Day 7; The weather's now holding us up.

We're stuck in the rain in Prachinburi and the 25 km stroll up the A33 to Nakhon Nayok today is now looking pretty iffy as I type this. It rained pretty much throughout the night and kept us both awake as we lay in the tent though some early progress was possible when we left the service station shortly after 7 this morning. Ros has a car full of wet clothing as the laundry she did yesterday didn't dry out properly so the car doesn't smell too good and I'm glad that I don't have to sit in it today. However, the dry weather was short-lived and shelter was sought on the side of the road about 5 km into the leg when we were hit by another heavy shower. Another couple of km down the road and the rain came again and that's pretty much been the story since then. So, a lot of walking to be done later in the day if and when the sun finally comes out or at least it stops raining! Fortunately, finding a place to do this post was quite easy. The blog was cut short yesterday as the lady who ran the shop wanted to close up at 10pm and she had a shop full of kids playing games who didn't want to go home. I find internet shops generally to be very noisy places if the owners allow their customers to play games and download music, which seems to be the norm. Most of the kids in the shops are teenage boys and I'm pretty sure thats ome of them who were in the shop I used yesterday afternoon should have been at school. It's not expensive, I know, but I do wonder sometimes where they get the money from and how long they spend in these places. Of course, the shop owners don't ask too many questions as long as the kids pay up when they've finished. Got some news from the Foundation in Lamphun yesterday from some of our expat volunteer visitors. Although they were basically happy with what they saw, there were a few points that need addressing and we're trying to arrange for some of our regular Thai visitors to go there today and straighten out one or two individuals who appear to be letting us down while Ros and I are away. I'll be glad when the CAT connector kicks in and I'll be able to post from my own laptop from the back of the car wherever we happen to find ourselves. But it's not picking up a signal to allow me to access the internet down here and if I want to keep on top of the blog and feed Grant more photos to publish, I need to find an internet shop wherever we stop. For those of you following our route who are wondering why we didn't go straight up the A304 to Korat for the fund-raiser up there on Saturday evening, I'll explain. We were advised by someone who knows the area well that going there via Kao Yai national park, which the A304 goes through, would slow us down considerably due to the steep hills up there and the amount of traffic that we would have to contend with and therefore make reaching there by Saturday evening quite unrealistic. So, Plan B was drawn up and we are now heading north-west towards Saraburi, which we hope to reach by Saturday afternoon. That too may be a tall order given the current weather situation. The sole purpose of going to Korat is for the event at The George and Dragon that Dave Kearns is organising on our behalf just as going down to Banchang on the first night was for the fundraiser at The Offshore Bar. However, we will get there though it'll be in the car and not on foot as originally planned. We'll be stopping in Korat overnight and then getting back to wherever we left off in or around Saraburi and resuming the walk from there on Sunday afternoon. Looking outside, it's still quite grey but the rain has abated so I'll post this and return to Ros and the car and see if we can make tracks so that we don't have it all to do this afternoon.