Khon Kaen

Khon Kaen is located about 450 km northeast of Bangkok. You can get there by train, airplane or bus. Taking the bus from Phitsanuloke to Khon kaen is very spectacular. The bus passes two national parks, very beautifull landscapes with mountains and rivers. From the bus you can enjoy the landscape very well. It's not only the landscape, the ride itself is also very special. The bus often crawls uphill in first gear, downhill the bus usually goes a little bit faster.

Khon Kaen is Thailand's fourth-largest city. Many hotels, a financial, commercial and educational center. The biggest university in north-east Thailand is in Khon Kaen. Nice restaurants, good food and music. We've been in Khon kaen a couple of times, but only for a very short time. We didn't see everything, but somehow we think Khon Kaen is rather boring.

That's why this story isn't about Khon Kaen, but about Non Sa-et, a small village along the road between Khon Kaen and Udon Thani, halfway between the two cities.
In Non Sa-et Daeng and P'Tou live, with their children and their grand-daughter. Daeng is an old and very good friend of Pia, P'Tou is Daeng's husband. Since 1980, when Pia came to the Netherlands, Pia didn't see Daeng and P'Tou very often. Making a phone-call from the Netherlands to Thailand is now very easy, but it is not always been that way. And not everyone likes to write letters. It was in 1994 when Pia, together with Tom, saw them again. After that year, we visited them another two times. These visits are always special, the hospitality, the warmth with which we are received, wonderfull. Daeng and P'Tou both come from Bangkok, why they went to live in Non Sa-et, we don't know. P'Tou runs his own business, he repairs the electrical parts of cars, things like lights, dynamos and so on. They make a good living, the road is getting busyer every day, so there are enough customers.

Non Sa-et consists of two parts, the old village along the road, and the new village just besides the road. In the old village there are a lot of small restaurants. You can have a good meal there, like kai yang (grilled chicken), som tam (papaya salad, very spicy), larb (spicy minced meat), nam tok (grilled meat), and a lot more dishes. All restaurants are along the road. In 1994 it was a two-lane road, with big trees on each side. The restaurants had terraces under these trees, a nice place to sit. Now, in 2000, the road has six lanes, and the trees are gone. The restaurants are still there, and the food is still very good. But something is missing. Maybe we are the only ones who bother about it, the people in the village don't complain. They propably are better off, more traffic, so the can earn more.
The new part of Non Sa-et consists of new houses around and behind a market. A lot of these houses have no inhabitants yet, and the market is still very small. The old village lacks a lot of comfort, but it's a nice place to be.