I left Kamphaeng Phet in a deluge of rain for what was the longest drive I’ll be doing on this trip, about eight hours, northeast, clear to the other side of the country. Luckily, the rain got lighter the further east I got. A little over halfway there the highway was blocked because of flooding. Uh-oh! I followed the detour signs into a very rural area which added about ten miles to the journey, but while traveling through some small village on the detour suddenly the road became a lake. It wasn’t too deep and other cars were making it, so I went for it with no problems. The water was up over the bumper, though. About a mile up the road… another lake. This one was quite a bit deeper, though. Crap! The pickup trucks were making it across, but I had serious doubts about my little rented Honda. That’s when a truck full of Thai military guys pulled up next to me going back the other direction. I rolled down the window and the super nice driver said a bunch of stuff in Thai that I didn’t understand and then he smiled and just said, “You, follow, me.” So I followed him on an even smaller road up the hillside around and down again to find myself on the other side of the “lake”. What a lifesaver! After that I was able to continue on my way and made it all the way to Udon Thani without incident. The only bad thing that happened was I forgot to snap pictures of the “lakes”. Doh!

There are several things I want to see in this region of Thailand, but unfortunately they’re scattered all over the place and none of them really warrant an overnight stop of their own. But Udon Thani, being the biggest city in the region and being pretty much right in the middle of all these random sites, makes an excellent base. The ducks above are sort of the mascots of the city. I was expecting them to be in the water and they could definitely use a paint job, but there they are.

There’s really not much to see in Udon itself, but I did check out a couple of places, starting with the Chao Pu Chao Ya Shrine. There’s a fairly large Thai-Chinese community in these parts. The gods Pu and Ya are also known as Grandpa and Grandma. Apparently people come here to get their fortunes, so I decided to give it a try too. You take a sort of cup filled with sticks about a foot long, shake it until one of the sticks falls out, read the number on the stick (I got number 2), then go to the reference book to read your corresponding fortune. Conveniently, the fortunes were written out in Mandarin, Thai, AND English. My fortune was incredibly positive.

After reading my very positive and encouraging fortune, skeptical me thought that maybe all the fortunes are positive, you know, to keep people unreasonably happy and hopeful… NOPE! I flipped through the reference book to read some of the other possible fortunes and a lot of them were quite frightening and ominous. After that I was pretty relieved with what Pu and Ya had to tell me.

On the other end of town I passed by Udon’s City Pillar Shrine, so I stopped for a quick look.

Udon is the biggest city in this part of the country and it has a fairly large expat community. This makes it the best place to find good hotels and restaurants. Ironically, I didn’t make it to a single restaurant here. About a block away from my hotel is the Train Night Market. It’s called that because it’s right next to the train station. Anyway, this place is jumping every night with tons of food stands, everything you can imagine or would ever need. I came here and pigged out every single night. So much delicious food and for so little money. Yummmm!

Time to make some real use out of that rental car if I’m gonna see all the things I want to see. First up was Ban Chiang to the east. A while back, in the small village of Ban Chiang they discovered some pots. Big deal! But after some more digging and scientific dating, these distinctive red painted pots just happened to reveal a vast burial site and an approximately 3000 year old prehistoric culture.

What’s really interesting about these people is that they were doing things that archeologists and historians thought didn’t happen here for at least another thousand years. Things like clay pottery, thread making and textiles, complex metallurgy, organized burial rituals, all of which flew in the face of established beliefs about where civilization actually began. These are not just pots!

Just down the street from the very large museum at Wat Pho Si Nai, is the only dig site open to the public. Due to some flooding years ago the skeletons here are just replicas, but I got to see the real ones at the museum. The fact that these people were able to do all of these things with no technology, other than sticks, rocks, and campfires, goes to show just how smart I’m not.

Just a bit further down the highway from Ban Chiang is this very small ruin, Prasat Ku Phanna. I was in the area so why not take a look?

North from Udon Thani all the way to the Mekong River and the border with Laos, in Nong Khai, I visited Sala Kaew Ku. First, I needed the bathroom. Ha! Priorities! Right near the bathroom I saw a sign that said, “Really Big Fish” with an arrow. So I followed the sign to a really big pond with REALLY big fish. For reference, the koi in the pond were pretty huge themselves. I don’t know what those other guys are, but wow! They looked like sharks!

Anyway, Sala Kaew Ku is a park featuring the stucco sculptures of a Buddhist/Hindu mystic named Luang Pu Boun Leua Sourirat. I saw some of his work on the other side of the river when I was in Laos, where he started, a few years ago. He fled to Thailand in 1975 before the communist takeover in Laos and continued his work over here.

