Buriram Trip Report with Photos

[Bamboo Grove]

The statues reminded of Khajuraho in India where I visited in early 1988. Wonder if they are anyhow connected.

The temples have a rich display of intricately carved statues. While they are famous for their erotic sculpture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khajuraho ... _Monuments

[Nereus]

The statues reminded of Khajuraho in India where I visited in early 1988. Wonder if they are anyhow connected.

The temples have a rich display of intricately carved statues. While they are famous for their erotic sculpture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khajuraho ... _Monuments

I think that they are from Hindu culture. I used to work out of the following place, and it is known for these sculptures:

7 Top Temples in Bhubaneshwar to Visit

https://www.tripsavvy.com/must-see-bhub ... es-1539565

The spectacular Lingraj temple (the king of lingas, the phallic symbol of Lord Shiva)

[STEVE G]

Yes, and I suspect that the above reproduced carvings of Shiva are there because of that certain Buriram political family.
Over the years I've comes across articles referring to Phanom Rung, Shiva, Issan black magic and people believing in their ability to influence Thai politics.
It's all very strange and hard to find much about in English.

[Bamboo Grove]

Nereus wrote

I think that they are from Hindu culture.

Yes, I think you are correct. Sorry BB, if you feel we are drifting away from your report, this can be a start of a new thread. I remember reading that the Khmer religion originally was Hindi before they became Buddhist.

Steve G wrote

Issan black magic

This is another interesting thing of which I have an experience (seeing something strange) but it would certainly deserve another topic.

[Big Boy]

Day 4 - 25 November 2022

Part 7

We woke up to a beautiful morning. I checked out how to get to the beach, and it was 2 hours away – I made an executive decision, that I’m not that keen on a trip to the beach. Of course, today was the BIG day – Buriram Utd vs Ratchaburi Football Club. This was the main driver for this trip, so we needed to do something fairly close to home. As much as I hate shopping, we (read Mrs BB) decided it would be a visit to the local shopping mall – ughhh.

It was our usual traipse over to our booked hotel for breakfast. Excellent as always.

We then drove into town to visit Robinsons. On the way, we saw a motorcyclist who had just overtaken me taken out by a car driver who pulled out without looking. OK, I saw him, and hit the brakes, but the motorcyclist was overtaking my rather large vehicle, and couldn’t have seen him until it was too late. Another example of Buriram or Surin driving. Unless you are the only available help, as a Farang, you do not stop to help at accidents – there are always loads of Thai Rubber Neckers wanting to video the gore, who can help. After that I had to turn right at traffic lights. I had to proceed with extreme caution because the vehicles approaching at 90 degrees from my left were not stopping. I crossed a roundabout the previous day – what an experience. All of these antics had convinced me to get a Grab taxi to the game. The journey was a nightmare in quiet traffic. What would it be like when it was busy?

Anyway, I digress, back to shopping – if you’ve been to one Thai shopping mall, you’ve been to them all. Same shops, but some are bigger, some are smaller, but they are all Thai shopping malls (are you getting the message? I detest shopping). I think we must have visited every counter at least 3 times. What did we buy? A pair of nail clippers and a pair of slippers.

We went for lunch (for Mrs BB, as I don’t really do lunch). Mrs BB wanted duck, and chose MK – a popular eatery in Thailand that I’d never fancied in over 10 years of living in Thailand. I was really well impressed when we were served by robots. I was like a kiddie seeing his first train set. I’d actually seen much better robots in my working days, but these guys were working with the public – I was probably too impressed, because looking back, they weren’t that sophisticated. They only did food – real people had to bring the drinks. However, it was much better watching the robots than watching Mrs BB eat duck.

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It was then time to relax at the hotel, pending the evening’s big match.

I used Grab (taxi booking service for foreign readers) to and from the match, and it worked very well. On the way home, the crowd had been huge for Thai football, so I decided to walk to the main road outside the stadium, and call a cab. This worked brilliantly, my cab came from the opposite direction, did a U-turn and I was eating my meal in the hotel restaurant at 8:30pm, whilst cars would have still been queuing to get out of the stadium.

