We’re back from our trip to Korat for the holiday. I went with Kru Oy and Khun Kwan and Bitoy to visit his mother in Korat. We left town at 10:30 Friday morning, after stopping for breakfast. At 5:00, we arrived in downtown Korat and went to see the Candle Festival sculptures parked around the square. This was interesting because the style was a little different from those in Ubon.
Many sculptures featured the king in some capacity.
There were none with the intricate, lace-like overlays. Some were red wax, which is not found in Ubon.
We saw a few people putting finishing touches on the sculptures. Being there in the early evening was nice, as it was cool but still light. Later they would have flood lights on in area so the crowds could see the sculptures.
The inner part of the square has the old city wall.
We also stopped at the city pillar where there are wax sculptures of the nine Rama kings.
After walking around for an hour Thai-style—quickly looking and taking quick photos; no stopping to carefully study the sculptures, we purchased food for dinner and went to Kru Oy’s family home in a village close to the city. His brother and his family live there with their mother. His sister, who lives and works in the city, has a house there, which is where we stayed. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but Kru Oy visited with his mother, age 80, each morning before the rest of us got going. And they took a lot of food for the family there.
Saturday morning after breakfast, we set off to visit a wat. I thought we were going to a wat in the city, but it was in the province about an hour and a half from the city. Wat Ban Rai was interesting in that its surface was covered with ceramic tiles.
We also visited Luang Por Koon Museum next to the wat, which is in the family home of the well-known monk at the wat. He is now in the hospital in Korat.
Then Khun Kwan told us that Kru Oy was surprising us with a trip to see the blooming flowers—dok krajieaw—in Chaiyaphum province. We arrived in the area in an hour, and, not surprisingly, we weren’t the only ones going to see the blooming flowers. We joined the bumper-to-bumper line of vehicles going to the park. After half an hour, we stopped for lunch. Then we joined the line again for another hour till we reached Pa Hin Ngam National Park at 4:00 and joined the thousands (This is not an exaggeration.) of people there for the annual blooming festival.
From the parking lot, it was still two more kilometers uphill to our destination; so we took a songtaew up the mountain, as did most people. The first stop was to see the view over the cliff and juggle among the hoards to take photos of ourselves with the view, which, of course, everyone was doing.
Then we walked the 350 meters to see the flowers. They are found only in this area and bloom for three months. There is a path through the fields, and, when someone stepped off the path to have a photo taken next to a flower or to photograph a flower closer up, an attendant blew a whistle. Since we were at the tail end of the blooming time, the field was not completely covered with blooming flowers, as in some photographs, but it was fun to see them.
Since the masses were quickly walking down the path, there was no stopping to study the flowers, only stopping to take a quick photo, which I did a number of times so I could observe them in depth later in photographs.
There were two places where people could sit and have a photo taken with flowers in the background. Then we proceeded down the path to where the songtaews picked us up for the trip back to the parking lot. From there, it was a three-hour trip back to Kru Oy’s family home.
Sunday morning we headed home. The first stop was at the Korat City Mall to purchase a gift for Khun Adin’s new daughter, as the party for her in the village is on Wednesday. It’s quite a modern mall and is full of everything that most American malls are full of. I’ve not seen so many toys for children in this country before. We enjoyed walking around for about an hour, and they selected a stroller for the baby.
On the way back, we stopped at Phnom Rung Historical Park in Buriam province. This is a Khmer monument from the 10th-13th centuries. The sculptures feature Hindu divinities and stories.
One lintel was stolen in the 1950’s and later turned up on loan to the Chicago Art Museum. It was returned to Thailand and the Phnom Rung Historical Park in 1988. We were lucky to arrive when we did, as it had very recently rained heavily in the area and the paths were covered with water in many places when we walked up; they were mostly dry by the time we went down. Since Kru Oy has been there several times before, he stayed at the bottom and had a foot massage while we walked up to see the monument. After all the driving he had done and the long bumper-to-bumper line at the park, I’m sure he needed it.
We arrived back in Ubon at 8:00 Sunday night. We were all ready to be home and out of the car.
It was good to have Monday at home to relax and do the weekend chores before returning to work on Tuesday. In the afternoon, after the rain stopped, I went to get a haircut at a place on the way to school. The young woman was quite hesitant to cut it as short as I told her to. I had to tell her to cut it shorter after she thought she was finished. Another woman came in and watched while she waited for her turn, and the two of them laughed as she cut my hair the second time. She didn’t cut it too short, as they always did in the village. Cost: 150 bahts (about $5) compared to 30 bahts in the village. I was a little surprised it was so much. She did dry and style it; so that may have been extra. Khun Kwan said 100 bahts is the normal price.
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