By Graham K. Rogers

I allowed myself to be dragged out of town for the weekend with part of the trip being a planned visit to a school for the blind. A number of student projects that I help with (writing problems usually) are aimed at providing solutions for those with disabilities and I have visited local classes of deaf students to gather first-hand information. What I see may be useful in guiding students to focus solutions. The deaf students, for example, are amazing communicators if anyone takes the time to look at what they are trying to say: with facial expressions, with hands, with sounds.

I was asked a couple of weeks ago if I would like to go with the group to stay at a colleague's house. As I had been to his father's house on the beach (south of Hua Hin) before, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Along with the invitation, there was mention of the word, Wine (of which there had been plenty last time), but also bunk beds, which I let pass. And that visit to the school for the blind. An overnight stay is an overnight stay out of Bangkok, so the idea took root.

I checked a couple of days before and the date was confirmed (and I confirmed I had some wine) but the starting time of 07:00 was hard to take. An overnight stay out of Bangkok is so rare for me these days, however, I was willing to make the effort.

It was still dark when I woke ten minutes before the alarm was set (do Apple build in a secret nudge to the iPhone alarm?). After breakfast and a shower, I grabbed a taxi and arrived at the meeting point a few minutes early. Not many did. We left at 07:35 after gathering all the lost souls and loading gifts for the school into the two personnel carriers that had been hired, plus one that my colleague had brought.

The first planned stop was a temple visit at Amphawa. Conversation in the bus was mainly about food with words like rice, squid, shrimp and crab being discussed intently. While we were en route the food was ordered for delivery to the evening destination. With all that sea food I was glad that one of the bottles I had brought was white.

At that time of day, even on a Saturday on the edges of Bangkok, through to Samut Sakhon, traffic is beginning to thicken but some new roads have made it easier. As we entered Samut Sakhon, I noticed a sign at the side of the road warning motorists to be careful of crossing turtles. Entering the municipal area of the province, there are many factories for seafood processing, especially canneries. The Immigration Office is kept busy as much of the workforce comes from Burma, with a few others from Loas and Cambodia.

Leaving Samut Sakhon we kept to the main road out of Bangkok for a short distance before turning off for Samut Songkhram and stopping at a gas station for a meeting with the other vehicles in the group: bathroom visits, food, drinks; then a phone call. It was the wrong location. We all piled back into the bus for the next service station 500 metres down the road: bathroom visits, food, drink. . . . Some of the rice bags were put into a fourth vehicle that had joined us to spread the load.

At Amphawa the buses were parked up for the visit to the famous temple. Most went to make offerings to the monks. I sat this out with my colleague. One worker collecting flowers already donated -- taking them to the main part of the temple -- dropped a lotus bud. A woman passing picked it up, wai-ed and placed it on the steps of a small pagoda.

Just as we were leaving, traditional dancers began a performance. The musical instruments were almost all entirely made of local woods.

As we left the temple, we were driven over a railway line. To my right was the station I had visited a couple of months back. To the left a market with the tracks so totally covered with produce you would not realise regular train services ran there (8 times a day) until the arrival of the slow moving train when all the stallholders moved their produce and hold the awnings back for the train to pass. Within two minutes, the railway has disappeared again.

We passed Petchburi and a quick bathrooms stop at a service station (now with 3 personnel carriers and two cars in the group) fooled me into thinking it was lunchtime. Not too long after we turned off the highway onto the road for Cha-Am and Hua Hin, eventually turning into a tiny soi off the main Hua Hin street and stopping outside the tiny entrance to a restaurant.

Through the gates, it was like entering a rain forest with dense flower growth. Tables were squeezed in between the trees and the customers squeezed into their seats. During lunch we were joined by bees flying round -- just a few but enough to disturb some of the company.

The meal was of noodles, produced in several colours rather than the usual white. These were accompanied by dishes of extras -- some quite spicy -- and the whole was followed by Thai desserts.

The usual photo-op ended the meal and we headed back onto the road, but not to where I had expected.

A few minutes later, we turned off into a small hotel complex (Baan Rajadamnoen) and my colleague pulled the vehicle into a space in front of a house there. A family business, but the house was private.

A while later one of the party from the university brought me a piece of paper with login information. I was on the internet in short time, sort of. Having lived in the big city for a while, it was not easy to deal with the sort of service that those in the provinces have to accept. A maximum of 1024 was shown on the paper, which I presume is download speed, with upload of 512. That may be a good day. It was raining which somehow always manages to cut signals here. The information displayed showed me that the Wi-Fi was on, but there was no internet . . . some of the time. I switched to the personal hotspot on the iPhone but that was little better.

If you are reading this, somehow I managed to get online.

See also: Off the Tech Track (2): Dhamikkayawittaya School for the Blind and Home

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.