The event itself was amazing. A beautiful stadium, away supporter view was decent (although uncovered), the atmosphere by the home supporters was the best I’ve seen in Thailand. It was my one regret from the night – I was sat in the away section, rather than with the GU12 fans. One of my unfulfilled ambitions was to stand in the Kop at Liverpool. Sitting with the GU12 fans is a new ambition. Just watch the way the cheer leaders pitchside are leading the fans in dance - amazing,






Most important of all, it was a great game of football, and very unfortunate there was a winner with a 93rd minute goal. The only downside of the evening was bugs. Big bugs were bouncing off me throughout the match. Fortunately, they were not of the carnivorous variety.

One strange feature that I’ve never seen at a football match was 2 tractor lawn mowers mowing the pitch 15 minutes before kick off and again at half time. OK, mow the grass once, but how much does grass grow in an hour?






After the game, as I wandered back to the main road, I was really impressed that looking down the main thoroughfare to the stadium by the pillars with real flames coming out of the top lighting the way down to the fountains in front of the main stadium. I think this must be unique in Thailand, and I’ve never seen such a beautiful frontage to a stadium anywhere. I’m not saying there isn’t somewhere as nice, but I’ve been to a lot of football stadiums and have seen nothing like it.

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Day 4 Hotel Complaint Update

My e-mail had been playing up badly in Buriram, and it finally rolled on it’s back and put its legs in the air. It was dead.

However, late in the afternoon, the phone in the room rang, and Mrs BB answered. Talking in Thai I heard a series of “Mai Pen Rai” (never mind) being spoken. Basically, the owner of the booked hotel had re-read what I had said and realised the Agoda page was terribly wrong e.g. as well as having no elevator, there was no indoor swimming pool or on site golf-course either. She was very apologetic, and accepted blame, but Mrs BB was too kind, and kept throwing Mai Pen Rais at her. When she put the phone down, Mrs BB said the owner had said sorry, and had admitted the page was wrong. She had promised to fix it. Episode closed. What about compensation i.e. this hotel costs less than what I paid for? Mrs BB told her never mind. I was less than happy, but it had happened.

Tomorrow, is the long journey home.

To be continued………………………………………../

[Dannie Boy]

It’s obviously all too late now, but I’m surprised that the original hotel you had booked, didn’t have any rooms on the ground floor, hence no need for elevators?

[Big Boy]

They were all full by the time we arrived. There was some sort of conference going on, which lasted the duration of our planned stay. The hotel claimed ground floor would have been an upgrade, but I booked a room in a hotel with an elevator. Floor was irrelevant.

[Big Boy]

Day 5 - 26 November 2022

Part 8

The Long Journey Home

We set off from Buriram at 06:20, and my Satnav promised me an 8 hour and 7 minutes journey. I arrived home at 17:05. The Satnav, for some strange reason, avoided the toll roads through Bangkok, but kept assuring me I was on the best route. It had never done that before, so I guess something major had been happening on the toll roads. Thinking my phone had thrown a wobbler, I actually fired Mrs BB's phone up at the same time, but the messages were the same. Actually, we did join the final stretch of toll road, which started just before Rama IX Bridge. Then we hit the ‘road improvements’ that lasted all of the way from Bangkok to Samut Songkhram. The ‘improvements’ lasted to Samut Sakhon, but the delays continued to Samut Songkhram.

Instead of improving roads into Bangkok, this country needs to work on building roads that by-pass Bangkok, maybe a Thai M25. Another 4 hours from Bangkok to Samut Songkhram. It’s stupid – most of the traffic is passing through Bangkok anyway. It is such a crazy system pushing all traffic through a single city.

Again, my speed camera paranoia played a big part of my journey home. So many ‘active’ cameras, and so many people speeding past them. Again, a couple of lowered speed limit cameras to trap the unsuspecting.

There was a fair bit of flooding on the road from Bangkok, although our journey was dry. I think some very bad weather must have been travelling just ahead of us.

Day 5 Hotel Complaint Update

When I got home, my e-mail was restored. I was pleasantly surprised to see the hotel were offering us a free meal on the evening of Day 4, and inviting us back for another stay at the proper hotel at their expense. LOL, a free holiday to Isaan – once was enough. It could have been worse, I suppose. They could have offered me 2 free holidays. I wrote back to them, explaining my e-mail problem, thanking them for their kind offer, but declining. All that I asked of them was to ensure the Agoda page was updated to prevent others having the same problem, which they confirmed was already in action. I had calmed down, and we parted as good friends.

