Now that I know the score, I'm free until my Big Meeting on Wednesday. I wish I could have had things worked out sooner, since I have been sitting around in Bangkok with nothing to do for two weeks. It would have been nice to go somewhere. As it is, I have three days until I have to be back. The easiest quick escape from Bangkok is the resort city of Pattaya, two hours away.

Getting to Pattaya is easy, but I ran into two hickups. On the bus to the Skytrain station, I saw an elevated platform and got off, assuming it was the Skytrain. It wasn't, it was on of Bangkok's many elevated expressways. I had never done anything this stupid before. It would have been a simple Skytrain trip to the Ekkamai bus terminal, probably taking 20 minutes and costing 30 baht. I had to take a taxi, which took an hour in traffic, and cost me 100 baht. Doh!

So many farang go to Pattaya, that all you have to do is walk into the bus station, and everybody directs you to the Pattaya busses. Easy. Unfortunately, the bus spent an hour cruising around looking for more passengers. We finally made it to a busy stretch of highway 3 hours later, when the conductor kicked me off the bus.

The bus said "Jomtien," which is a nice stretch of beach away from the chaos of Pattaya. But they kicked me out in central Pattaya. The motorbike drivers wanted 100 baht to go to Jomtien, as did the Sawngtaews (pick-ups), even though they are supposed to cost 20 baht. I didn't know what to do, and it was starting to rain, so I decided to stay in North Pattaya.

It took forever for my motorbike driver to find the guesthouse I arbitrarily picked from my Lonely Planet. It's clean, though, and has AC, for 400 baht. It's right across from the beach, too, and far away from the insanity of South Pattaya. So, I'll spend the next couple of days engaging in R&R.