Category: Tours/Guides

Sawadee Khrap

Before we left the Paradise – Kay wanted to get some shots at the pool.   Next we headed for Nong Khai and  made our first stop at Sala Keoku – Wow – huge statues and displays – quite impressive – and then on to the crocodile farm, next door, for a quick visit.   It wasn’t open but Kay was invited in and took some photos of the tanks –   Then on to the Friendship Bridge – Nong Khai , I think there are 3 such bridges to Lao along the Mekong River boundary.  Here the river looked quite wide but further up the way, going to our next destination, Chiang Khan, we were shocked to see how low it actually was.  I’ve been reading about the furor over the Chinese blocking the river with their dams and causing many problems down stream.  The sign above, not too far out of Nong Khai,  is one of the places where Mekong Naga Fireballs can be seen.  Next we visited Chiang Khan, a historic little town that the Thai’s love.  Lots of Teak buildings – nice, quiet, rustic and friendly place – and then on to Loei where we stayed at the Loei Palace Hotel for the night –  I stayed here 8 years ago on my first trip to Nong Khai – nothing changed but they did replace the carpet with tile – much better.

P.S.  Couldn’t do anything because I was with Kay –  But on my phone I have Grinder and Hornet, the 2 most popular gay chat sites, from Khon Kaen to Loei, I received calls from more than 28 local guys – maybe next trip I’ll go alone – meet some new friends.   

Ciao

Sawadee Khrap

Great breakfast at Anothai Hotel, on the road at 7AM – first stop – The Ancient City at Chum Phae – Interesting but leaves a lot to your imagination – they really don’t look like real bones,  I thought they looked more like reproductions but you can’t get close enough to really find out. The local area has no indication that any thing exist here and it’s hard to figure out how they knew how where to dig. –  you decide for yourself.

From here we headed to the King Cobra Village of Thailand past Khon Kaen on the way to Udon Thani.  Here’s where the Google Maps really helped – asked several locals for directions to the place and each sent us on a wild goose chase – they just didn’t know their own neighborhood.  They had boas and cobras and put on a hour free show, just asking for donations – nice.  Finally we stopped at the Paradise Hotel in Udon Thani.  We have been covering a lot of territory and so only stopped at a couple of venues – going off the main highways to get to these places takes a lot of time and I didn’t  want to drive at night but still make it fully around in the 4 days allotted.

Ciao

Sawadee Khrap

We started out at 7 AM passing  Lampang, Den Chai, Uttaradit, Si Satchanalai on the way to Sukhotai.   Didn’t stop for any photos until we got into the Sukhotai area –  Had lunch at The Legendha Resort – Great place , good food.   This is also a nice shot of Kay at the resort.

Before we left on the trip I had bought over 700 Baht of Atlas, and road maps and we also stopped at a TAT office ( Tourism Authority of Thailand) and got their maps.  They all were terrible – The only safe way to travel in Thailand is with GOOGLE MAPS running on your cell phone, here is my setup in the car, a LIFESAVER.  I also run a APP called TRACKS, it keeps a record of our path marked as the blue dot at the lead of the red line  – center right.  This photo was taken much later in our trip but It does shows the program working.   This also let me GPS the photos as my cameras don’t have GPS capabilities – Lightroom and Track’s GPX tracklogs did the trick, synchronizing with the camera’s date stamps when I get back home.       Side note:   They wanted 25,000 Baht to install an auto Garmin GPS system and it was SLOW – I mean slow – my 16,000 Baht Samsung Galaxy A5 was at least 5 times faster and I can take it from the car when I leave.  With DTAC I have full internet and phone capabilities.         Several times the maps showed road or highway numbers that were completely wrong and many times there were no roadside markers or signs to indicate what road you were on – leaving the main highways and trying to use shortcuts on lesser side roads would be impossible using the maps or looking for signs and at night – forget it.  With Google maps we drove right to each location – No Problem . 

Here are shots taken during the day – not in actual order as we were using 2 cameras I didn’t take the time to sort them out.  We did visit the Sukhotai Historical Park, Phara Buddha Chinaraj National Museum, and a small Wat next door with boys honoring  – Muay Thai.

That evening we stayed at the Anothai Hotel  in Phitsanulok  –  small but actually the best place we stayed for the entire trip – Amazing 600 Baht for the room, including breakfast – quite, clean and everyone very friendly   – I highly recommend it.

Ciao