Nong Khai - Goodbye Thailand..... For Now!

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We didn’t get much sleep on the overnight VIP bus, but were happy to reach Udon Thani around 9am and find a seat on the hour long local bus to Nong Khai. The journey was pretty uneventful, and on arrival we found a tuk-tuk to drop us in town and checked in to a nice little guesthouse near the river. We spent the afternoon walking around the market before having dinner at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Mekong river.

There were not many tourists in Nong Khai, and the only others we saw tended to be older European men – some with their young Thai girlfriends – who had come to renew their visa by hopping across the river to Laos and back again.

Next morning we hired out a scooter – with Debbie’s lack of coordination/balancing skills we decided Angelo should drive while Debbie sit on the back panicking – to look around town. We headed over to Sala Kaew Ku, a park containing huge sculptures of Buddhist and Hindu gods. The sculptures were quite impressive and the park was pretty much empty meaning we could take uninterrupted photos of the unusual and freaky statues.

We whizzed back into town on the scooter and stopped for lunch at a street food restaurant where a local tried talking to us in Thai – we presume they thought we lived there as they didn’t get many locals eating in their little roadside place!

After some more whizzing about town we found a bar where we grabbed some dinner and drinks while playing pool and observing the tourists in the bar opposite (which we strongly suspected was run by a number of very convincing lady boys) slowly disappearing with a young Thai girl on their arm…

In the morning we returned the scooter and then had breakfast at a German bakery (there seem to be a lot of Germans out here) before heading to the border. We filled out the necessary forms and moved through immigration pretty quickly – they don’t tent to take much notice of the tourists. We got on a bus and rode over the friendship bridge waving goodbye to Thailand, but not forever – we would be back soon!

Deb & Ang

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Photos

Black people toys
Found in the local market, including a dancing 50 cent to usher's music.