You may have noticed that my blogging has dropped off a bit over the last few weeks and that is for a very good reason as we are on holidays! We left Ubon 11 days ago and have been having a blast!
A night near Khao Yai, a few days in Bangkok and the rest of the time has been spent around Hua Hin where is where I am blogging from at the moment. Lots of eating, coffee shops and shopping interspersed with swimming in hotel pools and visits to the beach.
Tomorrow we will check out from our lovely apartment and head further south. I had such great intentions to blog regularly while on the road with heaps of photos but the mood just never struck me, sorry! The photos have been taken and edited but the words are yet to be typed. Hopefully soon!
In the mean time, I will leave you with another video from Bob who says “Here’s another short video I took I believe in early 1969. I was on Upparat Road south of Mun River just about where the Ubon Buri Hotel is now. I took video from both sides of the road.”
Things are getting busy here in Ubon as we prepare to leave town. In the last few days there has been a lot of packing and organising of power/phones/internet etc. Unfortunately things are not as quick and easy as back in Aust/NZ where you just pick up the phone and they organise everything for you. Here you need to visit the phone company, visit the internet company, visit the – well you get the idea. Take a number, line up, show them more half a trees worth of paper and then fingers crossed that they are in a good mood.
I have completed one fully loaded 4wd trip to the village and will do another three more between now and Saturday. I also squeezed in a visa run which of course included 18 holes at the Sirindhorn Dam Golf course with a friend.
We plan to start our road trip very early next week and we are all really looking forward to it!
In the mean time, I thought I would continue the popular Ubon history theme from last week. This was the first bit and this was the most recent.
In this instalment I am very happy to show you some more old footage taken by Bob. This one for me at least is very exciting as it goes right past the current location of Peppers and follows the road that I have driven on average twice a day for the last 18 months.
I will hand over to Bob who explains his video in more detail.
I’m sending another video clip. The quality is not good. As I said before, I used an 8mm camera and had the old film transferred to VHS tape and that tape transferred to digital tape so I could upload it to my computer. I trimmed the clip and saved it at a reduced quality so I could get the file size below 10Mbytes. You can make the judgement call as to whether you think it is worth posting on your blog.
The road that runs in front of the camp (Uppalisan I believe) was a dirt road in the 60s and many times was impassable after a rain storm. At its best, the road was rough to travel by car or truck. I was driving my Honda truck west on Uppalisan road towards checkpoint Charley (the entrance to the camp) so the camp is to the right in the video clip. I gave my camera to my friend and told him to do the best he could to film the road and immediate surroundings. If you look closely, you will see many taxis waiting across the road from checkpoint Charley to take the GIs to town. I stopped at the intersection with Chayangkun Road and turned right or north. The video shows the narrow asphalt road that was Chayangkun in the late 60s. The video clip stops when I was probably just north of where Robinson’s Department Store now stands.
Bob also replied to something he read that was posted by Rob who was also stationed here at the same time.
Hi Andrew,
I was reading your blog about a guy named Rob who was stationed at Ubon about the same time I was there. He mentioned several things that brought back memories. He spoke of the open-air barber shops downtown and I do remember those. A guy would get a pair of shears and a stool and set up shop under a tree. I have a picture I took in the on-base barber shop. You can see the prices in the reflection in the mirror. I believe it shows haircuts for 30 cents and a massage for 25 cents. You can see the barbers had to wear masks because of tuberculosis.
Rob also mentioned tailored clothes and Playboy magazines. I went to a tailor named Kiat Poosa. She would hand me a Playboy and ask me to pick out a style for a shirt or a suit then I would select the material and she’d make the shirt or suit. I would get tailor-made shirts for 50 baht ($2.50) and I got tailored suits made from Thai silk, Italian silk, sharkskin, etc. with two pairs of pants to each suit for 700 baht ($35).
Rob also mentioned a shoe maker near the Ubon Hotel. It may be the same one I went to. He would have me step on two pieces of cardboard and draw an outline of my feet. He would take a couple heel and toe measurements and have me pick out a sole and top made from elephant hide or other leather. I went back in a couple days for a fitting. He had the basic shoes completed and I would try them on and walk around. I would point out where they were a little snug or a little loose. He’d remove the insert, scrape out some leather or add some leather and then put the insert back in the shoe for me to try again. Once the shoes were comfortable, I’d come back the next day and he’d have them completed. A pair of tailored shoes cost 140 baht ($7).
