Day 23, Sang Kom – Nong Khai

Again . . . great temps in the morning to ride in were lovely . . .

. . . 10 miles down the road we came to Sala Keoku, the ‘mother of all sculpture gardens’,

where they made no secret about charging foreigners a higher entrance fee!!!

Lots of school kids arrived for a visit too  . . .

. . . saying, ‘Hello . . Hello’

We never got into this building, but there was plenty of other things to see . . . you can see the building in the aerial photos above.

. . . lots of multi headed snakes . . .

. . . happy Buddhas . . .

. . . big Buddhas

. . . and this one that must have been very special because lots of folks were stopping and making an offering . . .

. . . it had three women on it with sarongs!

Then is was back on the bikes and down the road. Here was an interesting banana vendor who had the bananas priced by how ripe they were!

A common place for us to stop for a break was an elementary school. Shade, bathrooms running water and happy teachers . . .

. . . and very well behaved happy children, all saying ‘HELLO’.

Back home, Cynthia is a physical therapist, and here is helping Bo work out a few kinks before we started biking again . . .

. . . which when we did,took us along a busy highway but with our own lane . . .

. . . which had a friendly woman selling fruit . . .

. . . and a fellow selling lottery tickets. Lots of lottery ticket vendors. There’s a lottery drawing every day!!!

Oh and there were elections in two week. Not only do roving pickup trucks with outside speaker setups continually broadcast political advertising but there are countless roadside signs giving you info on who to vote for . . . I think this guy was going for the older crowd . . .

. . . this guy was for the younger crowd (the men all seem to play up their military background)

Women running for office too . . .

. . . not sure if you are supposed to vote for this guy 8 times . . . ???

. . .this group looked like a television news crew . . .

. . .and I think this guy was going for the religious vote!!! All that political intrigue made us hungry and today Woodie pick a French restaurant for lunch where we all order off the menu . . .

. . .  everybody likes pizza . . .

. . .  including me!!!

. . . another rest stop at a school in the afternoon brought a bunch of happy kids out of their classroom!

. . . and soon we were entering the city of Beung Kan . . .

. . . where we saw only the second self supported bicyclist of the whole trip.

Tonight we would be staying at ‘The One Hotel’. Nice place!!

. . . and walked downtown for a lovely dinner!