So Phitsanulok......another large city.We stayed at the Princess Green which was very friendly but the language barrier is getting kind of testing at times.We wanted to go and watch the footie and there were no shortage of tvs showing it but FLIES !!! mossies and others MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of them and it was face fulls.So we found ourselves down by the river with a line of bars all showing the same game...all selling beer very cheaply...all had very few lights on and all had at least a massive fan on full per person.End of fly problem thank god as the sitting inside suggestion wasnt an option ...it didnt exist.So we watched Man U thrash West Ham and trailed our way home.

Apparently there is a tram that you pick up from the main temple that will take you on a sightseeing tour so we headed off to find that it wasnt running that day.......so we decided we would do the evening cyclo tour that night...book it at your hotel the book said.....no they knew nothing about it but eventually we stopped a cyclo and asked.She went off to ask another cyclo driver and apparently there was no tour that evening hmmmm??? So we took a cyclo (nice man ) to a little restaurant by the river recommended by the hotel.Wasnt bad.The next day we had booked a nice place in Phua Rua national Park ....

The address said Loei.....we arrived at Loei city bus station to find that we had passed our hotel about 50 k back and the bus had literally passed the gate.Can I just add at this point we had shown the full address to the bus driver and conductor who nodded when asked if they would drop us at this hotel....?????To get back we would have to travel back to where we had started4 hours previously and blah blah bla........So we decided to stay overnite in Loie and Blob had a chat with the resort and an email to agoda our booking office .Looks like we'll have to come back for Phua rua another time.

Loei was very sweet...no other Westerners around at all The TAT office had sent us to a lovely hotel and as they never got tourists it was only £6 a night (about £120 back home) but no one spoke english.We found a sweet restaurant that sold every variation of cooked frogs bugs etc...that you could possibly want....OR NOT !!! but we did manage to find something we liked and instead of turning the tv on for us like they normally do (some kind of Thai soap is usually on) we had a little group on who were quite sweet.So early start in the morning and off to Nong Khai.....