This is   the Final Part ( Part Three )   of our third trip to Loei from Dec-28-2008 to Jan-1-2009.  I hope my momories are still with me when I compose this. Seems the weather in Bangkok and the entire Thailand is getting a lot colder now than the time when we were in Loei, which is said to be the coldest province in the entire Kingdom.

Warning:  There are many pictures and, like   Part One   and   Part two ,   it might load very slow !


Put your cursor on the small pics below to expand them.

(To view even larger size of the pics: Go to   SLIDESHOWS   at the end of this post.)

Dec-31-2008 (Continued)

After dinner we took a walk around the town center.  There were two stages on both ends of the main street.  Each had some beauty contest and other shows going on. At some point on one stage there was a "beauty" contest for the most chubby lady.  The ladies on the stage weren't that obese.  They were just somewhat chubby, and all of them were cute.  In fact, they were very well-mannered and with grace and dignity.   However, I was annoyed with many words the two announcers used.  All the time I felt they kept making fun of the contesters' body weight.  But no one on the stage showed any slightest sign of being offended.   The rest of the audience just chuckled along.  Maybe it was only me who was unnecessarily serious over this matter?
Note: Right pic above showed the other beauty contest.

Along the street were all kinds of stalls.  Ken was interested in toys.  Many toys were so well-designed and were made in China.  Top-right in the pic below showed a well-known handicraft of "Phi Ta Khon" (pronounced: "peeh-tah-khon").

Now point to the word Phi ta Khon
And slide your cursor to the pop-up that appears.


There was a fountain at one end of the main street.   There we saw a very impressive acrobatic bike show by a group of young men with the youngest ones at the age of no more than 10 or 11.  All of them were from the Thai National Bike Team. What a surprise to see them in the little town of Loei on New Year's Eve. They were so good at riding the bikes. All of them went up and down the two huge slopes that had been put up especially for this occasion. Many slid up the slopes at their max speed and turned somersaults both forward and backward in the air while their hands firmly grabbed their bikes. The scenes were so dynamic! In contrast, most of the audience were awkwardly reserved and many were rather quiet. Only very few uttered and almost none screamed at all.  It was surprising to see any souls more reserved than my own self.  And it was certainly very funny to hear one of the two announcers continuously requested the silent Loei audience to applaud "so that the bikers know they were appreciated".
     

The above videos are 34 seconds, 13 seconds, and 7 seconds long.
Too bad the memory of our camera was full before the show ended.

Tony and Min toured the town fair in their cosplay costumes from "Soul Eater", a Japanese animation. When they returned we took these pics.  Tony was "Spirit" and Min was "Stein".

Way before Christmas,

Min and her friends in Loei had searched the internet and found a good wig shop with the name of "Bell" in Sam-Peng, Chinatown, Bangkok.  They asked Tony to get 8 wigs.  I grew up in the vicinity of Chinatown in the first stage of my life and am somewhat familiar with the neighborhood, but I did not know there were any wig shops, not to mention Bell's.  Amazing the kids more than 500 kms away knew better than I did.  It was an adventure going there.  We took a taxi from our place in Bangna to Chinatown.  After that we had to walk.  Sam-Peng was as jammed and polluted as before (or worse).  We had to move at half a foot a step all the way along the over-crowded and super narrow Sam-Peng lane. We made a right turn at an even narrower alley, walked a few more steps and there was Bell's, the wig shop.  Shops have changed a lot in Sam-Peng, but one thing that has not changed was the "busy-ness" in there.  The wig shop had a lot of wigs and the owner refused to give any discount -- just like what the bloggers had warned on the internet.  We ended up buying 9 different wigs with most of them at the unit price of 420Baht, or less than 15 US Dollars.   You have just seen two of them on Tony's and Min's heads in the pics above.

An excellent review of Sam-Peng:
(Please make sure you slide the cursor to the pop-up window.)
(The above was written by petehall in 2001.)
I have not found a good picture that reflects the hustle-bustle of Sam Peng yet. Try use your own imagination for now.

New Year's Day

Kanom Jeen

The way back was smooth. We saw two Kanom Jeen restaurants near Petchaboon and decided to stop at one of them.  Our first time there. It was good.  See pic of the food I copied from Wikipedia.

In this restaurant if we ordered Kanom Jeen we got three small "pots" of different sauces and a plate of fresh vegetables for free.  The refills were also free. The veggies in the restaurant looked more delicious than those in the pic above.  The Kanom Jeen was only 70 Baht per plate.  It was a good eat.  There were other delicious things on their menu, too.

Sukhothai Style Noodles

Before I end this part let me jot down another good eating place.  Actually I should have mentioned this in Part Two.  On our way to the temple that had monkeys and caves our friends took us to this restaurant.  It was between Amphur Muang, or Town district, and Amphur Wang-sapung, or the district of Wang-sapung. The restaurant was by the main road next to a Bang-Jaak gas station and it had a vast garden in the premises.  The name of the restaurant was Kuai-tiaw Sukhothai (Sukhothai style of noodles) , which was its most famous food. Such style of noodles is served with lime and certain veggies. There were white and yellow noodles for us to choose.  My first time to know of Sukhothai Style Noodles.  It was delicious.   It was 20 Baht per small serving at that restaurant. Two servings were more than enough to fill up one's stomach.  Sorry we did not take any pictures at the restaurant. To view pictures of Sukhothai Style noodles please click what I found from Google HERE.

 

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