Several uninspiring cities close to some stunning ruins.
26th November 2005

Crossing Central Thailand
OK, so Lopburi's not too bad but only because the ruins are in the centre
Thailand's second city. Think Birmingham.
Phimai ruins and festival - one of those perfect days
A convenient stop-over for a visit to our favourite ruins to date

Thai countryside

I look back on what we’ve written sometimes and it seems that we don’t say a great deal about the scenery that we pass through. When we’re riding, I tend to spend my time gazing at the road ahead and checking that random hazards don’t t-bone us out of side roads or field entrances. Poor Hippy, who spends all her time thinking about the Lord only knows what on the back, has something of an interupted view of the world around us. The central plains of Thailand seem to have little of scenic merit anyway, so why I feel the need to comment now is a mystery. My thoughts as we rode form Kanchanaburi to Lopburi went back to something my good friend, Martin Mayer, said when he came to see us in Guyana many years ago. He was stunned at the lack of development there and this caused me great surprise. He’d travelled extensively in the Middle East, Asia and South East Asia, places that I’d always assumed were as underdeveloped as Guyana is and so I thought that maybe he was tinting his spectacles with roses. I guess I see what he means now. The infrastructure here is in another league; broad well surfaced roads (many of which are being widened or upgraded to dual carriageway), convincing looking electrical distribution on sturdy concrete poles and drainage systems that look as if they would cope with a good bit of rain. If these were the yardsticks that VSO judged a country by, they would still be chosing correctly when deciding to focus on the Guyanas of the world rather than the Thailands.

What got me thinking along these lines were the flat flood-fallowed fields where rice is obviously the main crop. No great difference to Guyana in that respect, then. But everything else is world apart; shiny petrol stations, trailer loads of harvesting machinery and air conditioned coaches. On the other hand there are home-made trucks which seem to be powered by diesel engines from water pumping plant - certainly engines without an appropriate power curve, anyway.

Lopburi

And so to Lopburi. Not exactly a former capital of Thailand, as so many other towns claim to be, but certainly the site of the palace of King Narai who chose it as his tranquil retreat. It certainly seemed sleepy when we arrived. We’d chosen to stop in here because of its reputation for having an older feel round about the centre. I was a bit thrown by this, expecting maybe some hundred year old buildings along with the ancient and modern. This is a town of two halves; there in an abundance of old Kymer style masonry and everything else is 60’s and more contemporary concrete construction. I have absolutely no problem with that. Preserve that which is worth preserving and fill the gaps with practical construction. So long as there is a little sympathy of the latter for the former, all well and good. There is so much in the way of significant historic buildings that the balance is certainly in favour of antiquity.

Considering that the layout of the town is exquisitely simple (one huge spinal highway with everything else laid out in grids) we made a dogs dinner of finding our way in. Firstly we got on the wrong side of the railway tracks. It was a case of being able to see where we wanted to go but there being no thoroughfare to it. A bit of back-tracking had us pulling up at the TAT office. To the English, this must have rather a down at heel ring to it, but the Tourist Authority of Thailand is a pretty well set up organisation. The luvvly lass behind the desk handed me a few maps and highlighted so much information on the town plan that she might as well have put it back in the photocopier and run me one off on fluorescent paper. I’d been told that the TAT folk would be interested in my saga with the police in Bangkok. I’m not sure she followed what I was on about and nodded lots rather than offering soothing noises. I realised early doors that she hadn’t a clue what I was on about and so I let it lie.

Opposite our hotel was the walled palace built by King Narai because he wasn’t very taken with Ayuthaya, the capital at the time. Had a bit a of wander round. Not a bad gaff at all, built in brick with stucco to decorate it, there was enough fragments of the stucco to give an idea of what it must have been like; with lotus bud cills and lintels to the windows and doors.

We were seriously struggling with the dates in our wonderfully translated guide to the guides. It’s saying the palaces was built in 2000, it looks a lot more than 5 years old. Eh? Ah the Buddhist calender, now our only problem is to try and figure out what year it is now? Somehow I feel a bit daft asking people. Just for the record it is 2548.

