Namsom Continued…

Monday 22nd February

Having explored the little town of Namsom Joy and David decided to take us to Phu Phrabat Historical Park, which was only a one hour drive from Namsom (still on the boundary of the Udon Thani Province).

Thought to have been affected by the ice age by moving icebergs, thought to have crashed to the ground, Phu Phrabat has some very interesting stone formations. This strange but beautiful forest was inhabited around2,500-3,00 years ago by prehistoric man. Paintings of animals, men, geometric shapes and the palms of hands can still be seen in the sheltered rock formations today!

On the 3 hour walk around the tranquil park the mosquitoes decided to try some falang blood and happily feasted on me all the way round. After about 30 minutes I became dizzy and nauseous, for some reason I began having a reaction to these particular black and white striped mosquitoes.

The next day was spent in bed with a fever, I had some relief in the fact that I was taking malaria tablets, but still this doesn’t make you full proof! Fortunately it only lasted a few days, but it took weeks for the bites to go down! After realizing I was particularly allergic to the mosquitoes in Namsom we decided to make a move as soon as I was feeling well enough.

Originally the plan was to spend our last day with David and Joy in Nong Khai (the border town to Laos) and check out the markets at friendship bridge before we said our goodbyes and continued on with our travels. However, the night before we were going to leave my uncle told us that we had to ‘get bus’. Unfortunately many years of being married to his Thai wife has digressed his level of English and ability to communicate! After asking several questions and receiving very limited answers he told us that he would cook us breakfast and take us to the bus station in Namsom in the morning, from there we could catch a mini bus to a dual carriage way, then wait for a bus that is signed for Nong Khai. Eventually I found out that the reason why they could not spend the day with us was because they had to take some veg from their farm to the market.

Well, we managed to follow all the instructions and after a nerve-racking 1 hour wait by the side of a busy main road, sure enough we managed to flag down a bus going to Nong Khai.
I was a little disappointed having made such an effort to travel to North Thailand to see my uncle, that he was unable to spend our last day together. But as fate would have it Laos turned out to be a happy accident, as flying from Thailand to Hanoi in Vietnam, cost wise, was not an option, so we decided to travel through Laos overland.