I Was Up Early,

to go to the driving test centre,

 I did not want to walk around with the camera, so just a quick picture of it from outside,

 but this is the road that leads to it, 

 it is situated behind and to the right of the Regents School, for a copy of requirements if you want to drive in Thailand have a look here, for myself I was renewing my 5 year licence, all quite easy, we were in a group of 50, firstly all of us were given an individual colour test, the examiner pointed to a colour and you had to call it out, four or five colours each we all passed, next a reaction test, you put your foot on a throttle/accelerator peddle, a light shows green, randomly it changes to red and you have to then hit the brake pedal before the row of green lights goes into the red area, six or seven people failed and had to try again, five failed the second time and were told to come back tomorrow, we were now down to forty-five, next a distance perspective test, a stationary stick is next to one that moves, you are given a control box to move the one that moves next to the stationary one, we all passed, in the instruction room we were all shown a forty-five minuet or so video, then an instructor gave us a half hour lecture, both the video and lecture all in Thai except the last few sentences, where she explain you can renew your licence 3 months before and one year after it expires with no penalties, but go over the one year and you have to sit the written test again, next stop the payment counter, 1,060 baht for both licences, pictures taken and licences issued, into the truck and away,

to Boy Air Sound, we had decided to have a camera fitted to the truck, both front and rear, a friend was involved in a crash where the insurance assessors quickly decided he was 50% to blame, until he showed them the cameras, he was then pronounced 0% to blame! call it an insurance policy but we both thought it a wise move as the standard of driving out here for various reasons is not so good, especially as most foreign drivers have spent their entire lives driving on the wrong side of the road!

fitting the cameras was the first of three reasons we went to Boy Air Sound, the second was that the CD player in the truck had been getting consistently worse, playing a few bars of a tune then repeating them, skipping tracks, you name it, well you know me with electrics, the electrics of the truck were no different, so we had one of these fitted, a JVC KD-R456, instead of CDs it takes a memory stick, it is incredible the number of tunes we have on the stick,

 in the good news department the amplifier under my seat was still working well, it seems impossible but the new JVC sounded so much better than the old unit, or perhaps I just want to imagine it did, in any event it is now all working,

 next to the shop there is the repair/installation facility,

 the turning to look out for Soi 5, the shop is on the corner,

 looking back as you leave Pattaya on the Sukhumvit Road as you go past the Toyota dealership take the next 'U' turn and Boy Air will be on you left as you head back to Pattaya,

 outside, the shop looks fully stocked, inside it is to bursting, the third reason I called in was that the burglar alarm was playing up, sometimes not switching on or off, so that was serviced and a new sensor fitted, 

 as I waited outside there was a terrible noise as two birds attacked what I thought was a cat in the wires, as there was no traffic I wandered out into the road to take a few pictures of it, 

but it was a monkey and it was making a frightfully racket, chattering away and bouncing up and down on the wires, I took a few pictures which were not very good as it kept moving until it calmed down and steadied itself and I took this one, then it decided to move on, which was just as well as I could see the next wave of cars trucks and buses headed my way,

 the costs involved were 5,000 baht for supplying and fitting front and rear cameras, 2,800 baht to supply and fit the stereo player and no charge to service the burglar alarm, it was by now late so after our evening meal we settled down to watch Bonnie and Clyde, I remember seeing the film when it was first released in the UK, I thought then and now what a good movie it was, especially the slightly dreamlike sequence where Bonnie goes to see her mother and her family,

it was just like going to the movies as we had a break, but what a break! we tried another of the bars of rich dark chocolate from Ocelot Chocolates, in might seem that mixing salted Marcona almonds with chocolate might not taste so good, but you would be so, so wrong, it was delicious, Diana put the half we had not eaten away, twice! so for our next picture evening's break we will only have a quarter of a bar,

to round off the evening another film that I watched at the cinema when it was first released, Blade Runner, I loved it, the special effects, the story, everything about it, but I was amazed when it was universally panned, what had I seen that the critics had not? I do not know, but after a number of years it seemed like everyone had changed their minds and the film became a cult classic, any way we both enjoyed both films immensely and with that we were off to bed.