West to Phitsanulok and Beyond

09-02-2020 – West to Phitsanulok

Alison behind the wheel today, so watch out thailand. Last nights accomodation included breakfast which was a simple rice meal. Tasty! 

Heading of from Uttaradit our first stop was Wat Khon Ruea, a older temple with huge standing Buddha. Was here Alison met Steve, a Canadian living in Thailand who invited us all around for a cold drink. We spent a lovely 1/2 hour discussing life as an expat living in Thailand which was interesting to hear about.

Next stop was a cross between a temple and a shop, a huge Chinese place. We caught a buggy from the car park which was fun. We then visited a temple which was setting up for a night event which we circled back to later that evening.  Next stop was amazon coffee before a spot of lunch. From here it was back to Phitsanulok for the afternoon.

10-02-2020

Today we headed to a temple which is magnificent. It’s centre piece is a enormous statue with 5 heads of Buddha overlooking the valleys below. The temple beside it has incredible mosaics used throughout it. As we all enjoyed this temple so much we stayed so long enough to have lunch as well. From here we headed south to a military museum high in the mountains before we headed back down to Phetchabun. Here we found a huge temple beside cafe amazon to enjoy. Next stop was our hotel before we headed out to dinner where we were lucky enough to have a lovely lady help us order as the menu was all in Thai.

11-02-2020

This morning we drive south to see a temple we had seen photos of yesterday.

On our way we passed by a grand university which was decorated in golds and white. From there we continued on to the Wat Thammayan. It turned out this temple was also under construction, but what we saw was incredible. The sheer size of this complex is mind boggling.

From here we decided to head around the southern tip of the mountain range we have been driving down. Here we became lost! Google decided every goat track was a good road. All 4 of us with our favourite map guidance had a solution, none of which helped. So Steve got us on the out of trouble. Sadly this meant our landed arrival in Khon kaen would be quite late.

Short on our daily 10,000 steps we headed out to the night lights to stretch our legs.

12-02-2020

Today we travelled from Khon Kaen to Sakon Nakhon.

Before leaving Khon Kaen behind we visited a couple of the key temple here. Wat Thung Setthi was our favourite.  From here we worked our way to Lam Pao where a long bridge crosses the huge lake. It is giant! Thee were some water buffalo at rest here so we decided to take some photos. One was a little grumpiest and chased us off. The high light of the area was the huge complex at Wat Phuttha Nimit. This complex is still being built for 20 years. Still a bit to do, but awesome. We a some went to the reclining Buddha where I think the animals were so at rest. Even the rabbits came up to you for a scratch! From here we went to Sakon Nakhon where we found a hotel and night markets for an excellent pad Thai.