เที่ยวอุบล

Thursday I took advantage of the time off school to see a little more of the city where I live. I started off the day by biking over to the local museum. There were some fun things to see there. Most of what I saw, I’ve already seen other places. Probably my favorite things were some of the traditional tools (which I had not seen before).

In my previous post I mentioned that Ubon is gearing up for its big annual Candle Festival. Another part of that preparation is an international wax carving competition. There are carvers here from, I think, eight different countries.

After checking out the wax sculptures I took the scenic route home. I ended up seeing several water buffalo (no, not everyone has a water buffalo). I saw some folks out working in rice fields. I stopped by a store that sells traditional silk clothing. By this time I was getting close to a famous International Forest Temple. I’d heard about it several times, so I decided to bike the extra few kilometers to see it.

It was worth the extra distance. วัดป่านานาชาติ is a temple in the forest tradition that was started for English speakers. Walking into the cool of the forest of the temple it made me wonder what Thailand was like 50 or so years ago before they got rid of all their trees. It was so much cooler there under the trees. I was there at noon, having just ridden my bike, and I was not hot while in the temple grounds. The other impressive things was the silence. I saw only four people in the hour or so I was there. I didn’t hear anything from any of them.

Not so impressive, but perhaps noteworthy in a twisted sort of way, the toilets (squatties) had a notice forbidding the use of tissue paper. Usually such notices forbid the flushing of such paper, and a bin is provided for disposal. This notice did not conform to the standard, and there was no bin for waste disposal.