December 18-19, 2013




It’s exciting to explore some other border cities in northeastern Thailand. We spent two days touring around there, including Loei, Phu Ruea and Chiang Khan.

For the first 40 days in Thailand, I always stay in the city of Khon Kaen, trying to adapt myself better in this foreign place. Tuesday, Dr. Surapol mentioned to me if I am available to visit Loei together where he will take some water samples from a gold mining site. After moving my Thursday’s lecture to Friday, we decided to get there on Wednesday and Thursday (December 18-19).

December 18, 2013

Loei city

Dr. Surapol picked me and Michelle up at my place and headed toward Loei at 7 in the morning. As you can see from the map, it’s quite a long drive to get to Loei from Khon Kaen. The distance is about 200 km and it took about 3 hours by local route. On the way to Loei, sugar cane fields are all in your eyes. Big trucks loaded and piled quite high with sugar canes were busy on the road driving to the sugar plant. In this long drive, we passed by Phu (means “moutain") Wiang National Park, and went through Phu Kradueng National Park at its east side. By the way, there’s this saying about the word of “Loei": "Passing through directly without any intention of staying in this place." Is it because Loei is a deserted land or a bad place in the past times?

By the noon time, we arrived at Leoi Rajabhat University (LRU) and met with Pang, who is a lecturer at LRU and is now pursuing his Ph.D. degree at Khon Kaen University. After greeting Pang’s colleagues, Pang toured us around the botanical garden in LRU campus. This garden features with all kinds of dinosaurs and ancient plants. The garden looks like the one in the movie of Jurassic Park. I am sure visitors would be impressed by such a special spot of this university.


Scenic points near Phu Ruea National Park

After brief lunch, we all moved into Pang’s Outlander for sightseeing. It’s only until we arrived the first scenic spot that I knew we were in a temple area called Wat PA Ban Huai Lat. The construction of this splendid temple was supported by Queen of Thailand. Right below the pointing roof, there’re two royal symbols posted high on the front panel, which I guess represents King and Queen of Thailand, respectively.

The next two spots are not far away from the temple. Both are located within the outer rim of Phu Ruea National Park. One is a landscape full of european style, windmill and Christmas red flowers. During the winter times, the view of this spot is very in season, especially when Christmas is coming next week. Another one is a resort area with green forest in the place. It’s a place where you would sit and breathe in a whole lot of fresh air, and enjoy seeing the blue sky. It’s quite relaxing to stay and drink a cup of coffee there.



Night view of old street in Chiang Khan

Though the trip was quite relaxing, we were still in a hurry to drive eastward back to Loei and then turned upward to Chiang Khan lest it should become too dark on the road. The total distance is about 100 km, a long way to go. When we reached Chiang Khan, we were in a tourist area where the old and traditional Thai architecture is on both sides of the street. The leisure clothing displayed in the shops is mostly in colourful brown, yellow and dark red.

After we shopped around, finally we got to a restaurant at the other end of the street, and met with all Pang’s colleagues, Or, Kong, Ann and Kai. We had a big dinner together. The meat and soup were in Isaan style, and the fish was in particular provided from the Mekong River. Note that this tourist street goes along the nearby Mekong River. It’s a pity we could not see the river view during the night time.

It’s been a long day for today. What will be the next program tomorrow, seeing monk parade on this street or going to see clouds sea early in the morning?



December 19, 2013

Clouds sea

We decided to get up earlier and left for the clouds sea spot at 5: 30 am. I was awake around 5 am and found out that the morning temperature was 6 degree C only in Chiang Khan area.

So we all were on time to meet together at the hotel lobby and drove to the place for this morning adventure. Arriving at the foothill, Pang bought the tickets for the car-pool transit, and up we went to the hilltop, where a big crowd of tourists have been waiting there, ready to see the sunrise and sea-like clouds of all varieties. This scene reminds me of my past experience of watching sunrise and clouds sea in Ali-mountain, Taiwan. Like the situation here, we had to get up very early in the morning, took a chu-chu train to the spot, and betted our good luck to see the sunrise. There’s a difference of clouds sea between here and Ali-mountain. In Ali-mountain, you don’t visualise the cluster of village houses because it’s located at a pretty high altitude. Here, it’s with a hill terrain and the villages are spread right below the clouds sea.

There we saw the clouds sea and took a lot of photos. Fortunately, we had the luck to see the sunrise as well. I heard that it is the first spot here to see the sunlight in the whole land of Thailand. If this is true, the trip to Chiang Khan is even more worthy. On the way back to Loei, we stopped by a special scenic point, where the Mekong River makes a sharp turn. Again I was thinking I have ever stood right in front of the mountain forest of Laos, with the Mekong River in between, for several times. But, somehow I never have an opportunity to enter its land. I should manage to visit this isolated and mysterious country while I stay in the city of Khon Kaen.




Gold mining site visit

Another purpose of this trip was to visit a gold mining site and took groundwater samples from the nearby village. We were welcome first with a briefing of site profile, including site geology, gold mining and extracting processes, and site wastewater treatment and disposal. After this, there’s a site tour of mining pit, waste disposal pond, and mineral ore processing plant.

In general, I was impressed by the guideline of zero discharge, in view of environmental protection. But I was curious to know how this guideline was implemented and ensured. For example, washout of hazardous sediment and pollutant-contained water can be a potential issue of concern during the rainy season. In addition, air aeration of water sprinkling can accelerate toxic gas to escape from waste disposal pond. Furthermore, water mist may be wind-carried to the nearby paddy fields and villages, causing possible threat to human health.



Concluding remark

This 2-day trip accompanied by colleagues of Loei Rajabhat University was closed with a late lunch of Isaan style in the city of Loei. It is highly appreciated that Pang and his colleagues have arranged such a great trip, technical and cultural. We were back to Khon Kaen at around 6:45 pm.


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