Another, unexpected day we stay at Udon Thani.

Another, unexpected day we stay at Udon Thani.

First of all, there was no update this morning since the hotels internet service was down.
It was chilly though, this morning but very sunny and it soon warmed up. Mornings in the North East of Thailand bring about cold weather, like 15C.

Here's a view from our hotel room. We had breakfast and left to visit some relatives of Chot.

A short while afterwards we visited the main Ford dealership in Udon Thani. Here's where our not so planned extra day in Udon took shape.

Since Chot and Kob work as insurance brokers for cars and motorbikes, they know the major car dealers in the region very well. My wife and me have been talking for a long time already about upgrading our car from the current Ford Ranger to a Ford Everest. We still have to pay 8 more months before our current car is ours.

However! Chot and Kob and my wife were under cahoots and have been talking since a few days about the possibility of getting an Everest for us, so today we went to Ford in Udon to see what can be arranged. I was reckoning with a 10 or 15% chance of us leaving with a new car but guess what............ Yep, right, tomorrow we will pick up a brand new Ford Everest. Without any papers at hand, they gave us a very good deal , thanks to Chot talking to the owner and we got a return value for our current car that exceeded my expectation.

Tomorrow at 9.09 am we're supposed to drive out of the Ford shop in Udon with our new car!

Normally in Thailand one needs to look for a 'good day' to pick up a new car or house or you name it, sometimes having to wait weeks on an end, but surprise, surprise, tomorrow is by all parties involved considered a good day, even by my wife and my Father in law, so we can actually leave tomorrow with the new car. How convenient!

Watch out for pix of the old and new car tomorrow, same place, same time!

Since we didn't leave the Ford place until 2.30 pm, we decided to stay in Udon for one more night rather than driving to Sakhon Nakhon, where Chot and Kob live, a 2 hour drive and than come back in the morning again.

For all the George's, Rob's and Thomas', at last you guys will be able to stretch your legs in the back seat. It will be also a very convenient car for when my parents come to visit us next month in February, with lots of leg space in the back seats!

Stay tuned,

Camille

16 January, 2008

Today's weather in Udon Thani;

It's a beautiful blue sky with the sun starting to heat things up since at 7 am it's only 15.8C.

Yesterday was a lovely day with sunshine all day long.

We just completed breakfast and are about to get on our way to Nong Khai, at the Thai - Lao border where a mini bus is waiting for us to carry us through Lao (Vientiane) for the day.

Catch you later,

Camille

Patchanee Restaurant, Udon Thani

Patchanee Restaurant, Udon Thani

After having hooked up with Kob, my wife’s friend , Chot, her husband and Plae, their daughter who’s just slightly younger than our daughter, we checked into the hotel and after some playing around in the hotels pool, it was time to head the showers and get ready for some food.

They took us to the Patchanee restaurant, inside Udon and it turned out to be a good choice. There is a nice outside garden, overlooking a lake and two air conditioned wings. The place looked also very busy, which is always a good sign.

The food we had was very good, like the Kai Pad Met Mamuang pictured here.

The Puu Cha (deep fried, stuffed crab) was also very good. We also had Puu pong curry (crab with curry powder), Tom Ka Kai (chicken coconut soup), some Som Tam nand Hor Mok Plaa.

A good choice, thanks to Kob and Chot.

After that, my wife had to get her daily dose of shopping malls, so we went to the local Robinson dept store. After that, it was direction hotel and sleep. Tomorrow will be an early day!

Camille

Day 5, arrival at Udon Thani.

Day 5, arrival at Udon Thani.

Today no early weather report, since the internet connection in the Korat hotel wasn’t on until noon!

We left Korat this morning around 10 am and our hotel was next to the road leading up to Udon Thani, so that was easy.

We didn’t get to see a lot of Korat but here’s a picture from our hotel room, so you get an impression of the size of the city, it is rather big.

Today’s trip wasn’t as uneventful as the other days. We first arranged for a stop at Phi Mai Historical park, near Korat, which we found without too many problems, however, once we arrived there that’s when trouble started. In Thailand it’s fairly common that national parks and the like have two layer pricing, so did Phi Mai.

However, there are also rules that if you have a work permit and pay tax as a foreigner, you’re supposed to get the same price as Thais. The extra charge is usually 4 to 10 (!) times as much as Thais. Here they charged 4 times as much, not really a lot in all fairness, but they didn’t want to budge down on accepting my tax card. This kind of racist attitude in my opinion, doesn’t go down too well with me, so I decided not to pay at all and leave again, which led to a bit of an argument with my wife. We solved this however and next time this kind of attitude occurs, I’ll ask for the cashiers name and possibly their superiors name as well and tell them that I’ll report this to the TAT (Tourist Authority of Thailand). This may sound silly maybe to some of my readers, but it seems to work if enough folks complain, since the TAT just reduced all National Park fees nationwide by 50%! They decided to do this because they had received too many complaints about high entrance fees and not enough service and quality in return.
We’ll see, most of the time I do get the Thai price, so I hope that we don’t get too many situations over this and enough of my little rant!

This wasn’t enough however, since I was also stopped for speeding. From what I understood from the police officer, I was not supposed to drive faster than 110 km per hour however I did 119! The signs however said 90 is the max, so somewhere, something may have gotten lost in translation. What didn’t get lost in translation was that Thai people normally pay 400 Baht and I, as a Farang (=Westerner) would get away with just 200 Baht. Nice try Mr. police officer but a friend of us, who visited Kob, my wife’s friend, about three weeks ago got stopped and it cost her only 100 Baht! Ah well.

We made a little side tour to the Ubonrat Dam, near Korat on the way and had some lunch there.

During the whole trip through Isaan, we noticed how dry and brown everything was, up until we got closer to the Dam, the nearer we got to the Dam, the greener it turned out.

After the visit to the Dam we headed towards Udon Thani where we met Kob, my wife’s friend.

We checked into a lovely hotel, the Nakha Buri hotel, just outside Udon, on the way to tomorrow’s destination, the Thai – Lao friendship bridge, with at the other side of the bridge; Vientiane! Stay tuned for more!

Camille