Uthumphon Phisai

Uthumphon Phisai is about 500 km east of Bangkok, between Surin and Si Saket. Not a place to go without a very good reason. No hotels, just a few restaurants, at 8 o'clock almost everybody is asleep.
We went there two times. Phranom, one of Pia's sisters, was teaching at a primary school, and she thought we would like it in Uthumphon Phisai. And we certainly did. In Uthumphon there is not much to see or to do. A very fine Khmer ruin within the compound of the local wat, Prasat Hin Wat Sa Kamphaeng Yai, it's certainly worth a visit, but after that…..
The surrounding is very beautifull, but you need a car to see anything. Trips to the Mekhong with old prehistoric color paintings on the steep rocks, a border crossing to Laos, Khao Phra Wihaan on the Kampuchea border, everything is interesting to see.

Phranom's school, that was what really did it. That school was what made our visits to Uthumphon Phisai really worthwhile. The school is located in a small village, somewhere between the rice-fields, half an hour by car. In the dry season very easy to reach, in the rainy season you often have to push, because the car is stuck in the mud. You're on your bare feet in the mud, ankle-deep. We were lucky the car was front-wheel driven, less mud was flying through the air.
Before we went to the school Pia bought a lot of biscuits and oranges on the market. Phranom had told us before our first visit, that the children at school didn't have very much to eat. At school we were welcomed by all the teachers, and we were surrounded by numerous little children. Tom probably was the first white person of flesh and blood they saw.
It was getting lunch-time, so one of the school's staff bought, butchered and prepared a chicken. He made larb kai, a tastefull and very spicy salad, for us and for the teachers. The children had a cup of rice and some salted fish, brought from home. The fish had the size of a sardine, one fish for two children. The larb kai didn't taste that good anymore when we saw that. But there were the bicuits and oranges. Because of the poor diet, the children at the school were very small.

After lunch a tour through every classroom. Thai children get English classes at primary school, so Tom had was invited to act as a teacher. Most of the children only know phrases like "What is your name?" and "How old are you?" so don't give difficult answers or ask difficult questions. It was a very special expierence.
Phranom collected money, together with the other teachers, to make improvements to the school buildings. First of all decent toilets have been built, the children just went into a rice field. And now the children learn to brush their teeth after each meal.

The first time we went to the school, Tom was the first white person ever to visit the village. At our second visit, there had been another white man in the village. We were thirthty, so we went to the local pub. It was in the rainy season, so on our bare feet through the mud. The local pub was made of two planks, one to sit on, the other one to put on glasses and bottles. In the pub we heard that some month before a girl from the village, she was working in Bangkok, had taken a white friend with her. This friend has been standing in front of the pub for more than half an hour, he just didn't dare to sit down, great fun for all the villagers. While we were drinking, an old woman passed the pub, after a short hesitation she walked straight to Tom's camera-bag and started to study the content of the bag. She didn't speak Thai, only Khmer, and she was only very curious. Tom took a picture of here, we sent it to the school later and we hope she got it.

Unfortunatly, we only went to Uthumphon Phisai two times. Phranom is working in Bangkok at the moment. Good for her, close to the family, but Utumphon Phisai still has something special.