Despite the country becoming a democracy back in the 1930s, the King is still very much the King. Every town has a statue of him, every workplace has a picture of him, as you enter most towns His and the Queen’s images hang from banners. Although, the president is generally considered a con man, making himself unreasonably rich on insider dealing on the stock market, no one has said one word against the King or Queen. People pray to him, give offerings to statues of him. If they pass a statue they do their wais and spread their received blessing over their heads.

Most towns we have been to have had a night market, selling food mostly. The day we arrived it was market day, and the street became filled with the most tempting array of food we had yet scene. There were doughnuts, curries; red, green and brown, noodle stalls, fried fish, boiled crab, prawns the size of crayfish, dried squid, crackling snacks, satay chicken, glazed fruits, jellies, juice stalls and to top it all crispy fried insects. Cockroaches seem to be the favourite. We had seen them earlier in the day uncooked in the market. I tried to rationalised things in my head, there is no real reason why cockroaches should be more unappealing than crabs or prawns. I admit that in the market with their bellies up, they looked juicier than your averages scuttler, but somehow, my mind cannot get beyond the fact that they are cockroaches. Why is it that other exo-skeleton creatures which really are equally ugly looking are acceptable? A grey transulent prawn, looks rather like a fat maggot in an unappetising jacket, with as many leggy and antennae bits as the unfashionable cockroach. These are the rationalisations I put to my brain. But then my brain would counter with the fair retort, why run the risk of something you don’t fancy when there are so many other things for sale that look so tempting I am salivating and which cost no more than 25 Baht (35p).

You are never short of wats in Thailand and, the city having a royal connection, there are even more than usual in Lopburi. The one that all the grockles head for (that includes us, I’m afraid) is the monkey temple, and not really a temple at all but a prang. Prangs are the multitiered tower structures that define SE Asia. There’s essentially three types; those super stylie, slender, gold, bell shaped ones, pagoda style and the ancient Kymer style. To be so general is over-simplistic but the architectural specifics of the variations are a bit much for me. Anyway, your proper prang is most likely to have been built over the relics of a religious or royal notable. Here at Prang Samoyod, the buses queued up to discharge their cargoes of trippers to see the monkeys, the bats and lastly but not leastly the prang itself.

Clearly the administrators of Lopburi have listened to concerned residents and banned the sale of monkey foods in the town centre in the hope that they’ll bugger off. There is definitely a problem, all around the area television aerials have point-up cones fitted to prevent the little monsters climbing beyond the Euler monkey buckling limit. So seeking for further amusement, the simians hang around on the power pylons and walk along the lines. We didn’t witness the spectacular frying of a beginner trying to cross from one wire to the other but it must surely have happened. Bats are a much more acceptable infestation - no trouble to visitors as they don’t fly around during grockle hours, less tendency to break things and much less in the way of dirt left behind.

A couple of blocks away and almost deserted is a much more impressive set of prangs without a monkey in sight. Rattana Mahathai (usual spelling variations apply) is an unrestored huge array of prangs which are almost exclusively built of brick and stuccoed to the hilt. Regrettably stucco becomes more tired looking than other forms of decor over the years. Where stonework rounds off and ages gracefully, mortar falls off leaving ugly scars. Using our imaginations to the max, we could see that this must have been an extraordinary place when upkept.

Lending colour and a mellow vibe to the town were the usual little huddles of Buddhist monks. Here they seemed a bit more approachable than usual. One of the more youthful novices called out, “Where you from?”. Most unusual to actually be addressed. I was a bit taken aback but replied “Unggritt” which is the appropriate thing to say if you happen to be English. When faced with this line of questioning, I usually reply “Where you from?”, knowing that they are local. Not frightfully funny or particularly original but it often breaks the ice a little. The ruse fell flat here when he replied that he was from Cambodia. I’ve never considered working out a follow up to this reply and, being to slow witted to ad-lib, was left speechless as he padded off into the distance.

