We Woke Up Early At Nick & Maureen's,

then we were off,

 after thanking them both for such a great Christmas, we had a few things to do today, firstly a trip to Walking street,

 everything looks so much different in the day light,

 it is still surprising to me the number of new bars being built, I guess business must be good to attract so many new investors,

 I almost thought Google had opened up a go-go till I looked at the sign more closely,

 and this was where we were off to,

 the Yenjit money exchange, it is just past the big tree on the same side of the road,

 next stop the row of shops on Pattaya Tai opposite the temple complex, there is one shop we had come to visit,

 but first a bit of fruit shopping,

 each apple carefully chosen,

 purchase made, then we were on our way,

 to Tesco Lotus for some bread and milk, outside as I waited for Diana this little one arrived,

 a pretty in pink Kawasaki,

it seems strange to think that when I bought the Kawasaki I use every day some 12 or more years ago any bikes like this one with small wheels would get you an immediate fine on the spot, small wheeled bikes were banned, but nowadays there are literally hundreds of them over here,

keeping to a bike theme, the Honda that Phil borrowed had developed a hole on the exhaust manifold, so I took it to the repair shop I normally use, this is one of the many things I like about living here, I drive in the shop, no waiting, two mechanics start work immediately,

 unbolt the exhaust from the head,

 and remove it and the silencer box in one,

 the old unit, you can see how rusty the exhaust manifold is,

 so cut off the old manifold using a grinder,

 note to self, always use the grinder so that the sparks are going away from you!

 bolt the new manifold, which surprisingly was in stock, straight off the shelf, onto the head,

 reattach the silencer,

 by using a couple of welds to hold it in place, remove the complete system and weld it all round,

 some paint is them applied over the bare metal where both parts of the system were welded together,

 refit the entire system back on the bike and all is ready to go, the cost of all of this which I guess took maybe nearly an hour? including the exhaust pipe and all other charges, 275 baht, (£5.57 - $8.96),

 I forgot to mention the shop that we went to on Pattaya Tai,

 the gold shop of course! well it is Christmas,

in the evening we watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I must admit I did not know there were three versions of it, the theatre version as shown in of course cinemas, the extended version and the one we watched, the directors cut, what is the difference? I do not have a clue, but it was nice to watch it again, even more so as we now had the BluRay version rather than the CD we had watched it on before,

a 3D fest awaited us next in Wrath of the Titans, the special effects stunning, I lost count of the number of times that we both ducked and dived as rocks, fire and steel lepted out of the screen at us, just a small thing, to get the best out of 3D try to sit near, I mean really near the screen to get the full effect of 3D, for us we were about 5 feet away from the television, so it fills you view, the same when we watch 3D in the cinema, we are always in the front few rows, we have found if you sit in the middle or worse the back rows the 3D effect is totally wasted,

to finish our evening the last episode of Colditz, throughly enjoyable for both of us, as was the interview with one of the real escape officers who also wrote many of the episodes, Major Patrick Robert "Pat" Reid, MBE, MC, by now it was late, so for us off to bed.