3 Jul, 2006

Hello.

You may remember that we were about to have some visitors - friends of a friend. Well, this weekend has turned out to be rather bizarre! Let me tell you.....

Marick, a friend of ours in Bath, wrote to me on myspace.com and said that his friends, Julia and Mike, were about to come to Thailand on holiday, and said he would put them in touch with me if that was ok. I said yes, and soon after that I got a message from a Julia, saying she was coming to thailand on holiday. So I told her that Marick had told me that she was coming, and said that if she and her boyfriend (Joe, not Mike) wanted to come and visit one weekend and see the real side of Thailand, they were welcome. So that set the cogs in motion, and it was all arrranged that they would come last weekend.

They had changed their plans by the time the weekend came, so they said they couldn't make it, but then last week I got another message saying they'd love to come this weekend instead. So as we were just planning to stay at home this weekend, I told them to come and stay.

It was all set for Saturday - they were going to come to Prachinburi after going to the market in Bangkok. They rang me at 6 p.m., though, and had just got back from the market, and Julia was feeling off-colour, so they asked if they could come the next day (yesterday) instead. I was still really keen to meet them, so said that was fine - Maerick said he'd known them for years, so I was sure they were lovely people. Bought lots of veg and sorted out the spare room for them to stay.

So. yesterday rolled around, and they rang me at 11a.m. to say they were just getting on the bus. The journey usually takes a couple of hours, so around 1p.m. I went to the bus station to meet them. 2 p.m. came and went, no sign of them. Then they called and said they had been sitting on the bus on the middle of nowhere, going nowhere, for an hour, and had then had to get off the bus and change to another one which was leaving in 20 minutes. They were quite bashful, and said that if I'd been messed around too much they would go back to BKK. By this time, though, they were almost here, we'd bought food and were all ready for them, so they got on this last bus and rang 20 mins later to say they were in Prachinburi.........by a 7-11 shop. There are 2 7-11s in town, so Rob went to one and I went to the other........no sign of them. It was pouring with rain, so they must be sheltering somewhere, but we could not find them. They had no phone either, so the only contact was when they rang my mobile every so often with an update. But every call seemed to leave out some piece of information that I only thought to ask them once the call was over! So we had to just wait for them to ring back each time.

It had now been about half an hour of trying to figure out where they could be, and we even thought they'd maybe gone to Petchaburi, Pranburi.........but Joe checked and they were assured they were in Prachinburi. So I was trying to think what to do, and then it dawned on me! I was right outside a little shop that's owned by the parents of Minny, one of our students, and they speak excellent English. Joe was calling me from a Thai bus driver's phone, so I put Minny's dad on the phone, he spoke to the Thai guy and it was established where our visitors, Marick's friends, were. They were a little way out of town, and so they were put in a tuk-tuk and brought to Minny's shop. Phew.

So, we met Julia and Joe, commiserated about the nightmare journey, and took them to our place.

This is the strange part (well, the strangEST.....) - sitting chatting, Rob asked them "So, how do you know Marick?"

And back came the answer........yes, you've guessed it......"WHO'S MARICK?"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you know what had happened? This Julia, who was sitting in our house, was coming to Thailand, and thought she would search for some people in Thailand on myspace.com to ask for any recommendations. I had replied, and invited her to stay, thinking she was Marick's friend Julia, as he had just alerted me that someone of that name was coming to Thailand. So I assumed that the 2 Julias were the same person (geddit?), AND THEY'RE NOT AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was just the weirdest moment! (There was the Mike/Joe issue, I admit, but I just thought that maybe Julia was with Mike when Marick last saw them but that she now had a new boyfriend.)

So we all sat there in shock and realised what had happened! We laughed!

And the evening turned out really nicely. We cooked, Joe watched with enthusiasm, and it was a great dinner, with bottles of red wine and lots of guitar-playing and singing from all 4 of us. The night wore on and it got to half past 1.........best go to bed. So Joe and Julia had the spare room, and we said - what a funny, lovely thing to have happened!

So..........thankyou, Marick...........I think?????!!! That ranks among the oddest things ever to have happened to me!