On the subject of Buddhist monks, it may be of interest to readers to hear that there is a kind of national service facility within the Buddhist monastic training system. Families that feel that young Johnny may be going off the rails and hanging out with the wrong crowd may send him off to a monastery for a few months to get a bit of moral guidance. While there, they have to live the life of a normal novice including the praying, meditating and whatever else the monks do. Rather a better idea than youth detention centres where the only attitudes and skills young offenders ever acquire are those of their co-habitants. When we visited Wat Po in Bangkok, we’d witnessed the monks gathering for an evening session of some sort and each wizened old guy had a rather reluctant apprentice following him carrying offerings for some sort. Shuffling, and scuffling up sandy in that peculiar way that is quintescentially adolescent. It seems that these must have been residents who had not entirely chosen their own destiny. It all becomes clear, when you know what is going on.

We had the benefit of a television in our room. It seems almost obligatory for a hotel with pretensions to have a television set. I guess for those who are staying away from home on business rather than travelling, the need to speak to other people is not so great and so a TV is essential. When there is one channel in English that is looping a ‘fly on the wall’ with Britney Spears carping on about how much and what quality of sex she has been having, I would more than happily do without. As one or other of us was at the keyboard writing for the evening, we resorted to the classic standby of reading books. Clever things those books, so much more portable than televisions.

Nakhon Ratchasima, pronounced Khorat

Next port of call was Nakhon Ratchasima, known to the locals as Khorat. Not that we know why, but I hazard a guess that, they like us, found the other too much of a mouthful. All our information was suggesting that this the second largest city in Thailand, but you really wouldn’t have known it. All pretty low rise and linear, it was a dream to navigate and we found a hotel in short order. There are only two things of note about Khorat that the Lonely Planet identifies with enthusiasm; the statue of a heroine who held of the Laos hordes which attracts local performers who will sing favourites for a fee and a chicken restaurant. We ate at the restaurant in a rather random fashion as we had something of a communication failure. We did get chicken and a salad which is what we wanted but I’m not sure it was quite the type of chicken and salad we had attempted to order. As we came to pay, the lass running the place volunteered that she is married to a guy from Manchester and had lived in England for two years. I think that is what she said but her two years in England hadn’t advanced her language skills a great deal. Better than our Thai, though. That is for sure.

On the way home from lunch Berthette, rather belatedly, got her 100,000 km birthday present - a wash and brush up. The most extraordinary thing has occurred; for the first time since we took ownership of her, Berthette is now entirely oil-tight. Unnatural, I say. I’m not sure if that is a good thing or not. As they say, if there is oil leaking out you know there must be oil inside.

The overriding reason for stopping in this comparatively dull town was to take in the Phimai ruins. It was the usual flat rice growing land round about and there were strange little shrubs growing. we’ve seen these all over the place and been unable to see any purpose for them; trunks too spindly for any kind of construction, never seem to be fruiting and the foliage looks unappetising. Why so many then? It came to me in a flash of inspiration as we pottered along. Was this the mulberry bush for which the silk worms crave? The jury is still out but I thought that it was a pretty good bit of deduction. Now off the main roads, the farm transport diversified. I haven’t seen the rotovator/trailer combo since I was in Greece in 1969 but they are alive and well and crrying all manner of stuff down here. The ‘normal’ trucks seemed to be incredibly slow hereabouts and incredibly noisy. On closer inspection, they are modified from having been sensible trucks manufactured by reputable companies like Isuzu and Hyundai by having the cabs cut down and new engines installed. I can only assume that the two cylinder diesel units that have been fitted are incredibly cheap and incredibly cheap to run. They look as though they would be more at home attached to a 3 inch water pump and have the dynamic characterisitcs to suit that purpose i.e. running at constant speed. They must be a nightmare to drive.

Phimai

When we arrived, there was a bit of a party kicking off outside the museum. Strange. We toured the wonderful collection of carved statues and lintels. Because of a more practical choice of material; sandstone and limestone instead of laterite, the quality of the carving was infinitely better than any other we have seen so far in Thailand and that is saying something. Even the laterite creations are astoundingly clear. Slowly we are getting to understand the difference between Hinduism, Buddhism and their various branches. As I see it, it is rather like operating systems. Your Hinduism would be DOS which came in a variety of versions each with different releases. This makes Buddhism Windows which again has a load of different varieties and has been refined(?) over the years. Underlying Windows is DOS (tee-hee, nothing is perfect). So is Mac OSX Christianity and Linux Judaism? I think we’d better leave it here. Presumably, I can’t imagine 2 more divorced concepts religion and computer system, but I kind of get where he is coming from. I have always had the deepest respest for Buddhism, it seems to have an ingrained humility about and as far as I know, no group, country or individual has gone killing people in the name of Buddhism. Hence why the recent attack on a Buddhist monastry in the South of Thailand by some Islamic fanatics, has deeply angered the Thai people and seemingly if the news and press can be believed is uniting the country against this faction.

