Friendship

Hi,
As I predicted, it was a day of adventure. We spent most of the day out of town. Our Retirement Visas have been renewed for another year and we can come and go as we like. Pretty much, the last major piece of biz we have to deal with for a while. Whew. But there's more.
The song most of you got was "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone. See, I knew you knew that one. This one is hard:
"I crashed in the jungle while tryin' to keep a date with my little girl who was back in the states. I was __ __ __ __ ,
afraid and alone, tryin' to figure a way to get a message back home..." Hint: This one goes way back. Mostly spoken word, R&B tune.
After we dealt with immigration, we went into Mae Sai to look around. It was nearing lunch time so we started looking for some place to eat as we made our way towards the border. There was a place we wanted to show Blue and Ming. It's an antique store that deals with very old Buddhas and other symbolic objects. We saw many beautiful pieces and I picked up two amulets that are over one hundred years old.
We found a place for a nice lunch and then went into the shopping maze with a new intensity. It gets a bit repetitious after while, seeing the same items in every other shop, but if you look hard enough, you find neat stuff. We started fading a little after 2pm and started the trip back home.
That's when things started getting interesting. There are a series of roadblocks on the highway. South bound seems to be for preventing illegal Burmese from going south, and catching possible smugglers. They usually wave us through, but today was different. Not only did they have me pull over, we had to get out and they went through all our things. I'm not sure what they expected to find. We came to the conclusion that they were waiting for us to act nervous or try to hide something. Didn't happen, nothing to hide. Near the end of the search, as they looked under the back seat, I told the lead officer 'See, no Burmese'. He had to laugh and sent us on our way.
We went a little farther down the road and saw what looked like another checkpoint. It wasn't in the usual place. It was a detour, and they were turning the traffic around. Oh fine. How will we get home? Fortunately we keep a map in the glove box and Blue acted as navigator and we took alternate roads and finally made it home. We left Mae Sai at 2:00 and got home at 4pm. Our trip took an extra hour of winding roads. We called Boot and found out that some farmers were protesting and closed the road. The one good thing that came out of this, we got to see more Thailand.
Needless to say, I'm tired, so I'll be signing off now. Have a Wacky Wednesday.

Peace,
Danny

"Friendship consists of only one soul;
inhabiting two bodies."
~Aristotle

Gettin' Funky, Thai Style

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