hello welcome back to next level adventures and welcome to nong
kai here in the isan area of thailand
we are continuing our adventures in isan and following the mia kong
across there is laos but over here is isan thailand full of spicy food incredible beautiful
temples including a very unique one you don't want to miss this one we are going to a sunken
temple out in the miakong itself very interesting this whole province is beautiful
we're gonna have a great day today so strap in as we explore more of isan the wild the
true the real thailand and we're going to get to know this guy as well so come on dreamy let's go
okay so this is the first place we've stopped off in nankai it's about 15 minutes outside of the
main town and it's quite lovely it's beautiful sculptures and concrete statues depicting
religious buddhist even hindu stories and folk tales and they're all handmade and there are
hundreds and hundreds of them i've been walking around now for 20 30 minutes and everywhere
you turn there's a story being told from ones i understand and recognize certain parts and
periods of buddha's life and then it moves on to i've seen the king of thailand depicted here
and certain things that he did during his life i'm talking about rama9 and but then there's
like there's a bit of a day of the dead vibe going on in this particular area i came through
a tunnel a mouth kind of thing and there's this buddha's image here holding people in his hand and
all around this imagery of family life some of the cute old couples who seem to have lived their life
together all the way up until their death and then there's domestic violence someone's getting a slap
some woman's maybe she's been caught cheating cheating on her husband or i don't know there's
no english translations to the signs that go with it you just kind of have to use your imagination
and again wild depictions of other people's imaginations to tell these stories through
sculpture through art and uh it's it's fascinating and the more you go around this place the more you
just get blown away by some of the scale of these the centerpiece of the whole place is the seven
serpent rising up it looks about 30 meters high and there's a image of the buddha in the top of
it and it's it's massive and you know i walked around to the back where there's a forest and
even in the forest towering over the huge trees are again huge statues of buddha and you know
you walk around the corner and you just go wow and then walk around the corner and you go wow
it's one of those places where if you came here and wanted to take some nice
instagrams and photographs there's a few people knocking around but it's not very busy 40 bar
you entrance spend a good hour here and just soak up the atmosphere it's beautiful
absolutely gorgeous and there's a big lake over here with big looking fish
and you can buy some bread so let's go feed them
so
those fish are massive you can buy a whole loaf of bread for 20 baht it's got me hungry
i've got a snack and this is a strange snack in thailand now they have mango here some of the
best mango in the world and they sell it in all different types of ripetity
that's definitely not a word you know sometimes it can be green and crunchy fresh off the branches
and other times it's soft and yellow but they sell it with two types of dip the first one i'm gonna
try because i've never tried this i've always gone oh yeah but never tried it but since we're
in nissan and everything is spicier than normal why not let's just try it so it's sugar looks like
white sugar and it's cut with chili flakes and chili seeds yeah let's just let's give it a try
whoa okay i think there might be tamarind in there as well
but um get the hit of the sweetness straight away but then that is quickly removed by spice
i would love to have found that when i was a kid play pranks on your mum and dad with the dib dab
dad try the new flavor of dib dab and it would just be crazy spicy no it's quite interesting
but secondly and more worryingly there seems to be this quite strong crazy looking chili
dip now i would imagine it's a sweet chili jam or something i hope it's sweet but it looks menacing
it's quite a lot isn't it um smells smells alright here we go
issan what are you doing to me there's just no need for that as a dip
delicious delicious fresh mango and you want to dip it in that i'll just stick to the normal
fresh raw mango thank you but we tried it and we didn't like it the sugar thing was okay but um
stay away from that chili dip oh i have to say this is a big statement but if you look at what
you get for your entrance fee know it's 20 baht for thai 40 for foreigners but i've been here an
hour and a half hour and a half of looking around and you know if if there was a nice park that had
just one or two of these it would be worth it because they really are so big and so impressive
and it's not until you get closer up to you see the crazy amount of detail that there is in
every single one of these but yeah there isn't two there's probably 50 and each one is beautiful and
unique in their own way and they're dotted around with the lovely gardens and trees and plants
and it's incredible so if you're in nangkai 100 come here i don't know where we should go next
but um that mango is not gonna cut it so let's see if we can get some lunch somewhere oh one of
you guys has recommended me a place actually not far from the river let's go and check that out
so
okay good news and bad news bad news is the restaurant isn't open until five o'clock
but that's okay because i've had that mango so i can wait but the the good news is uh just
down the road from where the the restaurant is is the beautiful little area and a very unique
interesting thing happening which we're gonna go check out so firstly
there's this beautiful white and gold stupa here temple right on the banks of the mekong and as you
can see behind me there's people lying incense and things and it's very very beautiful however
more interestingly there is a shrine or temple in the mia kong under the mia kong and to get out
there there are tall boats taking thai people over and out into the middle of the mere kong seemingly
only the thai side and people are doing something i can't quite make it out there they're throwing
yellow ribbons over it or something i'm not sure let's go on a boat let's get a little bit closer
now there are people getting on the boats with big buckets of fish and turtles and eels and snails
it seems like you buy them from the ladies at the pier and part of the pilgrimage to the shrine and
the mere kong is to set free the fish now i did recently set free to two little baby turtles in
uh where was it pichit province i just thought you know what sparky's dead so let's uh
let's put some life into the world if you remember a water lizard monster ate sparky my little drone
so i decided to set free some turtles to counteract the death
but you guys gave me some crap in the comments and i think some of you had a
good point that you know it's not really the most um animal friendly of activities to promote
but you know it is part of buddhism and culture so you know swings and roundabouts i actually think
it's okay because every time you buy a turtle and you set it free it's gonna live and go downstream
and maybe get eaten by a fish but definitely have a better life than in a bucket but for this time
round we're not gonna buy the fish okay we're not gonna support that this time we've done that
before but yeah that seems to be what the thai people are doing but let's just go on a boat let's
observe let's get closer let's figure out what that is because from here just looks like a rock
but apparently according to google maps it's an underwater shrine so let's go have a look
oh
okay
oh sweaty sweaty sweaty so this is very interesting very unique
as temples go you don't get more unique than this so it seems to be a rock
i thought it actually would have been some sort of man-made structure but that's not the case
that would have been impossible for them to build this i mean look this is the miyakong right
this is a big old wide fast flowing whirlpool menacing monster of a river
but here this rock holds significance and everybody's coming up to bow give an offering
some flowers some people are paying extra to wrap the rock in gold ribbons and gold material
and it's just one other girl and me on this boat but this boat's got like 25 people
it's just nice you know it's just nice to experience these things when you're traveling
it doesn't matter what country or religion if you're allowed if they allow you
to just quietly observe them why not very fun
foreign
me
bye
right that is the end of nong kai a sweaty beautiful province in isan and the restaurant
that you recommended i'm sorry the person who recommended on instagram i lost your
message and so i know i asked you what should i order so i can't remember what you said but
i am going to order something i'll show you here what i order but i'm not going to
vlog there i just want to enjoy dinner and enjoy the atmosphere here by the mere kong
especially at sunset just got a cheeky little time lapse on the go here you can see the gopro
but the sun's just gone behind there and it looks gorgeous so thank you so much for watching
i've really enjoyed non kai just here for a day tomorrow we're off to the next one
and the isan adventures continue on next level adventures and thanks for all the
recommendations thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed the slice of vsan and we'll see you soon
foreign