We took the Laos-Thai International bus from Vientiane, Laos to Nong Khai, Thailand. It’s just a quick trip across the Mekong via the friendship bridge and the bus stopped at all the immigration checkpoints making it a very simple border crossing.
View of the Thai-Lao friendship bridge from our guesthouse – Vientiane, Laos is right across the river.
We liked Nong Khai immediately, it’s just the right size and it’s a really cute well kept place. It had a very long promenade along the Mekong river and an awesome day market that ran parallel to the promenade. In the evening the promenade turns into a night market but only on weekends-lucky for us we were there on a Saturday night.
The food stalls at the night market had some interesting things on offer. Lots of stir fried grasshoppers, crickets, and grubs. They are definitely a very popular snack, a local man marched up to the stall and bought three platefuls of these crunchy delicacies.
We visited Sala Keoku, Nong Khai’s Buddha Park, and it was designed by the same Monk (Bunleua Sulilat) who made the sculptures in Vientiane, Laos. The artist fled from Vientiane to Nong Khai and then designed a park very similar to the one in Vientiane, the difference being that it’s newer with more modern sculptures. It was cool to visit and he really was very creative.
The next morning was supposed to be a laid back, sip on coffee, read the news kind of morning but then Gordon realized that the UNESCO site close to Udon Thani that we wanted to visit would be closed the next day, which is the day we were planning to go. I was woken suddenly by Gordon shaking me, so we quickly got ready, had a coffee, and the guesthouse owner drove us to the bus station where we hopped on a mini-van to Udon Thani…things got kind of interesting from there. The rest of the story is in the Udon Thani post…
Where we stayed: The Rim Riverside 
Written by: Tammy Hermann…Live~Love~Travel
Very nice and interesting. I Love all the sculptures
they are all unique and interesting. Thank you for sharing
Thanks, the sculptures are definitely worth seeing. We’re glad we made the effort to see them!!
Very interesting sculpture. I was wondering how he made them. Were they cast 1 piece in place? Or are they several pieces and joined together with bolts?
Yes they are really interesting and they definitely had us pondering over a few things. We think they were cast in one piece because on some of the broken ones we could see the rebar. He must have had some amazing forms to make them!