Loei Revisited (Dec 2007) Part 2

Loei Revisited (End of 2007 - Early Jan 2008) Part 2 Jan/09/2008

* Notes: Reposted at Webs.com on Nov-28-2010. Moved again in Sep 2019 to neocities.org with some re-coding.

( Dec-30-2007. Continued from Part I)

Raft on Nam-Maan, video by Ken:

Ken did most of the talking:

"Today...
we are heading back!
Look at the view...
We don't have anything like this in Bangkok.
Beautiful, isn't it?"

And blah, blah, blah...

In the evening we came to Kut Pong Shrine, which was of Chinese style and the city's oldest.
It was adjacent to Loei River and the city's public park.

There were tons of fish in the reservoir part of the river.
We had fun feeding the fish. One of them had crooked back.

For dinner we walked across the street to "Mum Aroi" restaurant. "Mum"=corner, "Aroi"=delicious.

We got a table near a fish tank. There was one big red fish with swollen head swimming languidly in the tank.

Ken was interested in that fish. It was also interested in Ken, I guess.

Whenever Ken walked around the tank the fish would immediately "followed" him until it bumped its swollen head at the corner of the tank. It only followed Ken. See the videos!

The food at "Mum Aroi" was good, but Ken had more fun teasing the fish. Once we did see the fish imitate Ken by shaking its head and its entire body vigorously.

Who said fish were dumb? Too bad it happened so fast we did not have time to record this.

According to my cleaning lady, the Thais believe that this kind of fish, called "Plah-maw-see" in Thai, shows the winning lottery numbers on its body and brings fortune to its owner.

Dec-31-2007:
On New Year's Eve our friends took us to Phra That Satja Temple.

"This pagoda, which is similar in design to Phra That Phanom, is 33 meters high and topped with the white 7 tiered umbrella of sovereignty. In addition, there are lotuses in full bloom with 3 layered petals, one meter high encircling the base of the pagoda. The pagoda is located in the area of Wat Lat Pu, Ban Tha Li, which is 2 kilometers from Amphoe Tha Li Administrative Office."

Thailand Travel Information
* Note: In 2019 the page at http://www.allresortthailand.com/loei/loei_attractions.html has been removed.

Minn's dad is from Nakorn Phamom, where Phra That Phanom is located. He said Phra That Satja was built after the one in Nakorn Phanom collapsed.

There were interesting exhibitions outside the temple.

The pic that showed many American soldiers holding a long fish seemed to be well-known.

Later on I searched for more info on the internet: it said the pic was a hoax because such fish could not have appeared in Mae Khong river, and the incident must have taken place somewhere far away from Laos. Nevertheless, what a big fish!

Other interesting exhibitions that gave good info: Left: Weird fruits. Right: Poisonous plants.

* Notes: In Sep 2019 I zoomed the pics of poisonous plants and added them in here. Surprised to know some in my own garden are classified as poisonous.

Left: Introduction to Phra That Satja.

* In Sep 2019 I added the zoomed screenshots below:

There were many people inside the temple. Ken was about to put money into a donation box:

Next, we went to the Thai-Lao bridge over Hueang River. The bridge was opened on Oct-28-2004 during the time of Thaksin's government.

Above: Customs on the Thai side (with zoomed screenshots). We are supposed to obtain permits here before crossing to Laos.

Legally speaking we could not cross the border to Laos as we did not have any permits. But there were so many tourists and all of us just walked past the border.

I could not see any shops or temples on the other side except a road, lots of trees, and two persons in uniforms at their tiny checkpoint. Those two both tried to tell all of us in a very friendly way that we could not get into their country without visas or border passes, and they did not allow us to take any pictures of them or the scene on the Lao side.

Minn's mom "interviewed" one of them in their language, which was also the dialect of most of the "Isan" (= NE Thai) people, and asked what his name was, etc. The conversation sounded friendly and so musical to my ears but I could understand only a small part of it.

Meanwhile, someone also in uniform from the Thai side came riding on a bicycle in a hurry and pleaded all of us Thai tourists not to break the Lao law.

"You are not supposed to cross the border without permits," he said.

All the tourists including us therefore walked back a little bit from the white line on the ground that was called "border", and lingered on around the middle of the bridge and took pictures.

Below: Left photo was taken before we returned to Thai side. Right photo has the sign "Thai border by Hueang River"

We then went to "Kaeng Tone", or Tone creek, which was connected to Hueang River, and took more pictures. Bottom right below shows the border sign.

Laos was just across that small creek! But it is another independent country...
The creek was so clean, we saw swarms of teeny fish and a toad!

After lunch we went to a fresh market that had exotic things. For the first time in my life I saw rat meat, bird meat, mole meat, boar meat, beehives, and caterpillars. I also saw junglefowls (Ghai-pah"'; "Ghai" = chicken, "pah" = jungle, forest, wild). They were neatly packed and wrapped in plastic bags. In one of the pics you can see a creature that looked like a piglet with a very small nose. That was a mole. The price of fresh mole meat (without de-boning) was @250 baht/kg. That bag in the pic would be about 700 baht, which was more than the amount of a Thai worker's three days' minimum wages. Minn's dad said actually these things were illegal!!! In another ordinary fresh market in town I saw several kinds of fried bugs.

See pics taken at this "special" fresh market. 2nd row are pics of rat meat.