This is the clong in Hatyai, reflecting the
houses that I took a pic of before.

                                                             Magic plastic. It's fantastic.

                 A wall and some trees. That black stuff, as you know, is mold. Black, deadly mold. Oh my.

So, what happened was, I found a nice clean-looking cafe and, since there were no customers, I went in. I thought I could possibly find myself a decent cup of coffee and maybe even get on the internet. Fat chance. The delightful girl there tried hard to get my laptop online, to the point that she even put her android in front of me and said I could use that. Well, that didn't do much good, since I needed to download stuff off my own laptop and couldn't do so without a connection. But, I drank the coffee. It was ok. And, I told her I'd be back.

Later, I wandered around and found a ticket agency, so bought a bus ticket back to Ipoh. Then, I went back to see Bua at her coffee shop. I noticed she had cake, so I got a piece and invited her to sit with me, since there weren't many customers, just her family members around. It turned out that she made her own cakes. It was her dream, since she was a little girl, to make cakes and sell them. We talked about food and she asked if I knew what Miso was. (I actually didn't know exactly what it was but later found out that it's either beans or grains in a mashed down form that you can add to soup stock, etc.) She showed me her Miso and I asked her if she could make me some. So, she threw in some tofu and seaweed and I was overjoyed. It was probably the most healthy meal I'd eaten since leaving Malaysia.

Bua wouldn't let me pay for the soup because she said it wasn't on the menu. She invited me to go with her to deliver some cakes to a hospital, to tour the town and to pick up some cake ingredients. We went to a Macro, which had absolutely everything imaginable and unimaginable. I was quite surprised to see the stuff they had! I mean, everything! Then, on to her brother's drink shop. After that, we went out for dinner. She ended up inviting me to stay at her place the next time I was in Thailand. She said she had a spare room.

So, in a way, I was sorry to have to leave Hatyai. I got to see a different side of it from an air-conditioned car. Neverthless, I have to admit, getting across the border back into Malaysia felt good. Something about being able to speak English and something about the familiarity of the country is just reassuring in some way.

Back at the house in Bandar Baru Jaya, both of the dogs were there to welcome me! That could only mean that Tim had dropped by. Still, there was no evidence that he'd brought the kids. They had stayed at a hotel in Kampar. But, the female dog had been in the back yard when Tim came. I guess she is starting to feel more at home at my house. (Previously both dogs took off back to Tim's house for three days! I had to go get them.)

Home sweet Home. Where the buffalo literally roam. In fact, next morning, when I took the dogs for their daily constitutional, there were several big old buffalo right in the bush beside our path, so we all had to turn back and take our walk into the housing development.