Welcome to Mukdahan

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So off we went for a new Thailand adventure, off half way across the country up to the very North East of Thailand for the next 5 months..

So me and Gabby (my friend who I have been placed with) said bye to the rest of our friends and headed off in a minibus with four other people who were been placed in the North East also and two of our agencies workers who would be taking us.

We set off at about 3pm on Friday and by 8pm we were no-where near the hotel we were meant to be staying in so we had to change plans and find alternative accommodation. We ended up pulling up at what was advertised as a ‘hotel’ to find a bunch of huts in the middle of nowhere with about 100000000 mosquitoes buzzing around, the manager sent us off to get food while he debugged the place. When we got back to check into our rooms me and Gabby decided that neither of us were brave enough to sleep in a hut on our own and risk becoming part of a horror movie so we decided to share the ‘love shack’. It was pretty scary but we finally managed to get some sleep despite a Thai band noisily playing all night.

The next morning we woke up to find that outside was a nice river and that by daylight the love shack was actually in quite a nice location.

At 8am we were off again for the rest of our journey and after another 4 and a half hours we arrived in our new home of Mukdahan..

According to the lonely planet travel guide which has practically been our bible over the last few weeks Mukdahan is, I quote… ‘a humdrum town’. First impressions it seemed like a deep south American town, like something from sweet home Alabama, apart from the fact that no-one can really speak English.

The first apartments we looked at were not really what we had been hoping for but we managed to find somewhere we liked; we are living in next door rooms. It is kind of like hotel rooms, with a massive bed, free wifi, aircon, fridge and tele etc so it should be okay.

After spending our Saturday night and Sunday day exploring what Mukdahan had to offer we soon realised we might be having to make our own entertainment. But all in all, the place seems okay and compared to some people who are literally stuck in a tiny little village I think we got it quite good.

We managed to find a few bars, one called ‘The Picking Cowboy’ looks alright, it’s a country bar so might need to get me a cowboy hat and boots, but apparently they do great burgers so that’s good with me. We also found a swimming pool at a nice hotel which they said we can use, so luckily we will be able to finally work on the tan at the weekends. Theres also a nice market, lots of food places and most importantly at the Big C supermarket and Tesco Lotus they have a KFC and Dairy Queen so at least we wont have to eat rice every day!!!

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