Totally Terrific Thailand!!!!

We crossed the border over to Thailand a fair bit earlier than we had planned, but we simply could not resist the red curries and tom yum soups any more, plus we were sick of the Laos buses and wanted to get our arses on some good old reliable Thai trains, so we quickly and very easily crossed the Friendship Bridge from Vientiane to Nong Khai.

We spent two nights in Nong Khai, checking out a couple of cool little temples but the highlight was a sculpture park built by this ex-monk, non-believer in marriage, guy who created the park in some sort of abstract attempt to display all the different forms of religion in a washing machine mix of sculptures. His messages were a little unclear but the grandure of the sculptures was second to none. There were at least 5 stone sculptures in the park over 20 metres tall and dozens more over 10 metres. They displayed mainly a mixture of buddha and hindu gods but with a twist, some with massive serpents around them, others in unusual positions, a big wheel of life and our favourite, a large stately elephant surrounded by small aggressive dogs doing a range of ‘bad’ things like gambling, drinking, smoking, copulating etc.


The rest of our time in Nong Khai was relatively uneventful except when the old English guy in the room next to us decided to bring a prostitute back to our hotel for some ‘boom boom’. The thins walls gave us a ringside seat, and Shell was not impressed to say the least.

Next we went to Khon Khaen for a quick 1 night stop over, where Shell was excited because she got to feed an elephant some sugar cane. That girl does love elephants. If we spot one in the street we normally have to follow it for at least 20 minutes, with Shell beaming the whole way – it’s pretty cute really. Other than that we had a quick look around the night markets and had a fairly early night.

Ayutaya was where we spent the next couple of nights. This town has a special place in Scott’s heart because it was the first place he went to when he began his travelling escapades about 6 years ago. The city has grown over the last 6 years but the many charming wats scattered around the town had not changed much and we had loads of fun riding around on a bike seeing the many beautiful ruins that are dotted around the country’s old capital.


After that we headed to Lopburi, which is we like to call monkey town. There are hundreds of monkeys that live in one of the temples in the centre of town and because of Buddhist belief of not killing creatures (combined with the income the monkeys bring through tourism), they are allowed to pretty much roam free. This puts them in the same category as you see many of the animals throughout the small villages (part domesticated and part wild) but none the less still very cheeky and amusing.

Needless to say we had a great time watching the monkeys eat, swing, fight and play, sometimes with each other and sometimes with us. They climbed up both Scott’s and Shelley’s backs on several occasions, elevating themselves to our heads where they proceeded to groom and pick at our hair. They especially loved Shell’s dress and Shell enjoyed swinging them around playfully. It was always the little ones that wanted to play, the big ones had obviously outgrown that type of behaviour – unlike us :) You have to be careful though, once Shell swung one of the little monkeys a bit fast and it’s mother came up and showed us her teeth unappreciatively. Also the monkeys sometimes want to keep playing when you don’t and like to continue to jump on you even though they know that you don’t want them to. Little guys are so cheeky and human like it’s almost unbelievable.




So then after monkey town we spent one night in Bangkok where we did too much shopping for Scott’s liking (he is so not a shopper), went back to our favourite Bangkok bar for a few drinks and a couple of games of pool, then took the bus the next morning back to Kho Chang where we plan on chilling out for the rest of our trip, which is less than a week away – oh well it’s been a good ride :)