Tomorrow, it is the summing up of our journey, and we start to plan our next adventure.

To be continued………………………………………../

[Big Boy]

Conclusion

Part 9 and final installment

With hindsight, a journey of 11 hours each way was probably a bit (lot) too much for a couple of wrinklies. We should have maybe broken the journey halfway. However, we didn’t anticipate the massive impact of the road improvements (even better roads to deliver too much traffic into the bottleneck they call Bangkok). Even worse, it wasn’t just regular driving, it was nose to tail for hours at a time. Even worse, on the way home we were driving under the raised toll roads through Bangkok, so we had the added tension of losing GPS signal for long periods and having to guess which way to drive. To compound the problem, when the signal was lost, I had to guess which way at the many junctions – Mrs BB seems to have lost the ability to read Thai, and couldn’t help.

After a disastrous start, it was an OK break. It was Isaan, so it will never sit in my ‘best ever’ list of trips, although the Chang Arena experience was very special to a football nut, and well worth the 22 hour journey. I don’t really want to go to Buriram ever again, although I’d love just one more match in the GU12 area of the Chang Arena. That experience looked so special.

Of course, once we’d left the main highway North, I started getting comments like, “See, I told you Koh Samui was just like my home.” Mrs BB was actually right, get away from the beach, and Koh Samui was very primitive, in an Isaan kind of way.

I’ve never known a week so badly affected by severe weather warnings that never actually happened. I started to wonder, had Michael Fish retired to Thailand? Almost everything we did was done with one eye on the sky. If we had actually waited for the weather warnings to materialize, we’d have spent our entire visit in our hotel. We wore our wet weather gear once, and that was for a 400 yard dash back to the car from the Botanic Gardens.

Wheelchair friendliness was not perfect, but for Isaan, it was actually very good. Yes, I was wondering if I was going to lose a wheel on occasion. And I did reverse over my toe 3 times. However, as wheelchair access goes in Thailand, Buriram was pretty good.

Dual Pricing annoys a lot of people in Thailand, and foreigners are often charged 10x the amount that Thais are charged. On this trip, I was hit once, and I only had to pay 5x the Thai price. So dual pricing is not as prevalent as some will lead you to believe – there’s still plenty of free stuff. My take on this is I have a choice, pay or not pay. In this example, I’d had a 22 hour return drive to get here. Did I want to pay a premium price (on this occasion 80฿ extra to see the sights I had driven so far to see)? No, I didn’t want to pay extra, but I did, without question – it would have been stupid to have gone home without seeing it. However, I do limit myself to seeing these attractions just once i.e. I won’t pay a second time. Visitors who come to Hua Hin, and go to see attractions with me driving are probably shocked when I say I will wait outside. In my opinion, I pay a premium price to see something once without complaining, but I will not be repeatedly ripped off to see the same thing.

Where to next? It was going to be a trip to encompass Kanchanaburi (been many times), the 3 Pagoda Pass and the Mon Bridge. However, I am also considering Petchabun, which I am told is at its best in the colder months, so it might take precedence. A bit of research has still to be done e.g. could I push a wheelchair (without breaking my back) over the Mon Bridge? Is the beauty of Petchabun accessible by wheelchair? Watch this space.

I hope you’ve enjoyed sharing my trip. Until next time……………………………………

[migrant]

Thanks for a great report!

[Nereus]

With hindsight, a journey of 11 hours each way was probably a bit (lot) too much for a couple of wrinklies. We should have maybe broken the journey halfway. However, we didn’t anticipate the massive impact of the road improvements (even better roads to deliver too much traffic into the bottleneck they call Bangkok).

Not up to me to say one way or the other, but why do you blindly follow what I assume is Google Maps on your phone. It is not necessary to go anywhere near Bangkok to get to Buri Ram. There are two alternatives that both use Hwy 9. They may be 50 or so kms further, but will also be at least an hour quicker.
Either rt 9 towards the airport, or rt 9 via Ratchaburi. The airport route will not avoid Samut Songram, the Ratchaburi route will.