Udon Thani

Udon Thani is located in the north-east of Thailand, about 560 km from Bangkok. Easy to reach by plane, train and bus, a number of good hotels.
And what else?
Three busstations. Which busstation you need for which destination is an easy question, the answer is rather difficult. If you live in Udon long enough, maybe you know it.
But never ask it to a tuk-tuk driver. He brings you, for a lot of money (for sure if you are a foreigner, but als if you don't know the regular price) to the wrong busstation. And after that, for even more money, to another busstation. A lot of foreigners live in Udon, especially Americans, and that made the price of a tuk-tuk ride rise to astronomical heights (at least for foreigners).
Udon has two shopping centers, Charoensi en Charoensi. You can eat, shop, like everwhere in Thailand.
So rather boring.

But why do we go to Udon?
Friends of us live there, Bansri and Dick, Dara and Joop, Nong, …. Reason enough to go there.

And Udon isn't really that boring and expensive.
All of the hotels have good restaurants, disco's bars, often with live music. And if you like karaoke, you can have a good time. For lunch, go to a buffet in one of the hotels, good food, and as much as you want for a fixed price.
Udon is centrally located and easy to reach, a good place for trips in the surrounding area, Nong Khai , Loei, Ban Chiang . . .

Ban Chiang is a small village near Udon. While plowing their fields, farmers regularly found parts of pottery. Somebody woke up and started digging. Ceramic objects were found, the oldest so far in Thailand. And bronze objects, the oldest so far in the whole world. There is a small museum, as usual a foreigner pays more than a Thai, and you can visit one of the excavation sites.

Just outside Udon, in the middle of the woods, a very influential monk has lived. After his death, the tempel became a place of pilgrimage. Beside the simple wooden dwellings of the monks, there is a kind of monument with a statue of the monk. A lot of marble, very flashy. His house became a museum. Fortunately only one monument has been built there, the suroundings stayed the way it should be with a forest monastry. From time to time you might meet some animals.

In the north, towards Nong Khai, is a nice temple. But the main reason to go there is the landscape. In the woods around the temple you will find gigantic round boulders. A nice walk is marked, and you will also have a beautifull view over a valley. During your walk you will see traces of prehistoric people, drawings on the rock, and also a kind of house (very old maybe?). This area is a national park, the Phu Phra Bat Historical Park. But beware of the time. We arrived in the afternoon, and at the end of the walk, it was dark. No problem, only the car was parked a few kilometers away, at the beginning of the walk. One of our friends asked a park official to bring her to the car, on the back of a motorcycle