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Hi again eveyone,
Sorry for the tardyness of our emailing, but we haven't had a great amount of free time or any good places with reasonable email facilities. Right now we are sitting at an internet cafe on thebeach at sihanoukville - beautiful, but i will get to that in a minute. I will start were the last email ended.
We headed off the wild and wacky sculpture park in Nong khai, The guy who started the park was a laotian man who started his own religion that was a combination of hindu and buddhism and he has quite a following now in this region of thailand. he fled lao just before the communists took over. Anyway the scuptures are pretty amazing some ar 45m high, and very intricate. The crazyiest thing though was heading into the musum section of the park where er had a guide show us the deceased mans body that the guide proudly stared was 11 years old with no formuline, no airconditioning etc. to see his black body in this glass sacophagus with flassing lights and strange fake flowers was pretty fucked up... sorry no other way to explain it. But it still
Monks - Victory Monument Vientiane
Monks laughing at their friend who had fallen asleep downstairs - cute got worse, then who showed us framed pictures of the blood he coughed up while he was dying. I was pretty keen to get out of there. strange.
Then we did head off for the river cruise after spending the afternoon on the semi perminent beach beside the friendship bridge to lao. The beach appears in thelow season when the the waater level drops to display the sand of the river. Shacks set up with tables and chairs selling food and beer. Thais are very good at knowing what people want. scotty played with somelocal kids in the water for alittle while - very cute.
River cruise was interesting originally they said there was no room because it had been fully booked by a group of muslims, but they ended up squeezing us onto anopther table with a scotish guy, who had just had his heart broken by a thai prostitute - interesting listening to his stories. THe muslim group turned up 1 1/2 late for the ctruise and by that stage all their food had been sitting ion the table for over an hour. very strange. Went out with the scotish guy to pub after and scotty
New Friends in Yasothon
This is as far as we made it from the bus stop... got completely wasted, first time on the trip.
Next day we did a contiki tour of lao - we went to vientiane for the day!!! had fantastic french cakes and baquettes. met some norwegion people who were christian missonaries over in lao doing volunteer work, i didn't know till after and i would never have guessed. THey were pretty funny and they showeed us around a bit. went to victory monument, a little island in the middel of the mekong and the market, then pretty much headed back to thailand. Lao is verry nice - what we saw of it anyway.
Fri 11th May
Left nong khai and headed to Yasothon for the rocket festival that starts today, 9hrs of buses. arrived in the dark with no accomodation and was adopted by a group of young people that run a restaurant and bar. They tookl scotty off on a motorbike to look for accomodation and i sat and drunk and ate some food with them. hehehehe Ended up spending almost all nigth there drinkning and eating with them, they were great people and onther group there invited us out with them the next night.
Sat 12th May
Today is the parade day of the festival. Walked the street and saw all the crazy floats and lady boys and traditional dances, it was very interesting, but sooooo hot. So excited to find this rare grounded green rice dessert in the afternoon, strange but yummy. Met two other travellers the first farang (foreigners we had seen in yasothon) this was not a tourists festival. One was a pom and the other from the US. Lovely guys, very funny. They told us about this dinner for all the locals out near where they launch the rockets, that night. We headed off on foot at about 6opm to find this dinner and meet up with them. Wlked for about 1 1/2 hrs though areas that would make my mum worry. Asked a million people for diections in very poor thai. Finall y we find the place and it is this amazingly formal dinner for all the dignitires of the town. hehehe we were in shorts and tshirts, with no tickets, so we walked back into town to the food stalls. Here we met to exchange studnets (US and German) who had been living iwht thai families for a whole year and
Traditional Isarn Food
BBQ chicken and Sticky Rice - not so much fibre were going home next week. learnt a lot about thai culture and things, really interesting girls, very grown up. Middle class thai families are very strict on their daughters and these girls weren't allowed many freedoms, home by 6pm, chaperoned to 7-11 crazy stuff.
During the festival evenings there are 48 stages set up along the main st where eachof the teams that builds rockets sing and dance to really bad and super loud thai music. The stages are staggered along the road about 5 m apart and so the noise ont he street is deafening. I had to wear earplugs whilst walking along the street, it was so load it made your ears hurt. On most of the statges there were more people dancing on the stage that infront of the stage. very funny.
Sunday is the big festival day where they launch the rockets. The rockets were amazing, it takes about 10 people to carry the big ones out the the lauching area, then for about 15 min they launch all these smaller ones and then finally they launch the massive one and it goes soooooo high and fast. Pretty cool. we got some good phots
of the rockets. The rockets are launched to tell the gods to bring the rains. Which funnily enough most thai people are scared of. the night before we had tried to go to an open air music concert by big arse a pretty big thai band. but it was raining so the band hadn't turned up. Anyway about an hour later the band turned up but they had already pulled down half the stage and packed it up, so hthere was no concert. 😊
On a sadder note while we were having lunch around this artificial lake a young thai teenage drowned whilst swimming with his mates. for about 12-20min. three guys were searching the warter for him, and eventually threy found the body using fishing nets. Pretty full on seeing him pulled from the lake. Its easy to forget that in these land locked regions, people aren't very good swimmers.
One of the craziest things at the festival was the mud fights, if your rocket doesn't work you end up inthis massiva mud patch and your whole team is there with you. Very funny watching these people frolick around in this brown mud, and if you wastched for
The losers- Rocket Festival - Yasothon
If your rocket doesn't work as desired this is where you end up, lots of fun was being had in the mud... too long you were likely to get some muddy hands wiped on your face, or mud tossed towards you. Scotty got mud on his face but left it there for most of the day and theen had some interesting sunburn lines later that night.
We left yasothon for the temple of prasat preah vihear which is techinically in cambodia but easier to reach from thailand. we busted our arese to try and get there by 3pm which is last entry time, but we missed by about an hour. SO we got up eatly yhe next day and hired moto taxis (motorbike drivers were you sit on the back of the motorcycle). It was about 30 km to the national park entrance. THis was the scariest 40minutes of my trip to date. doing 100km/hr ont he back of a motorcycle with no helmet - sorry mum. Had my eyes shut for most of it. Arrived at the majestic temple which was built over 1000 years ago, and it is at thetop of a mountian and in some sections only meters from the edge of teh cliff. There are meant to be majestic views of the surrounding lowlands cambiodia and thialand,
Prasat Preah Vihear - Temple
Went early in the morning - this temple on top of a hill is reknown for its magestic views of surrounding thailand and cambodia - hehehe shame but it was very foggy so we have tehse eery photos of temple ruins in teh clouds. This was alsdo the spot that pol pot and the khmer rouge had there last battle in 1998, before surrendering.
Then we headed of to cambodia. (only did 60km/hr onthe way back at my request, difference betweeen instant death and injury). The trip to cambodia sounded much easier then it actually was. see next entry...
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