(written by Nancy)

We got an early start today after eating breakfast in the room.  The terrain was mostly flat all day today – only a few gentle climbs, which was a nice change after the last few days.  The countryside was nice today but we had a lot of traffic on the road so our eyes were focused mainly forward.  There also seemed to be lots of construction along the way so there was lots of dust blowing around us most of the day.  It was a bit of a head-down-and- ride kind of day, lots of grime and grit to wash off in the shower.

We stopped to get pictures of a few temples and a couple large Buddhas along the way – always surprising when you see these big huge Buddhas way out in the middle of nowhere with nothing else around.  They are generally well-cared for so there is obviously some group of people (probably not called a congregation but something equivalent in Buddhism) that take care of these places but you don’t see very many people about.

The roadside stall product of the day was brooms – lots and lots of brooms.  We see these brooms being used everywhere – shopkeepers are always out sweeping the front walks with them.  They do seem to work pretty effectively even though they look pretty wispy.  They are hand made too – we saw some folks sitting at their stalls making them today.  Not many other stalls, but heaps of broom stalls.  It would be great to get a couple of these brooms back to Oz – however, no way they would get past Customs with all that plant material.

We made it the 100k to Nong Bua Lam Phu before noon and stopped to discuss whether we should just keep going and do the remaining 50k or so to Udon Thani.  It was pretty hot and we weren’t sure what the terrain was like between here and Udon Thani so ultimately decided to stick with the original plan and stay here tonight.  We had the names of two different hotels but weren’t entirely sure where they were located.  We stopped at a highway police station and a policeman kindly told us both were just up the road.  He didn’t speak a lot of English, but anyone can mine “up ahead, left side, right side”.

We came to the Kinnaree Resort first.  It is a small little hotel with an attached restaurant.  I looked at one of the rooms and it looked clean so we figured what the heck.  We ate some lunch at the restaurant – quite tasty food but trying to work our way through the menu took a bit of effort.   We had many options to choose from:  Spaketty (Dave thought that was spelled correctly), rice with canned fish power action, turbidity in shrimp fried dough and many other options.  I’m sure that the names were correct in Thai.  Either they bought a discount translator or their translator liked playing a bit of a joke on the owners.  They are kind enough to make the effort on our behalf – but it is still funny all the same.

There is not much around here so we will probably head over to the restaurant for dinner as well – might be bold and try some of that turbidity shrimp.  Tomorrow we are off to Udon Thani for a couple of days off.

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