problem with to_ascii() function in version 8.3.3

Hi,

i have a problem with to_ascii() function in version 8.3.3. I have
read Mr. Gonzales's post at
http://groups.google.com/group/pgsql.general/browse_thread/thread/f74650e3b3248ff0/9f36fb072ea1dc98?lnk=gst&q=to_ascii#9f36fb072ea1dc98
and he managed to use to_ascii function with following command
sequence:

create table chartest ( c text);
insert into chartest (c) values ('á');
select to_ascii(encode(convert_to(c,'LATIN9'),'escape'),'LATIN9') from
chartest;

His output was:

to_ascii
----------
a

but i'm getting:

to_ascii
----------
\341

What am I doing wrong? How to_ascii function should be used?

Regards
Pavel Arnošt