After yesterdays blog about the continuing drought affecting Ubon Ratchathani I received an email from Bob with two photos showing a very dry time more then 40 years ago.
Both these photos were taken in 1969. The first one shoes a dry river bed somewhere close to Ubon while the second photo is of the Mekong River at a very low level near Nakhon Phanom. Thanks Bob for allowing me to publish these. If anyone else has old photos of Ubon that you think others would be interested in then please email them to me.
*Edit* I asked Bob about the tiny truck in the photo and he just emailed me back a reply which said in part “I bought the Honda truck new in December 1968 for $1,200 US (or 24,000 baht at that time). It was powered by a 360cc motorcycle engine, held two people in the cab and could easily hold six more people in the bed. It was small.”
Outside Peppers and all the way along Uppalisan Road from the airforce base to the entrance to the passenger terminal used to be a big ugly grey wall. Thankfully it was partially obscured by some half decent trees. Then one day the council came around and pulled them all out. I was really disappointed as it gave the place a splash of much needed green.
It stayed like this for a few months until I was blinded upon my return from our short New Year holiday as the complete wall was painted a brilliant white. It was blinding but at least we saved on our power bill as we hardly need any lights on in the shop!
Almost immediately we noticed starting from the terminal entrance end people starting to paint murals on the walls. They are slowly working their way up our end and I must say that I am impressed by some of the works. A lot of school kids but also adults seem to be painting as well. It has a theme which seems to be about the King of Thailand and the projects he has done to help his people.
Here is a photo of just one mural and when I get time I will take some more of some completed works of art.
It is great to see this happening in Ubon as it really has lifted the mood of this road which I would estimate to carry the second most amount of traffic in any given day within the city. Lets hope they do some similar projects elsewhere also.
Yesterday I promised my daughter that I would take her to the park to do a painting.
In the centre of town 3kms from home is the Tung Sri Muang Park. The kids and I love going there and recently Ariya has really enjoyed doing some paintng there.
This lady copies the outlines onto a canvas which is affixed to a cheap plywood. For 20 bath (AUS 0.75 cents) you choose your piece of artwork and they supply the rest.
You can then choose from a selection of different cartoons which ones you would like to paint. Normally there is about three times the amount to choose from but I am assuming because of the wet season it was rather limited this time.
Ariya chose an Elephant riding a motorbike (this is Thailand after all) and Marisah choose a princess.
As I had expected Marisah lost interest after abut 3 minutes and went off to play on the play ground but Ariya stuck it out even with the pull of playing with her sister to make sure she finished her painting.
As a side note it is great to see that the water features in the park appear to be working again.
Two days ago my mate Clint and I were having breakfast of Khao Mung Gai on Phichit Rang San road when we heard a lot of fire trucks racing past near by.
On the way back to Peppers we could see something happening up around Robinsons. I was too busy to go and look but Clint went for a walk with the camera while I stayed back at the shop.
It would appear that a small shop selling food a few doors north of Robinson had half caught fire. It can’t have been too bad as when we drove past about 6 hours later it appeared as he was back in business.
Now that I own a food outlet of my own it was reassuring to see such a response from the fire brigade and that it was contained so quickly.
A big turn out.
The shop that caught fire. It was contained to the inside.
Police directing traffic around the scene.
The last few days have once again been really busy.
12 hours a day getting the shop ready and then another few hours doing my other work. Add trying to spend as much time as possible with the kids = not much time left for anything else. However we aren’t complaining as it is a lot of fun what we are doing. I am enjoying working alongside Seerung as well as Ben and Nong.
Yesterday we had all our staff start work so the last few days have been training them on new recipes and seeing exactly where their skill levels are. We have Mee and her son Urn. The used to work in the shop a while ago. Mee does most of the cakes and biscuits while Urn helps out his Mum as well as doing dishes etc. He will also be using his motorbike to do all the market runs for fresh food every day.
Jack is our baker and will do all our bread and pies. He can also bake cakes when we need him to. He has loads of experience and I am enjoying seeing what is already coming fresh out of the oven.
Dtom is our chef and will be handling the cooking of both the breakfast and lunch menu under the initial supervision of Ben.
Today the signs went up and although we still have a double sided A4 list of things that need to be done we are all confident of opening in just a few days time.
