We had a very early start today as we left our hotel at 6.15am to catch the 7am train to Sikhoraphum. The final destination for the day was Surin but we wanted to stop in Sikhoraphum to visit a Khmer temple. As soon as we left our hotel we were glad we did get up that early as we saw around 40 monks, mainly kids, walking one after another in the streets of Ubon to collect food. We had seen before some monks collecting their food but never that many. In Thailand the monks live of the generosity of the Thai people that give them food and various items... in shops you can buy what we could call "a monk's kit", a bucket filled with various items like toothbrushes, food or batteries. People buy it and then give it to a monk at the temple. Moreover the monks have some privileges like having reserved seats in buses, trains and bus stations. After following the monks for a while to witness this kind of unreal scene we caught a songthaew to the train station (Bh10 each). Our 7am train left 30min late for unknown reasons...we did not mind at this left us more time to observe the very busy platforms of Ubon train station. The trip to Sikhoraphum lasted nearly 2h30 and was quite pleasant (third class, Bh56 per person). In Sikhoraphum we decided to walk to the temple as the guide book did not mention that it was necessary to catch a tuk-tuk.....well we ended up walking a good 25min under the sun, not very fun when carrying heavy backpacks! We were very surprised when we finally arrived at the site as the temple is very small and can be visited within 5min! It is a nice temple, but it is not worth the Bh30 entrance fee ... luckily we did not have to pay it as there was nobody to sell us tickets! After a quick visit of the temple and a long walk back to the train station, we easily caught a train to reach Surin (Bh27 per person, 30min). Surin is a medium sized town very famous in Thailand for its elephants festival in November. The rest of the year it is a quiet town where there are just a few tourists. We still saw an elephant, in the evening a guy was trying to get people to pay to feed his elephant. We had seen this before but never had a try so we thought that for our last evening in Thailand we should have a go. It was a lot of fun to have the elephant grabbing skilfully the pieces of bamboo from our hands and it cost us only Bh10 each.
Thursday 10/04/2008 - THAILAND, Ubon Ratchathani, Sikhoraphum "Prasat Sikhoraphum", Surin
We had a very early start today as we left our hotel at 6.15am to catch the 7am train to Sikhoraphum. The final destination for the day was Surin but we wanted to stop in Sikhoraphum to visit a Khmer temple. As soon as we left our hotel we were glad we did get up that early as we saw around 40 monks, mainly kids, walking one after another in the streets of Ubon to collect food. We had seen before some monks collecting their food but never that many. In Thailand the monks live of the generosity of the Thai people that give them food and various items... in shops you can buy what we could call "a monk's kit", a bucket filled with various items like toothbrushes, food or batteries. People buy it and then give it to a monk at the temple. Moreover the monks have some privileges like having reserved seats in buses, trains and bus stations. After following the monks for a while to witness this kind of unreal scene we caught a songthaew to the train station (Bh10 each). Our 7am train left 30min late for unknown reasons...we did not mind at this left us more time to observe the very busy platforms of Ubon train station. The trip to Sikhoraphum lasted nearly 2h30 and was quite pleasant (third class, Bh56 per person). In Sikhoraphum we decided to walk to the temple as the guide book did not mention that it was necessary to catch a tuk-tuk.....well we ended up walking a good 25min under the sun, not very fun when carrying heavy backpacks! We were very surprised when we finally arrived at the site as the temple is very small and can be visited within 5min! It is a nice temple, but it is not worth the Bh30 entrance fee ... luckily we did not have to pay it as there was nobody to sell us tickets! After a quick visit of the temple and a long walk back to the train station, we easily caught a train to reach Surin (Bh27 per person, 30min). Surin is a medium sized town very famous in Thailand for its elephants festival in November. The rest of the year it is a quiet town where there are just a few tourists. We still saw an elephant, in the evening a guy was trying to get people to pay to feed his elephant. We had seen this before but never had a try so we thought that for our last evening in Thailand we should have a go. It was a lot of fun to have the elephant grabbing skilfully the pieces of bamboo from our hands and it cost us only Bh10 each.
