really very happy to get off the bus and get our rides to the hotel for Ken and I and the four teacher and Samai out to the Welf

are School. We were soooo happy to get into a/c and a small but decent quarters for the week.