Welcome to Holy Crap Adventures season 51, episode 11, in which our intrepid hero explores many ancient Khmer ruins and gets violently attacked by a hyper-aggressive gang of locals… On this section of my journey, I’ll be resting my head in the town of Nang Rong in Buri Ram province. There’s absolutely nothing to see or do in Nang Rong, but it’s close to the many sites I want to visit along the nearby Cambodian border. So let’s just dive right in.

There are loads of Khmer sites all over this area, but there are three that are considered the most significant in Thailand and two of them are very near Nang Rong. The third site I’ll be visiting on the next stop. First up is arguably the best of the three, Phanom Rung. This place definitely wins the location prize sitting atop an extinct volcano. The volcano is so long extinct that it’s almost impossible to recognize it as a volcano, but it’s a phenomenal location just the same.

Phanom Rung was built over a long stretch of time, from the 10th to 13th centuries. It’s primarily a Shiva temple and was one of the most significant Khmer locations outside of Angkor. There are still a lot of great lintel carvings, mostly dedicated to Shiva.

As it turned out, I visited Phanom Rung backwards. The front approach to the temple is by this incredible promenade. There was also some pools at the top of the grand staircase and in one of them a bunch of lotus buds were opened up. Beautiful!

I’ve been looking forward to seeing these places since I saw all the ruins in Cambodia several years ago. So far, it seems like they will be worth the wait. Phanom Rung certainly was!

As I said, there’s also a lot of smaller hidden away temples all over this area. I’m never satisfied with just seeing the major popular sites, so as usual I stopped at every one I could find. These next three were quick stops right near Phanom Rung.

Only a few miles south of Phanom Rung, Prasat Muang Tam is considered the bronze medal winner of the big three Khmer sites in Thailand. It was also a Shiva temple built in the late 10th and early 11th centuries.

This place was very impressive as well. There was an outer wall leading to a courtyard followed by another entryway into the inner temple area. I love taking pictures through the entries to see how many door frames I can get in one picture.

Phanom Rung had lots of other visitors, mostly Thai tour groups, but Prasat Muang Tam was pretty much deserted. I had the whole place to myself.

It’s also a bit unusual as far as Khmer temples go thanks to its four L shaped ponds in the inner courtyard. You can see part of one of them in the pic below.

And the center of it all is these five towers. Apparently, the middle one couldn’t be restored. I’m not sure why. This was a very cool place to walk around.

Before ending my first day in Buri Ram I took a long detour to Prasat Ban Prai. It was a looong detour for such a small temple, but that’s how it goes.

The next morning I hit the road south all the way right up to the Cambodian border to see what I thought was two temples, but turned out to be three. Prasat Ta Muan was definitely the most atmospheric.

The next planned temple was only about a mile down the road, but first I ran into another temple that I wasn’t aware of and isn’t even on the map, Prasat Ta Muen Tot. Bonus! And there was a super friendly and affectionate dog that came over to say hello. I was really tempted to put her in the car and bring her back with me.

The second, I mean third, temple of the group, Prasat Ta Muen Thom I wasn’t even sure if I would get to see it. On the map it’s over the border in Cambodia, but I read that its being occupied by the Thai military, much to Cambodia’s chagrin. Sure enough, there were about a dozen or so Thai military dudes, sandbag bunkers, lots of fences and barbed wire to keep people from wandering, and I had to be escorted the whole time, but I got to see it. Yay!

Sadok Kok Thom is a temple I found just the day before by mindlessly trolling around on the GPS one night to make sure I wasn’t missing anything good. Top three rankings aside, this was a really cool temple and why it’s not mentioned in any of the guides baffles me. It was a pretty long drive south into the next province and up against the Cambodian border, but wow was it worth it!

It’s a big square temple complex with several buildings still standing and a really tall central temple. I’m sure it’s all been meticulously restored, but holy crap, what a cool find!

On the way back to Nang Rong after my visit to Sadok Kok Thom I had one more temple to stop at, Prasat Nong Hong, a name I definitely will not forget. It’s another small temple, but looks unkempt with tall weeds growing out of control. I took a couple of pictures and then started to walk through the entryway when I bumped my head, but I bumped it on something soft. It turned out to be a wasps nest. Suddenly I had wasps buzzing around my head stinging me all over as I jumped down the steps on the other side in a giant panic. At the bottom, still flailing my arms around like a lunatic, I quickly realized they were gone. They just vanished! I got stung five times. Four on my hands and one bad one on the back of my neck. So much pain! Then I realized I dropped my camera somewhere in the attack, but I couldn’t find it anywhere in all the tall thick weeds. Crap! I thought maybe it was at the top of the steps? Sigh! I had no choice… I had to look. So I slowly climbed the steps until I got to the top and was searching for the camera but didn’t see it anywhere. The wasps weren’t attacking, though, so that was good.

So, I figured I would go back down and start looking through the weeds for my now missing camera. As I put one foot down on the first step I turned to see if I could spot the nest that caused me so much trouble. I walked all around that top step searching for my camera and they did nothing, but I swear the instant I made eye contact with that nest they shot out of there like supersonic darts right at my head. I screamed, I jumped down like a paratrooper and then they were gone again, but I had two new stings, seven in total now. So much pain! It’s definitely one of the more terrifying things I’ve experienced in my life. After that I waded through the ridiculous weeds and had to scale up and over that wall.

The good news after all that is that on the second jump down I landed right next to my camera. The main body of the camera is undamaged and still works. The bad news is, the lens was totally smashed, as you can see in the pic above, and I can’t take pictures without a lense. Hopefully there’s a camera store at the next stop where I can find a new one. Wish me luck…