Taking a holiday from our holiday: Chinese new year in the big city!
We left our comfort zone in Nong khai, after a week of doing..well..not so much..We've been playing tourist though and seen a few amazing Wats plus the town big tourist attraction: a big sculpture park. It was absolutely worth a visit, what a place! It's hard to describe it by words, but we took a bunch of pictures, so have a look at the end of the post.
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| Took us some time to find a room when we arrived in Nong Khai,everything was full, luckly we got the last room at Joommalee G.H. Turned out to be a super nice place! |
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| On our way to the market to shop veggies. |
We've met some really interesting people as well, walked up and down the streets (the same ones, it is a quiet small town) and asked our self why we like it so much here..Guess it's super easy to fall into a "this is home" feeling as soon as you stop somewhere for more than one night. We unpack our few belongings and there you go, we have ourselves a house! We decided to leave the day after tomorrow though, after all, we did bring our bicycles, it's about time we use them again.. We have a very nice 300 km along the Mekong ahead of us, before we enter the mountains and the river takes a swing into Laos. We read on several blogs, that this particularly bit,should be some of the best we'll get to do.. We're both super exited to hit the road again -it is very much needed after this fairly long break.
After the 300 km we will enter the real mountains and not those sissy hills we've been riding through so far. Miki is jumping up and down, no need to say, I'm less enthusiastic, but still looking forward -it sure will be a challenge for me! We wont pass many real towns on the way so not sure we'll be able to update the blog til we hit Nan, witch should be in about 550 km..
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| Community gardens along the mekong, first to arrive gets the spot. |
Anyways, back to the reason for this post: Chinese new year in Udon Thani.
From previous years in Thailand, we know that most town celebrate the Chinese new year in one way or another, so to make sure we got a real party, we went to Udon Thani, the capital of this region, about 60 km south of Nong Khai.
Lets say, it's pretty big, at least compared to the small dusty towns we've passed so far. We checked in at a massive horror-hotel, amazing place, just the way we like it! The owner spoke no English, but we managed to get ourselves a single room with fan for only 220 B, pretty sweet deal.
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| (To Per) Let's start collecting sticks and open our own building company! |
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| Chinese temple |
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| Now that's a REAL cup of coffee! |
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| Gate to "the wheel of life" at the sculpture park. |
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| Seven headed Naga |
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| Not sure if u can tell but this statues are between 12 and 20 meters high! |
Mikele:
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| That's it! Im going on holiday! |
Udon is a pretty big city and not having bicycles with us, sure made the difference.
We did a lot of walking and i can tell you, I'm not use to it anymore!
Most of the happening, malls, cafes and night markets, where located in the eastern part of town and it was a bit of a hike for my taste to get there. On the other hand, our hotel was located over a big square/parking lot (hard to tell in Thailand) that turned out to be the big celebration point for Chinese new year.
From around 4 pm the whole street got cut of from traffic and turned into a long party lane with a huge night market.
At the very beginning was the serious part of the celebration with different altars to bring offers to and monks giving the blessing.
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| Our great horror hotel once again... |
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| Plenty of rikshaw in Udon Thani |
Further on, people where selling all sort of different weird things, from mobile phones covers to cactus plants, but certainly the big hit this year where ukuleles. There where at least 4 stalls selling them!
The last part of the long road where occupied by food stalls, a lot of meat of course such as a whole deep fried pig that was chopped down through the night, prehistoric looking crabs and a lot of insects! Sure not my favourite!
Looking and looking, we found some vegetarian noodles and just when we thought: "this is it for the night" a vegetarian stall pops up selling papaya salad and all sort of deep fried goods.
In the middle of the road, there was a long line of tables and chairs to sit and eat, it was funny to battle around and get a spot, aiming for those without piles of food left either under, or on top of the table. Another popular trick was to park either the little kid or the grand parents at the table, while the rest of the families raged around the food stalls.
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| Last beer at the night market before new year |
The very end the road was closed off by a red stage, where the local celebrities from town where performing, there we sat for most of the night.
The celebration started with fireworks and the dragon approaching the stage in a cloud of smoke, it made it very hard to take a clear picture!
We where all prepared for celebration, armed with shakes and a little bottle of Thai rum to mix with and after some performances such as a kid popularity contest and presentation and speeches from the whole Udon Thani town hall members we where pretty knocked out and ready to go to bed... it was 21.30.
Who knows what happened to all the performers wearing amazing costumes and corps painting, probably acted at midnight!
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| The celebration begins |
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| The dragon |
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| Waving it around... |
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| ...in a cloud of smoke from fireworks |
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| The altars... |
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| Raging for a sit |
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| Undreds of different stalls selling multicolou food, mostly dead |
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| Sushi |
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| Giant frying pan |
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| Mekong white fish |
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| Squashed squids or bookmarks...not sure about this one... |
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| Some preistoric crab |
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| A Whole deepfried Pig! |
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| Finally some vegetarian food! |
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| And a greasy table |
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| The end of the line, the stage, where we spent most of the night |
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| Getting ready to face the road again |
