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Photos by MJ Klein (and others, uncredited) plus FOOD PHOTOS!

Bright and early the next day, Mr. Nom picked me up in his Toyota pickup truck.  We were going to meet Oath at a nearby restaurant.

Always thinking of our readers, I thought I should take this shot of the environmental controls.  You’ll notice that vehicles in Thailand do not have heat.  Many people do not know this, but only older vehicles that were originally designed for Japan have heaters.

Here Nom picks out a table.

Nice lakeside view with a cool breeze.

Oath joined us and he ordered food.  Notice the Johnny Walker Red on the drink cart (not my idea!).

The girls bring us glasses and ice.

I took this shot to show how lovely their outfits were.  I love Thai silk.

This is how drinks are mixed all over Thailand.  There is a cart put beside each table that holds the ice bucket, alcohol bottles and any mixers.  The server usually pours cap-shots, like she is doing here.  In this example, she’s pouring Regency Brandy.  Personally, I don’t really like it, but I wasn’t drinking very much of it anyway.  Plus she was mixing the drinks so light with a single capful that I could hardly taste it.

Thais drink a lot of soda water for mixers, and this is what we were having (and pretty much throughout my entire trip).  Soda water has no sugar or caffeine, and using it can help keep you hydrated while you drink.  Basically you drink your drink about 1/2 way down and the girl grabs the glass, refills it to the top (and overflowing) with ice, then tops off your drink with another capfull plus soda.  So you keep drinking 1/2 glasses all night. But with how light they mix the alcohol, you can drink without the tendency to over-drink.

Now for the food photos!  This is som tam, or papaya salad.  Notice the crab pieces.  They were really stinky and none of us actually ate the crab!

Grilled pork.  The sauce was great.

Iced vegetables.

The most famous dish of all: mu krapau (aka: hsiang la fan).  This is a Thai staple dish and we had it every day.  I want to say that while Thai cuisine is very complex, and there are literally thousands of dishes, ordinary, Thais seem to eat the same handful of dishes on a daily basis.

“Dry” pork (deep fried).

This overview shot shows what the table looked like.

We got more pork and beef because one plate each was not enough!

I’m not sure what this is called, but it is a classic Thai dish with mint.  This version was really great.

The place was empty except for us, so we had the undivided attention of 3 waitresses.

The D7000′s D-lighting made all the difference in this backlit shot.  By this time, I’ve honed in on the settings that I like.

Oath asks the girls to pose with him.

They eventually said OK.

This is Oath’s shot of me with the girls.

On the way back to the room I shot this drunk guy sleeping it off on the street (shot through the car windshield at speed).

These Thai DPW workers were filling up potholes – a big problem in this area.

Later we met A-nune and Elle.  Miss Elle had brought me these Thai pastries and they were great!

Elle loves to clown around.  She’s fun to hang out with because she’s like a little kid.

For some reason, I got a bad headache and I had to take some medicine and lay down for a few hours.  Therefore, by the time I was ready to go out, I had missed A-nune’s performance that night.  Oath picked me up from my room and took me to the place where he played last night.

As soon as we got there, the food hit the table.  You can see mu krapau on the left, fried fish at the top and an egg pancake on the right (sorry about the lens shadow).

Miss Elle being her cute self.

Elle shot this one.

This is a green bean noodle salad, and it was delicious!

Now the funny thing is, you never know what any given night will be like when you’re a performer.  On this night, Saturday, not a single customer showed up, while Friday night before had a good crowd.  Go figure!  So, we decided to put on our own show.  A-nune put a guitar in my hands and asked me to play a few songs.  Sure!

Elle had her violin and A-nune was goofing around with it while I played.

Oath set up the mic and we actually had a pretty good impromptu show going on.  The boss lady was pleased to hear us playing together and she was surprised that I know so many Thai songs.

I’m using my tablet to display some lyrics to songs that I don’t often play.

This is the boss lady.  I have more photos of her in Day Three’s installment.

We played until midnight, and had a great time eating and drinking.  Then we headed back, but not without stopping for some more food!

We went to a convenience store with a noodle shop out front.  This area of Chonburi has very few foreigners, so when this gentleman saw me, he politely invited me for a drink.  If you view one of the larger sizes of this photo, you can see that there is a bottle of Hong Thong on the table.  This is what he was drinking, and what he invited me to drink with him.  Being a very experienced Thailand traveler, of course I knew what Hong Thong was and I wasn’t about to drink any of it!  So I bought the bottle of 100 Pipers you see next to it.  Notice that he is using a tablet and doing some kind of work.

This gentleman and his wife were very polite and I decided to ask everyone to move to his table.  He struck up a conversation with Oath and A-nune right away.

These are shots of what everyone ordered (taken by someone (probably Elle) while I was in the restroom).

Fish balls are pretty much the same no matter where you go.

After eating, we were all quite tired and ready to go back home.

But this guy and his wife looked like they were ready to party all night!

Elle took one last parting shot of me, and we hit the road!

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