While we were in Pak Chong, we had gotten instructions about how to get to our next destination, Phimai. It was a little involved, involving a couple of buses, which we weren't thrilled about. In the morning, us and a few other people had breakfast and waited for our lift into town.
While we were waiting, one of the guides in the vicinity called us all over. He had found a chameleon. He had to move it because it was eating the 'lantern bugs' (the first bugs we saw before our first tour), which apparently are pretty rare.
Our lift arrived and we were dropped off at the bus station. We managed to communicate where we wanted to go and got our tickets. But we didn't have enough communication skills to figure out how long the bus would be. Turned out it was only 10 minutes away.
The bus trip was nowhere near as bad as we were expecting. The traffic in rural Thailand is quite civilised, and the bus was comfortable. We were in Khorat before we knew it, at a MASSIVE bus station, trying to find the next bus. We asked a very helpful lady who actually escorted us to the bus, and told the driver where we wanted to go.
This bus, being more of a local commuter bus, wasn't quite as comfortable, and took a long time to get out of the city, stopping to let people on every 5 minutes. Once we were on the highway though, it was pretty smooth going and didn't take long to reach Phimai. We even managed to get off where we needed to and found the hotel easily!
This hotel was individual bungalow style accommodation, a decent step up from the last place, but not nearly as nice as the first one.
It was a lovely setting though, right on the river. There was a cute little boardwalk thing that spanned the length of the grounds, with little sitting areas every so often which were lovely for relaxing.
FWIW, none of the places we stayed at had a pool, and we never missed it. The first thing I did here was take a long hot shower!
We decided to take a wander into town first up and get our bearings. Town was just over the bridge. It was a very small city, and easy to walk from one end to the other. The owner at the hotel (who was a lovely German man who runs the hotel with his Thai partner) had told us about the night markets and the temple festival, and we'd decided to check both out.
First we just wandered up and down some of the streets, getting a feel for the place. It looked like it was after school time, and there were kids in uniforms getting around in the back of utes and piled onto motorbikes. We got a lot of stares and waves, and one kid even ran over and gave us both hugs! It was pretty clear they were not used to seeing westerners here.
Eventually we came across the night market, which was still being set up. We saw one or two other westerners in this area.
The whole town was centred around the large Angkorian style temple, Phimai Sanctuary. We decided to head back to the hotel for a rest and head back to the temple for the evening festivities.
Back at the hotel, we asked the owner about dinner. He said there were mostly just 'hole in the wall' type places in town, and didn't really have anywhere specific to recommend. He told us about one of the actual restaurants in town, which he hadn't been to personally. We decided to just aim for that. Unfortunately we were disappointed. The food was presented in a fancy way, but was no good. For example, I ordered lemon grass chicken. What I got was deep fried pieces of lemon grass and chicken bones with very little meat on them. I really couldn't eat much of it, and shared some of DH's dinner which was also sub-par, but not quite as bad as mine. It was one of the more expensive meals of our trip too. We made sure to tell the hotel owner not to recommend that one!
Moving on, we headed towards the temple for the festival, really not knowing what to expect. We were running a little late by then, the there was no line at the ticket desk. We gestured for two tickets. Two of the people behind the counter had a quick discussion and handed us VIP lanyards. We gestured for how much, and were told 'free'. Score!
We entered the temple area and began wandering, not really sure what to do or where to go, and feeling silly that we'd bought dinner at that awful restaurant when their was a huge array of delicious looking street food on offer here.
One of the side temples was half lit up for a display by the local 3D Art Museum. It was quite interesting and we decided then and there that we would visit the museum the next day. We also checked out the temple while we were there, but only the front part was lit up.
After a while, we discovered that there were several entrances on the gate temple that had letters above them, and one of the letters matched our VIP ticket. We showed the people at the entrance our ticket and they waved us through.
We had no idea what to expect on the other side, but there was a whole heap of seating set up facing the main temple, which looked like a miniature Angkor Wat and had a large stage set up in front of it. We were shown to our seats - front row centre! There weren't many people there yet, but as the people starting coming in, we noticed their lanyards all said things like 'diplomat' and 'liaison', and they were walking around with little flags representing the countries they were from. We suddenly felt a little out of our depth, but decided to go with it. A very nice (and very important looking) lady sat next to me and, when she realised that my photos would be a little blocked by the tree to the side of us, she got everyone to move up one seat (there was a spare seat on that side of the row).
When the show started, we started to realise what sort of production we were going to be privy to. This rivalled any Disney show. There was a cast of thousands. The costumes were elaborate and included puppets representing elephants and horses. They used projection lighting effects, as well as lasers and mood lighting on the temple. There were fire and smoke effects. Not to mention fireworks (which sadly I didn't get a photo of). It was really quite amazing. Of course, the storyline was a little hard to follow with no English translation, but we understood enough to realise it was the story of the ancient people these temples belonged to.
We didn't quite know when the show ended, because all the actors just stayed put. Apparently we were invited to go up on stage and get photos with them, but a lot of that got lost in translation, so we just left.
We stopped by one of the street food people on the way out to get a snack. The vendor saw us looking and obviously realised that we wouldn't know what it was, so he offered us a free taste. It was delicious! Like a crepe served with a sweet thick cream and topped with something grated that could have been some sort of rind.
On our way back to the hotel, we wondered if all that had really just happened to us, and thought we must be the luckiest people in the world!
