Nong’s final decision to move her shop into the hotel was a weight off the women’s minds, but only one of them. Problems and missed deadlines seemed to be coming at them from all sides. Ross was able to advise in a general way and Craig helped with the Internet café, but he realised that Soom probably knew more about mass hardware installation than he did. His main input was to be able to debunk the outrageous excuses the engineers used for not being able to do what they had promised, on time, but once they realised that there was a man there who understood computers and the terminology, they did buckle down.
Soom had known that they were lying but had not had the self-confidence to face down an older man. It was a common problem born out of Thai society’s respect for an older person or