Anyway, the festival. By some bizarre coincidence we’d arrived at Phimai in the one day of the year that they celebrate their famous ruins with a day of events and an evening of song and dance with lights and firewoks within the ruins. Being the complete wuss that I am, I insisted in driving back by evening light at the worst and so we missed just about everything apart from the long boat racing. I was a little disappointed, although a sound and light sound in the ruins with a bunch of dancers had the potential to be seriously tacky, it could equally have been very atmospheric. This made coxed eights look like and individual discipline. I counted no less than 50 paddlers in each boat plus a steersman for good luck. The boats were half the width of the boating lake and took a good few minutes to turn around and line up for the start. Without any allegiances and no desire to bet on the outcome, more than one race would have been a bit dull so we returned to the stalls set up for the relief of hunger. Not just cockroaches, here. Scorpions, grasshoppers, larvae, caterpillars, locusts. There were people buying them and they looked ordinary folk. I’d assumed that this was either the food of complete nutters or those who could afford nowt better. This weird stuff must have some merit, then, and I’ve just got to summon up the bottle to report on them. Not sure why I’ve gone all nesh, I was quite up for deep fried ants in Colombia.

There seemed to be a lovely atmosphere amongst the traffic travelling back to Khorat. Groups of friends jovial with the days activities; mopeds buzzed in swarms with their riders geeing each other on; pickups overflowing with youthful frivolity, leant heavily on their back wheels. There was a comraderie and friendship. I spotted a customised moped with a rather spiffing paint job. (Eat you heart out Arlen Ness. Arlen who? Never mind) I think I made the guys day, as I wrestled with the camera to take a shot, on the move. The one guy who had a big bike had to make an impression by hooning past us. Sad Pat with his testosterone level challenged had to go charging after him. Thankfully he slowed up, we waved and carried on more sedately.

The hotel we were staying was the hotest hotel we had frequented. The way it faced meant that it absorbed heat through the day, the the floor and even the bed radiated heat through the night. With no through air option in the room the fan merely oscillated the warm clammy air. This might explain why it was our cheapest ensuite hotel room at 150 Baht (£2.16). All this is just part and parcel of budget travel in the tropics,what dumbfounded us was that the second night we were provided with not only a blanket but a duvet. A duvet! What on earth? Was this Thai sarcasm in action? We laughed. Of course it is Novemeber and no doubt Thais begin to feel the cold. Maybe the duvet was for putting under us to soak up the sweat and prevent the matress getting damp.

The breakfast was embarrassingly, large. They seemed a little confused by the American breakfast on their menu and where there were optional alternatives, indicated in the normal way by oblique strokes, they decided to give us everything. The cleaners were overzealous to the point of annoyance. We left the room for only half an hour to have brekky, on the day we left. We then arrived to pack up our gear, unable to sit on the bed for fear of ruffling the perfect sheets, we felt so guilty using the loo that we clean it ourselves again afterwards.

There was a rather odd bunch of folk hanging around in the restaurant when we tried to squeeze in for breakfast. We’d seen then in passing the night before and assumed it was a first-aid training course for they were all sat around in crisp white tunics with medical logos on the chest pockets. It seemed we’d got it wrong as they were all clutching mobiles to their ears and calling numbers given to them on large printed forms. It all seemed rather strange, surely this was tele-sales of pharmacuticals or some such. But why did they need to go to the town and stop in a hotel to make the calls. Have they not heard of subscriber trunk dialling? I’m sure one of their number was a fully fledged lady boy. It seems that not only are these guys/gals quite common in Thailand but they can just hold down a normal job without causing to much of a stir. A little unsettling at first sight.

