We could hardly believe it when we arrived in Thailand this time, the roads are good, the bus services are not crammed to the seams, there are shopping malls and ATM's everywhere (the capital of Laos is proud to have 150 ATMs as the tourist office will tell you).
Nakhon Ratchassima is a useful base for visiting the Isaan and since we've visited before we feel quite at home. Our first port of call was to Nang Rong to visit a few of the oldest Khmer ruins in Thailand - rather like we did when staying here before. We met a bunch of travellers who wanted to do the same thing so we spent the day with them travelling in the back of a pick up. The temples still boast a number of carvings but it seems that the most interesting pieces have been placed in museums (to protect them?). The better of the temples is Muang Tham where the architecture is more obvious as are the joins used for the huge stone blocks (rather like wood joints in the form of a T or L).
Once again we placed ourselves in the back of unknown person(s) pick up and went into one of Thailands large national parks - Khao Yai. The jungle is always full of strange sounds, particularly the bird which sounds like a speaker or megaphone - unsighted but definitely heard everywhere. A small half day trek through the jungle led us to a waterfall where we tried to find more willing people to drive us back led us on another adventure. The doctors and nurses who took us in their minivan decided that we'd like to accompany them on a 60km trip to see another waterfall before getting back to the visitor centre. One of the younger ones (Nicknamed Apple) also tried to convince us that we should sing something but we declined so she did us the honour (several times).
Our final stop was the English sounding town of Chantabur[y]i but it was in fact more influenced by the French. In anycase now it's part of Thailand and has plenty of colourful wats though its Vietnamese catholic cathederal makes an interesting sight. It's also home to the rabbit in the moon or at least this symbol represents the city - the moon is for serenity, the rabbit we're not sure :)
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