The work is kind of mind blowing at first, though not really out of line with typical Hindu art. The scale of it is what’s really impressive. And not just the big pieces either, but there were hundreds of smaller sculptures all over the place. This guy was prolific!

That’s Luang Pu Boun Leua Sourirat below on the right. He’s very revered in these parts. Most of the work is displayed outside, but inside the main hall are hundreds of smaller sculptures that he did, some of his things, about a thousand pictures of the dude, and they even have his mortal remains preserved under glass (also seen below).

Luang Pu Boun Leua Sourirat’s story is basically that when he was a boy he fell into a hole and there he met an ascetic named Kaewku. Kaewku taught him about the mysteries of the underworld and set him on a path to become a Brahmanic/yogi/priest/shaman. And here we are.

The works all have a lot of script on them. I’m assuming it’s all religious verses, but unfortunately, I don’t read Thai.

Also, the back of most of these have really intricate designs carved into them. This guy must have been super busy, that looks like a lot of work.

On the way back to Udon I stopped at another temple I read about, Wat Tung Toomkam. This place is not a museum, but it sure looks like one. They have a lot of statues and artwork cluttered everywhere. All kinds, all mediums, these monks don’t say no to anything and find a place for everything.

My biggest day of driving all over hell and half of Thailand took me northwest to Phu Phrabat Historical Park.

Phu Phrabat Historical Park is maybe one of the most unique places I’ve been to. It’s an area with lots and lots of sandstone rock formations and hoodoos. I would expect to see this kind of thing at home in Utah or Arizona, but not in Thailand. Many of these rock formations were carved out and modified by prehistoric people to use as shelters. Maybe the same people who inhabited Ban Chiang.

They laid out directional stones around many of the shelters seen in some of the pictures. A couple of the shelters even had petroglyphs. Awesome!

What visit to a national park would be complete without a hike up to the viewpoint?

Below are probably the best examples of the modifications made by these industrious people. It’s hard to believe this was all done 2500-3000 years ago. On a side note, walking around this part of the country is much more pleasant thanks to the much lower humidity. It’s still hot, but at least I’m not drenched at the end of every day.

Around the 17th and 18th centuries Buddhism moved in and some of the shelters were used or converted to be temples. There were a few cool Buddhist carvings in the park too.

Phu Phrabat Historical Park was an awesome stop. The stuff I read about it didn’t do it any justice. I’m glad I didn’t decide to skip this place.

Quite a distance out of my way, about another 50 miles northwest from Phu Phrabat, is a pretty spectacular waterfall, Than Thip. I just can’t resist a good waterfall.

That was a looong drive back from Than Thip Waterfall back to Udon, but I think it was worth it. However, being a little tired of the driving now I decided to visit some sites a little closer to Udon for my last day. I started with a very short stop at a local Ho Chi Minh museum. He apparently lived here for a bit in the late 1920’s. The museum wasn’t as interesting as I was hoping, though, so I zipped over to another waterfall, Than Ngam.

It’s not the biggest waterfall in the world, but all the waterfalls here are pretty impressive this time of year at the end of the rainy season. Full gusher!

Not too far away from Than Ngam is Koi Nang Waterfall. This is an awesome three tiered waterfall. I couldn’t figure out a way to get to the lower falls, but the middle and upper falls were great!

Right at the top of the middle falls was this super helpful sign and a great view of the upper falls.

I thought about swimming, but opted not to because there’s still at least two more stops to make. The park in the village of Kumphawapi is known as monkey park, so of course I had to check it out. There really wasn’t very many monkeys though. It didn’t look all that exciting. So off to drive around the Red Lotus Lake on my way back.

During the winter months the lake is covered with pink lotus flowers. It’s still too early for the flowers and I knew that already, but I still wanted to see the lake anyway. And it’s on the way, so there’s that. The most interesting things I saw were the couple of herds of water buffalo in the road. It’s hard to imagine this lake lit up pink, but I bet it’s quite a sight.

There were also a lot of these structures all over the shores. I assume they’re for fishing, but I’m not sure.

And that wraps up my time in Udon Thani. There was a little bit of everything on this one. My next stop isn’t that far away and will be a fairly quick one. Thanks to missing my stop in Um Phang because of flooding and thanks to the extra three days I always factor into my trips anyway, I have a whole extra week now. I’m formulating ideas about what to do with the extra time, but for now I’m sticking to my original plan. Stay tuned…