Even if we could easily stay longer in this peaceful place, we had to leave Khong Chiam to make sure we will be back in Surin on time to enter Cambodia on the 11th of April, the date Laurence's visa will expire! We left Khong Chiam early in the morning, we got a songthaew next to the market at 7.30am and it took us 1h to reach Phubin (Bh30). In Phubin we easily got a bus to Ubon Ratchathani and this time the trip was much quicker, it lasted around an hour as the driver did only a few stops to pick up and drop passengers. In Ubon Ratchathani the bus dropped us, as per our request, not far from the tourist office on its way to the bus terminal. We went to the tourist office to pick up a map of the town and also to collect some information on how to get to the Prasat Khao Preah Viharn. We got a good map of the town but not much information about the Prasat Khao Preah Viharn. Ubon is a big town and as it was very hot we could not be bothered to walk to the hotels advised in our guide book. We tried our luck in a hotel nearby the tourist office and even if it looked expensive from the outside, we got a good room with fan, hot water and cable TV for only Bh300 (£5). Afterwards we wanted to have lunch....however we did not feel like Thai food so we started walking in town looking for a KFC restaurant...well we felt like KFC :). Please note that KFC is a posh restaurant in Thailand! It took us a while but we managed to find one, it was nice to have a break from the rice and the noodles! We then spent the afternoon in a nearby Internet cafe which offered the cheapest rate we ever paid in Thailand (Bh10/h). We had to catch up with some emails and to be honest it was so hot outside that we really enjoyed being inside with the air conditioning. After dinner, going back to our hotel, we walked through a park where a lot of Thai were playing football, basketball, badminton... it is not something we had seen in other towns. We thought that staying in Ubon will be boring but it turned out that we had a good time. There is nothing special to visit but we liked the fact that we could discover a big town totally outside the tourists beaten track.
