Day 5 - With people waking up on the train at about 05:00 and deciding to have conversations at the top of their voices, sleep was some what scarce last night. I reckon about 3 hours, tops.

When we got up at about 06:30, we had about an hour left before arriving into Ubon Ratchathani station. Once at the station we wandered out through the station to be met by a really loud tannoy system playing music which we think must have been the Thai national anthem as people seemed to all stand still and were silent, not that I noticed! As soon as the music finished is all we could hear was "tuk tuk, you want tuk tuk" from every angle. Picking one likeable chap, after a bit of poor bartering on my part, we hopped on and off we went to our hotel in the town centre a couple of miles away.

Arriving at 08:30 surprisingly our room at the Ratchathani Hotel wasn't ready, not that the receptionist seemed to grasp why we were there. A guy in Bangkok had told us that no one really spoke English in Ubon and he was not wrong. We eventually worked out that the room would be ready in 30 minutes so we went for a quick look around town. Considering it was 30 degrees C already and after a lack of sleep, walking did not go down well. We found some shade in the bustling indoor market which stocked a good array of flowers - partly making up for missing the Bangkok one yesterday.

Back at the hotel we grabbed the wifi code to check the path of the typhoon and it seemed to suggest it would be a bit further north than first feared.

We grabbed our bags and went to put them in the room. Not a great room but for £12 what can you expect, it had all we need including a decent shower after the sleeper train evening without one. We dumped our bags and decided to go for another walk around town, starting at the tourist information office to grab some maps. We headed down to the river which is quite a sight, really wide but fast flowing. The temperature was rising still so we couldn't walk around for too long. We headed back to a covered area at the hotel to plan what to do.

We decided to venture over to the park where we saw a Wat at the entrance and then a massive gold dragon in the centre of the park. There were lots of staging areas scattered around so we could only assume there has been or will be some kind of festival in town. We stubbed across some gym equipment in the park which had seen better days but ofcourse I had to try the weights out! Leaving the park we went in search for the 'chapel' on stilts. Stumbling across this Wat was again another bizarre experience in this big town (or possibly city) as there were lots of people just sitting on a bit of grass land next to the chapel. Feeling very unwelcome we soon made our way out.

We made a retreat for our hotel and to be honest it didn't seem like this place had a lot to offer. We had heard about the night market which took place across from our hotel and we could see people setting up for this so we decided to grab a shower ready for the market in the evening. 17:00 came around so we ventured out and to our amazement, not only had this small square been filled with food stalls but the whole of the mile long high street was filled with market stalls. We genuinely thought no one lived here but now we realised why no one was around during the day, they all come out at night! We strolled up and down the market and then into the food square which we walked around three times before deciding on one place. These were portable food trolleys basically serving either pork or chicken with rice and several dipping sauces. Lets just say Alice needed some convincing. Two portions of chicken and rice for 70THB (£1.40) which went down a treat.

After another lap of the market, not sure why, we went to the roof top bar at the Ubon Hotel called Top View, but stopped short at the entrance as it looked too scary so we beat a hasty retreat back down to ground level. Guess what, another lap of the market including a stop to get an ice cream and also a stop at another hotel for a beer. The mosquito's were out in force so we couldn't stay out too much longer. A quick walk down to the river to see if anything was happening as we had seen seating areas erected there earlier but nothing happening except a Suzuki moped sales team trying to sell shiny new mopeds.

The last leg of the day was to get back to the hotel from the river, not amazingly far but through the hoards of people at the market this was no easy feat. A quick nip into Tesco, yes Tesco (not quite the same as the UK) to get some supply's for the bus journey to Pakse tomorrow and then off to the hotel. We sat down outside of the restaurant (having negotiates the pop-up car show room which had appeared in the hotel car park along with the market) and ordered a Singha to share. The manager came out and started talking about the mosquito's to us and the waitress, next thing we knew our legs were getting sprayed with repellent!

Anyway, off to the room we went to erect the mosquito net which was interesting as we hardly had anything to hang it from in the room except the wardrobe and a light fitting.

Checking the radar it looks like the typhoon as tracked further north so we have decided to head for Laos tomorrow and see what happens.

P.s Alice got burnt today after being in the sun for 7 minutes!