A day trip to Nong Khai
This weekend, my colleague and I went to a northeastern city within earshot of Laos – Nong Khai. The town is located about 100 kilometers away from where we live, so we decided to ride our motorcycles there. It took us around 3.5 hours to get there since we didn’t drive fast and stopped a couple of times. It was a risky decision since now it’s a rain season, but we successfully and safely made it!
Nong Khai lies on the Mekong River and is the road and the railway gateway to the Lao capital – Vientiane. In pre-Covid times, many people were going to Laos through Nong Khai to do the visa-runs (to renew their Thai visas and to come back).
Historically, Nong Khai shifted back and forth between several opposing forces, including the Ayutthaya kingdom (what’s now Thailand), the Lan Xiang kingdom of Laos and southern Chinese Haw warrior. Many Vietnamese also settled here during and after American War, so Vietnamese culture is very present here in local cuisine and architecture of the temples. We embraced it, eating some Vietnamese food and drinking Vietnamese coffee which gave me some feeling of nostalgia about my trip to Vietnam.
Nong Khai's main sight is Sala Keoku, a park of colossal sculptures, some over 20 m tall. The park is the handiwork of the mystic Luang Pu Bunleua Sulilat, who bought the land in 1978 when he was exiled from his native Laos, where he had built a similar park in Vientiane in the 1950s. Synthesizing Buddhist and Hinduist ideologies, Buddhas, many-armed goddesses, a seven-headed Naga snake, and various human-animal hybrids dominate the site (from Wikipedia). Walking the park gave us a magical feeling of being present in another world. It’s really unique, and we spent there around one hour just wandering around, gazing at the statues and trying to guess their meaning since unfortunately there’s no explanation in English.
One of the highlights of the trip was visiting a coffee shop decorated like a rain forest. Since I’m a big fan of rainforests and aesthetics inspired by them, I really enjoyed hanging out there and inhaling a man-made but still pleasant humidity of the lavish green vegetation.