In Thailand outside the farang cities of Bangkok, Krabi and Kanchanaburi, we have been struggling for internet. Thais relative wealth and sophiscation means that we are somewhat in limbo between poor countries where there is always internet because no one can afford their own computer and rich countries like US where areas and coffee shops have wifi because it is cool.

There was something so incredibly warmingly familiar about being in the supermarket near the end of the day as thrifty housewives hovered around the fresh food counter waiting for the mark-downs at the end of the day. For once I felt no urge to take advantage of the bargains, we were full and could amply afford the full price, the Thai housewives were more in need. Oh, Hippy, you little liar. You know full well that we selected our fresh fruit snacks from the array of reduced items. OK, so we didn’t scrimmage for the best bits of delicious looking cooked fish but our instinct to survive on bargains remains intact.

The hypermarket had everything, including cross stitch kits. It says something about a nation that some at least can afford the luxury of hobbies. There was one pattern that really made me smile - a load of monks in football squad formation ready for the ardent cross-stitcher to render in thread. And why not? Beats twee little girls holding bunches of roses or alphabet samplers.

Nang Rong

Another day, another town and another set of Khmer ruins. In this case, Tuesday, Nang Rong and Phanom Rung, in that order. The hotel was quite an ordinary little place (also with duvet) and there were only a couple of events of note. There was a succession of groups of young men arriving on their mopeds bearing their musical paraphernalia to crack out a bit of Thai Metal in the back room. Between excellent self-penned numbers (or at least Thai tracks that we’re not familiar with) the guitarists would break into riffs from ‘Smoke on the water’ and all the other classics. Nice to know that these ground breaking standards are still considered essential basic knowledge for wannabe rock stars. That night the hotelier cooked us our most bland meal so far in Thailand. I hope she was just wrongly assuming that farangs like us wouldn’t like it spicy. We have, it’s true, met a few travellers that do not appreciate the finer points of chilli culture. To me it’s a bit like going to France and not liking wine or cheese.

There was a telly in the communal area which suffered a major communication fault from our perspective, our Thai is not up to the standard of being able to follow the soaps. We resorted to watching the Asian Indoor Games which are currently being held in Bangkok. There was a brief report on the women’s 5-a-side football featuring Thailand vs. Jordan. It degenerated into the Jordan team assaulting all and sundry in a most unladylike way after their lead was overturned and one of their number was sent off for retaliating with fists. I hated the fact that I couldn’t understand any of the commentary. As they repeated and repeated the scenes, I couldn’t even tell whether the broadcasters were registering shock or delight at the tomfoolery. Such is my ignorance of this tonal language.

The ruins were absolutely wonderful again but took a bit of finding. There’s a bit of a pattern developing in Thai road-signing. Very helpfully one is pointed in the right direction from a main road only for the boards either to peter out or become Thai only once you’re out in the wilds. We do get to see more of the countryside, though. Phanom Rung is just as it is described in the Lonely Planet, on the edge of an extinct volcano. We could see it from everywhere we went around the plains. But could we get to it? Having completed what felt like 358 degrees of a 10 km diameter circle we eventually found the radial road that took us up to the top of the hill. It was clearly harvest time, every field we passed there was a couple of wide brimmed brightly coloured hats bobbing just above the height of the rice. We had seen so much sophistication and development in Thailand, I had somehow forgotten that much of Thailand is poor. There people were head high in reaping by hand, it was a fair cry from glitzy Bangkok.

PR has a rather spectacular processional avenue, to a tump with sanctuary with an enclosed walkway round it. It does one of those solstice things that twice a year as the sun rise the sun shine straight through all the doorway and down the avenue. It is also famed for the only complete naga bridges in Thailand. A naga is a 5 headed serpent that represents the snake that sheltered Buddha in the rain (I think). Anyway these bridge had 5 of these spectacular heads curving on their vertices. The Khmer believed in their symmetry, to such an extent that they had some of these amazing structure centimetres from the wall. Seems a lot of effort in the carving department to have the thing facing the wall, but maybe they felt that the wall needed something interesting to look at too.

