17 - 25 March 2008

And it gets even madder

After we have recovered from all the strange creations, sculptures and ant nests we're definitely on our way to Laos . My god - of whatever religion - we are really going to miss this country.

We were in Mukdahan at the eastern border with Laos and are on our way, with a couple of detours, to the northern border town of Nong Khai where we'll enter Laos .
On the way there are a number of attractive villages, if only to take a picture of the name sign. They are too far from our route to visit though. The Thai have tried to make the Isan region extra attractive for some (Dutch) travelers by altering the names of some smaller villages. Thus we find at a short distance of each other the villages of 'Kut Bak', 'Pak Mak' and 'Kut Chap'.

We're not affected at all, and over the bigger roads we cycle via Sakon Nakhon to Ban Chiang. At night we eat, like almost always, at one of the many stalls at the night market where you can buy a fresh meal of rice, vegetables and fish or chicken for half a Euro. Healthy, cheap and more or less bacteria-free. The only problem we sometimes encounter is the definition of spicy. We tell the ever smiling chefs in perfect Thai we want our meals 'mai phet', without chillies, and they always nod understandingly. Immediately they start chopping, cutting, stir-frying and cooking enthusiastically. Within ten minutes the unseasoned meal is served with a friendly Thai smile and after the first tasty bite we burn our mouths.
Shit.
'This is mai phet?', we ask whilst the tears roll down our cheeks.
'Yes, yes, yes, mai phet!'
We are of an entirely different opinion. But luckily most of the time all goes well.

My favourite fruit, next to fresh coconuts, is the dragon fruit: a fluorescent pink, round delicatessen which grows on a dragon shaped cactus. After peeling it turns out to be a big juicy ball of white meat dotted with miniscule black pips. The fruit is known to cool the body, which can do me no harm. I can't remember ever having sweated before my thirtieth birthday and my body is very busy making up for it. Even at 25 degrees Celsius or less the salty body fluids run in small rivulets from it, whether I move or not.
We arrive in Ban Chiang, a nondescript village in Thailand 's northeast, but nonetheless world famous under archeologists because of some very special finds. Not for nothing Ban Chiang was declared World Heritage Site number 359 in the nineties of the last century. In this village 5600 year old graves have been found, with many clay pots, tools and jewelry.

The Lakeside Guesthouse is run by Khun Tong, who welcomes us with Thai herbal water and a great conversation. She has worked all of her life in a very good job in the museum and by doing so neglected her Australian husband and child. Now she reaps the sour fruits of this. Her husband left her and she is on her own. But she's built a beautiful place, housing purple dotted geckos and a bunch of toilet frogs who live here for free and refuse to leave.

Apart from Khun Tong, we meet Englishman Rick, his Thai wife Chan and the two American girls Hillary and Jennifer, who, just like Rick, teach English in Lampang. Or American, the difference is bigger than many people think. The four of them are on holiday in their 'own' country, which they celebrate together with us with too much beer and mad card games. It gets really late.

With a wooden head, he will never learn, Peter follows me the next morning to visit the museum and one of the excavation sites. The very practical and splendidly informative museum shows all the treasures from the past, the sheltered excavation site shows us how dedicated, patient and careful archeologists are.

Udon Thani is a town like many in Thailand : very well organised, all streets in neat 90 degrees bends and therefore getting lost is almost impossible. We skip the obligatory temple visits for once; this time we're going somewhere else. To an orchid nursery to be exact, where not only these extraordinary and fragrant flowers are grown for a special perfume, but also something else that exists nowhere else on this planet. Madder than this isn't really possible: leaves of a tea plant that dance to music. Initially we're convinced we're being fooled with a lot of nonsense, which would be nice for a change. But when the lady starts playing a song on her cell-phone, the smallest leaves of the plant start slowly moving to and fro. It resembles a waltz rather than hiphop or headbanging, but nonetheless a mad experience.

From Ban Chiang we cycle further westward, first to the town of Udon Thani , then on to the Phu Phrabat National Park and Historical Park .
Two parks in one. The last kilometres to the park go straight up the mountain, the first climb in weeks. Once on top we are heartily welcomed with cold lemonade and some fruit. The sleeping accommodations, described as dormitories in the travel guide, turn out to be luxurious bungalows in the middle of the forest. This park is comparable with Mukdahan NP; here erosion also caused the maddest rock shapes, balancing boulders disguised as gigantic mushrooms, and natural caves.

On a number of rocks 3000 year old rock paintings can be seen depicting human figures and water buffalos. During two days we take adventurous walks over well-marked rock trails leading through a jungle of bamboo and strangler figs and don't really want to leave any more. At night, in the bungalow, we are on our own in the huge forest and listen to the busy life starting at sunset: uhuing owls, cicadas performing their sound wave, geckos introducing themselves and mad insects impersonating dentist's drills.

But the maddest still has to come, and then you realise that being an earnest Dutch employee you haven't got the faintest clue of all the things that exist outside the walls of your well-known office, which strange and special beings live on this earth and how these beings spend their time. That people build a temple entirely of bottles or in the shape of a royal barge, okay, that's only logical. That nature sometimes takes strange shapes, a la. And it was about time somebody grew a tea plant hybrid which dances to music.
But to build a Buddhist-Hindu sculpture park where humor, satire, serious devotion and mythological symbolism come together, that's too mad for words. And such a sculpture park exists: in Nong Khai, named Sala Kaew Ku Sculpture Park.

It is created by the exiled Laotian Luang Pu Boun Leua Sourirat. The man was a very devout Buddhist during his life who lived celibate and wanted to convey his inner convictions to normal people. Despite a lot of objections he built his dream place, together with many volunteers.

If you're ever fed up spending your holidays in the usual place, think about cycling to Nong Khai, in northeastern Thailand . It's not very far away. This park, and the journey itself, are more than worth the effort.