Harrumph

I'm having an "I want to be home" day. 95% of the people who you meet out here and really great, or at least totally innocuous. Then every once in awhile there is someone who just *really* gets under your skin. We rented a motobike on Monday at 5 pm for 120 baht per day and the guy said yes it would be fine for us to turn it in Wednesday morning. So we went to return it this morning, and he's humming and hawing over some scratches and thinks that we had an accident (which we didn't) and all of a sudden he wants payment for another full day because we didn't return it at 5 pm the night before. I argued saying that he had agreed that we could turn it in the morning, and at most we'd pay for an extra half day since we did keep it overnight, but he got all pissy, stopped talking to us, and pointed out the fact that he's keeping Darren's passport hostage, so pay or else. That just sucks, you know? It happens here all the time where people see dollar signs and know that they can weasle more out of you. And the reason we'd gone there in the first place was because the first shop we went to took our money and said wait half an hour, then 5 minutes more, then another half an hour. Because they told us we could rent a bike, but they didn't actually have any. They were making us wait, hoping that one would come in. Then said we could take an upgrade, but we'd have to pay more for it - never mind the fact that they'd kept us waiting so long already. So I got our money back and we went to grumpy man (who wasn't grumpy that night). But on the flip side, the woman running our bungalow is really really cool and hooked us up with coffee and bannanas this morning and gave us little parting gifts and lots of hugs and kisses. She's super super cool, and I'm trying my best not to let the old fart ruin my happiness for this morning.

Yesterday on the moto was really awesome. Darren's my hero. We went about 90 km yesterday - round trip to Sappong and back. It was a beautiful drive, and I wish we'd been able to spend more time in Sappong because it's an adorable little town. It took a lot longer to get over there than I thought it would because we had to go up over a mountain pass, and the road was being worked on for a long stretch of it. Lots of loose gravelly stuff on a steep road that was kind of difficult to navigate. But even though Darren hadn't driving a moto for about 15 years, he managed just fine.

We're doing out best to make it back to Chiang Mai today. The local bus costs just 70 baht and takes the same amount of time as the 160 baht private minibuses. The unfortunate thing is that there is NO orderly way of getting on this bus - the bus pulls in, everyone crams on, and if you don't make it, you don't make it. So we missed the one this morning, even though we were there way before most of the rest. We were even willing to stand in the aisle, but then a group of 6 french folk jumped on and the bus was crammed full to the point where they were standing in the stair well. For 4 hours. Now we know to shove up to the bus and hop on, hope to actually get a seat, then worry about our bags later. Wish us luck!