Day 67 – Mueang Kalasin to Mueang Roi Et
Kalasin has a nice bicycle shop and a nice Hotel, but it was not a very pretty city. The city seemed to be full of businesses, especially in the area we visited. A very typical Thai town of endless shop-houses, roads, traffic and overpriced tuk tuks.
The ride today was only 50-ish kilometres and was fairly easy. We left late, we rode at a comfortable pace, and we arrived to Roi Et around lunchtime. The town centre of Roi Et is lovely, it has a massive lake with fully functional fountains and islands in the middle, surrounded by sports activity fields and well-maintained grounds, simply amazing.
I was well impressed by this town that, until now, I thought would be another Surin or Yasothon looking place. I would definitely suggest a visit, we cycled around the outside of the lake and around the inside of the island, it was great.
Across the road from the town centre was a Technical University, which must have been big, as there were hundreds of university girls and the occasional boy relaxing, chatting, sleeping, dating, and talking near the lake. Made for a good backdrop.
I said ‘good afternoon’ to all the groups of mostly girls as we rode around, I got a lot of smiles, but it was only after about 25-30 people before someone said anything back to me in English. One girl said “good afternoon” back in very good English, she was the only one that obviously understood me and was brave enough to reply.
The town of Roi Et is lovely. I would suggest a visit. Around the edge of the park was a pizza place (we didn’t go as we just had pizza yesterday) and we also found a decent coffee shop between the post office and the plaza shopping centre, which is near the same university.
It is a nice place, everyone is friendly and always gave a big smile to us as we passed by. Also, the local bicycle shop was very supportive and friendly, spending time with us to find accommodation in our price range. So big thanks to them!
