The Road to Nan and Mu Ga Ta
Posted by Stuart at 03:29 PM on March 26, 2007Monday, March 12
The trip to Nan was mostly uneventful, however, we did make a few stops as planed. Our first one was in Uttradit Province. And believe me, that stop was especially uneventful. The next one, in Phrae Province was much better. Phrae is another example of an old, Northern Thai city that had a city wall and a moat around it. There are a few interesting temples inside the old city walls, and a lot of old wooden houses. We had a good time just walking around town and checking out the old architecture.
We finally made it to the mountainous province of Nan, on the Lao border. As we started to climb the hills, we started passing various fields and mountain sides that were being burned. As we went farther and farther, the air became more and more smokey. By the time we reached Nan city, the air was so full of smoke it was actually a bit difficult to breathe.
As we found out, a state of emergency was being called in the neighboring provinces of Chiang Mai and Chaing Rai because of the smoke. The Thai Government first tried to blame it on Myanmar, but it was obvious from our trip that Thai people were doing a lot of burning themselves.
But we walked around town at night anyway. Nan city has its charms, although though the downtown is made up of mostly modern concrete shophouses (as one usually finds in Thai provincial capitals).
Eventually we stumbled upon a all-you-can-eat, grill-it-yourself mu ga ta restaurant with another boy band. This band was a bit better than the one in Phitsanulok last night, but their set was almost exactly the same. For some reason, James Taylor's "Handyman" and CCR's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" are very popular in Thailand. They finished off their set with a quite impressive full instrumental of "Hotel California".
Full of grilled meat and beer, we headed back to our very cheap (180 baht, or $5) but not very nice hotel. We definitely were getting what we paid for tonight! Tomorrow we will explore more of the sites in Nan and then decide where to go from here.
