Going stir crazy...........and then freedom!

After about 20 hours of being cooped-up in that Castrol service station on the A2 near Sung Noen, the rain actually stopped just after 2pm yesterday and we were able to make tracks out of there. The place was driving me nuts even though they allowed us to plug the laptop into the mains so that I could check my mail and update the blog. And there was nothing to eat. Beer yes, but as much as I like it, I don't live on the stuff. The weather was that bad in the morning that even the somtam lady didn't show up for work and we had to go back a couple of kilometers towards Korat to find somewhere that offered a semblance of a choice of dishes for the farang other than somtam or Mama noodles! Considering how much rain fall there had been over the last 24 hours or so, most of it had run off the road by the time I was on it and done the first 7 km before I took a break for a meal. If anyone can tell me how a bowl of Mama, which costs 5 baht to buy per packet, can then be flogged on for 40 baht with a little bit of hot water and a few pieces of veg added to it, in the so-called impoverished north-east region of this country, I'm all ears! And they didn't rip me off; they did it to to Ros! Thai rak Thai, eh? If anybody in Korat is reading this and wants to avoid it, it's the place about 300 meters east of the big, new temple they're working on next to the Korat-bound lane (there may be a picture of that on the blogsite) but on the opposite side. Anyway, having been fleeced there, we set off again though it wasn't to be long before I got waylaid again with more rain and that was the pattern for the rest of the afternoon. Despite the stop-start nature of things, some 17 km was knocked out in just under 4 hours. I must point out that one of the sections of the slip road that I was walking along, just after I'd crossed the flyover over the 201/24 roads, was inpassable for about a kilometer and I had to jump in the back of the back-up vehicle to get through it. The police and local volunteers had coned off the road and then were re-directing traffic onto the east-bound lane which became two-way. There was a fair amount of water there too and the traffic was backed-up in both directions but we got through it and about another 500 meters further on, we turned back onto the slip road which was now clear of water and pulled into the large service station along there which became our home for the night. 17 km is way below what I was hoping to do as that's now two consecutive days that we've fallen well short of our target and I reckon that, unless we can get a full day in today, and that's also looking unlikely considering what we've done so far today and the way the weather is at the moment, then we are a full day behind schedule and we're now looking at getting back to Saraburi by Friday evening at this rate.