The mystery of the reclining Shiva.

Back in the 1960s a surveyor noticed that a carved lintel that had been previously recorded lying on the ground, was missing in 1965. Locals had some vague recollections of a helicoptor landing on the hill. Then decades later it was spotted in a Chicago museum, on loan from an American. Ummmmm? They were in the process of restoring the ruin and demanded the lintel back, no joy, until a few years ago enough money was raised to buy the stolen lintel back. (We Brits of course still haven’t given back the Elgin marbles). It seems that 6 of the 7 Thais originally allegedly involved in the theft have since met unnatural deaths. The Thais are an immensely proud nation, and the thought of one of their own selling them short was clearly beyond the pail. It feels as though under their hospitable gentle Buddhist exterior, vengeance can run deep and long for those that cross them.

To be honest the lintel that was nicked was not really the best. It was good, very good, but there were many that were better. And I was in danger of taking a million and one lintel photos. I presume they took that one out of laziness since at the time it was conveniently lying on the ground.

We spotted a couple of trees dressed in saffron robes. Can’t be too sure about what this was about exactly but someone told us recently that in order to protect a bunch of trees at risk from a developer, a monk had ordained them all, and dressing them in rodes. Very strange. It worked for a while, but with much controversy the trees succumbed to the bulldozer.

Talking of trees, when there had been a bit of insurrection at one time, the prime minister considered that this was due to the poverty of the people involved. As the troublemakers kept hiding out in the forest, he had all the trees cut down, cleared the land and gave it to the poor folk, to grow palms for oil, for which they were guaranteed an income. Double whammy, end of poverty and nowhere to hide any more. The environmentalists may not be happy, but it’s a dam fine way to crush a revolution, and at least palm trees give out more oxygen that your average Wimpy home.

Ok, it’s a nice temple in a wonderful situation, but it is hugely overblown compared with its near neighbour at the foot of the hill. Muang Tam may not have the tallest tower, most perfect lintels or any other superlative but on balance, it’s features make it by far the most wonderful of the Khmer ruins we’ve visited. I’m reminded of an experiment that someone once carried out involving using all the acknowledged most beautiful features from womens faces and piecing them all together to create the perfect face which of course turned out ridiculous. Here was a wonderfully balanced and tranquil spot composed of simple elements.

There have been ponds at all of the other sites but none had incorporated them into a beautiful regular courtyard as they had here. Within a nominally square boundary wall (which itself appeared to have been originally surrounded by a further moat) an inner moat had been divided into four L-shapes by paths leading from symmetric gates to the central functional area. Each of these L-shapes was surrounded by a knee-high wall topped with a curved coping to represent the body of a snake. Naga heads punctuated the snake body at every corner and ornate gateways led through the wall down the few feet to the water. My powers of architectural description do not do justice to the elegance and symmetric simplicity of the place. Hippy and I reminded each other of what images it conjured up to us. The elegant water gardens at Versailles was a favourite.

The tranquility of the site was not rubbing off on a tour guide who was fretting that he had lost a couple of his pax. We’d seen them simply enjoying a bit of quality time at the far end of the site. This chap seemed totally bewildered that anyone would not want to be soaking up his non-stop running commentary.

Before leaving Nang Rong, I sent Hippy off to the silk shop to make some initial soundings with regard to quality and cost of the local craft. I always just get in the way and offer little wisdom of any consequence. When it comes to souvenir hunting, if I were left to my own devices we would probably end up with a load of cloth sew-on patches and a bronze repro Buddha.

It was soo hard, honestly, I don’t know enough about silk to say what good or bad quality is. I had no idea what a reasonable price for the silk was. So I was completely in the dark as to whether the prices they were asking for stuff were fair. Honestly, I needed to see more and then I would know the score. We were planning on going to Surin (apparently known for it’s quality of silk) and then maybe coming back this way. So I left it. More to the point there was nothing really that caught my eye. I felt guilty that I had wasted their time. Strange to think that Hippy, as many of her gender, can drift from window to window and shop to shop with little or no remorse but when faced with talking with the proprietor suddenly feels the pressure to buy something.