8 - 9 th Feb, 2013
With Pak Chong literally behind us, we had roughly 230 km in front of us before we’d reach Khon Kaen. The roads themselves in Thailand are good, however, as we all know the traffic rules and load limits can be another story.
Being sugar cane harvest time many of the trucks are filled higher than high. On two occasions during our trip, we witnessed trucks that had come to grief, no bends in the road!...maybe a gust of wind?
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| Not a sugar cane truck |
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| Lunch stop |
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| Khon Kaen |
As we entered Khon Kaen we retrieved Ning Nong from the console to locate our lodgings for the night. And, as she guided us around town, Stray spotted a nice looking yellow building down a lane, not from from Fairy Plaza Shopping Mall.
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| The Money Place Hotel - Khon Kaen |
With the name like ‘The Money Place’, which is opposite the still under construction, orange, ‘The Rich Home’, we couldn’t go wrong ;) A very newish and acceptable hotel indeed. Decorated simplistically and containing a fridge, large soft bed, small dining area, ample bench and storage, sat TV and air con the rooms were more than adequate, spacious and clean. You can find them on Facebook
here.
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| All the rooms opened out onto external walkways/verandas |
We happened to be visiting on a Friday when the walking street night markets are held, only a short walk north from Fairy Plaza on Na Muang Road. I forget exactly which street on the right it is, but you can’t miss the stalls and people and naturally, there’s 7 Eleven on the corner. Not the biggest night market I’ve been to, but plenty of trinkets and reasonably priced (tagged) clothes. Stray had bargained and bought shorts for 350 baht in Pattaya, here they were on the rack for 200 baht.
And food, lots of food, so that’s where we stopped for dinner. Sorry, no photos.
With not much time allocated to our morning activities (I’m already starting to wish we had more time up our sleeves) we asked the girls at reception where we could find breakfast = boiled eggs and if at all possible, toast. They gave us directions, in Thai, back to the same street that hosted the markets the night before with the land mark of ‘???? red’. *Umbrellas, I see red umbrellas, that must be it! We ordered and ate our boiled eggs accompanied with those little donut pastries (which double as soldiers/toast fingers) and coffee strong enough to fuel a small jet plane.
Tummies full, we packed up the car and took a short drive to see the Nine Storey Stupa (or Phra Mahathat Kaen Nakhon) located in Wat Nong Waeng, near Kaen Nakhon Lake.
50 metres square, 80 metres high and adorned with temple bells, it makes a pretty sight and sound. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to go inside, which is a shame after reading
Wiki’s description of its contents.
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| Across the lake |
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| Pedal paddle boats |
We wandered down to the lake and around the park, which was fairly deserted apart from many trees and quite a few sculptures. I’m sure there was much more to see and places to visit, but alas, Nong Khai was awaiting our arrival.
*LIGHT, it was 'red light' as in traffic light - fai daeng! As luck would have it the red umbrellas belonged to the street cafe next to the traffic lights.
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