Sakaeo is located about 2 hours east of Bangkok heading towards the Cambodian border. Most tourists drive through this small city without blinking an eye on their way to the border town of Aranyaprathet, where there are some interesting Khmer ruins and from what I have read a bustling outdoor market. At first glance, there is nothing really striking about Sakaeo, a city of about 60,000 inhabitants – it has the same drab look and nondescript architecture that is characteristic of most cities in Thailand. Sakaeo even has a 7-11 store, which officially puts it on the map.

While I was in Sakaeo this past November, I visited Pang Sida National Park, which is about a 20-25 minute drive from town. For butterfly watching, Pang Sida is prime time throughout the summer months, and during the month of June, a Butterfly Sighting Festival takes place. From what I understand, this festival attracts hordes of Thai tourists. Predictably, the butterfly watching wasn’t that great when I was there as November is off-season for this type of activity. It didn’t help matters much that we arrived at the park sometime close to noon as well. Leaving Pang Sida, my driver continued to Lalu, site of some magnificent and strange earth pillars caused by soil erosion. About a 1 1/2 hour drive from Pang Sida, the landscape here looks like a miniature version of the Grand Canyon. This was definitely one of the eeriest panoramic scenes that I have encountered in Thailand.

At the end of my stay, I began to warm up to Sakaeo – it was a relatively pleasant and clean city, the people were friendly and it wasn’t overrun by farangs. And if you were familiar with the town, there was sanuck to be found, especially on the weekends. Furthermore there were no Starbucks or Burger Kings for miles around and that suited me fine. Where did I stay in Sakaeo? Find out in the next installment of Calypso Island Chronicles.

Sanuk is the Thai word for fun!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Nature, Thailand, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.