The River of Tranquility
Trip Start
Feb 04, 2007
1
11
107
Trip End
Mar 09, 2008
Nong Khai,
Thailand
Saturday, March 10, 2007
As a result, we are spending a few days in this border town (on the Thai side) prior to heading into Vientiane. If we come back to Australia and fail to rave about Nong Khai then we've had a heck of a trip. We picked the Mut Mee Guesthouse at random, and found a tropical resort paradise on the banks of the Maekong River. Its as if Club Med operated a resort and then decided to charge just $6 a night for it. Its so good and so tranquil than we happily overlook the squat toilets and icy showers and are even coming to love them.
Dogs riding scooters
Its taken more than a week, but we finally took the logical step of ordering a pad thai in thailand (to compare with the 1100 consumed in Sydney). Notably, we didn't order just pad thai of course... but also a pork belly stirfry and soup and... and... We'll be rejoining the West a little heavier as long as most meals cost a dollar yet could comfortably command $20-30 if served in Sydney. And after a late evening bike ride we are sure to leave room for sticky rice and mango.
Our bike riding skills have lost a bit of polish through 20 years of non use, but the Thai's don't care. Through an appalling bit of loading i had 7 litres of bottled water in the excellently effeminate pink basket over my front wheel which did horrible things to steering, balance, and one's general poise. And no matter how many times we lurched in front of other vehicles they resisted the urge to use the horn. Look, I'll confess, its a trait I'm deliberatly and consciously trying not to pick up. Don't want to come back too different.
Nong Khai has the odd expat here, and the whole experience does stir a few "what if" thoughts. If you can't afford a house in Sydney, don't fret, you could still be infeasibly wealthy here
Mut Mee Guest House
. And its Thailand, not India, so your Western car could tear across the plains with little risk of damage. Being 600km or so north of Bangkok the weather is a little more temperate and the presence of people who came for a 2 day stop and are still here 5 and 6 months later seems entirely logical.On the tourist front, we took our bikes to a sculpture park. Intended as a monument to religious belief and understanding, its too higgledy piggledy to be understood at any deep narrative level. But at the level of the basic male need to make pointless stuff and show it off, its deeply fulfilling. The sculptor used concrete ("because its cheap and there's lots of it"), and started of with 2ft high dogs but progressed to an astounding 35m high 7 headed serpent. Its in a state of disrepair, and with their 8 visitors per day only being asked for a 30c suggested donation toward its upkeep and restoration hopes are grim for explanatory signposts in the near future.
In quick time this has become a little place we'll come back to. Maybe even get my hands into the concrete.
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Nong Khai is a beautiful little town. They say it is the place where you'll adjust to the Laos way of living - and now that I am writing this entry from Laos (yes, I'm a bit behind) it absolutely is! We arrived at our sensational guest house and I almost had a heart attack when French baguettes were on the breakfast menu. Baguettes and jam - what a fantastic breakfast. Iain was happy to discover they also had Lipton tea. [Small things....].
We were searching for sunscreen all over the place and finally we found some
On our bike ride
. Just in time for our epic biking adventure. Welll we thought it was sunscreen. It said UVA and UVB all over the front and then had lots of Thai writing on it. The decision was made that it must be sunscreen when we opened it and it even had that sunscreen smell. So I lathered it on, a few extra layers on my nose (just to be safe - because we are on our anti-malaria medication now which means we are extra sun-sensitive). Well, we would have had more protection lathering ourselves up with cooking oil. Apparently it was just something called UVA and UVB. I think the Thai writing said "don't buy this if you want protection from UVA and UVB"... My nose is burnt! I have freckles I never knew I had. Even Iain's beard was peeling. Not good.If one of us is contracting Dengue fever or Malaria from a mosquito, we have both agreed it will be me. We go out to dinner and I will be covered head to toe in Deet based repellants, ask the waiter to move the burning anti-mozzie thingy to my feet and wear long pants and a long top. By dessert my toes are itching with a zillion bites and I have RSI from shooing them away from my face. Iain, on the other hand, goes to dinner in whatever.. and is not sure what I am complaining about. I woke the other morning with some fresh bites and was complaining (as you do.. hey they are really annoying) and Iain said "yeh, one was bothering me in the night so I shooed it to your side and then it never came back".... I am the human mosquito magnet and whilst Iain is the "canary" when it comes to gastronomic risks, I proudly mark my place in this relationship as Iain's malaria defense shield. [This will be less funny if I contract it...]
All in all, Thailand was fantastic. How could it be anything but. It was great to go back to a country and get to a different place and see just how incredibly different every little piece of the country is. I suppose it is obvious - Sydney to Darwin to Mollymook, etc. But still.
