Phetchabun Day Trip

Ok, so if ya’ll didn’t know already Phichit is a TINY town with quite honestly NOTHING to do. I’m not even joking, I dare you to look it up on google and try to find anything remotely worth visiting, apart from the crocodile park down the street. That being said after two weeks of being here we needed something else to do or life in Thailand was going to get real boring real quick. A little digging and we realized we could easily rent a private van for super cheap and go wherever we wanted for an entire day. So, we all crammed into the van and drove two hours east to Phetchabun, pronounced pet-cha-boon.

Our goal was to see Wat Pha Sorn Kaew or “temple on the glass cliff.” Located above the town of Phetchabun overlooking a breathtaking view. Well our driver had a different goal in mind, and we took a million and a half pit stops! Don’t get me wrong some were pretty neat and def worth the stop, but I can only handle getting in and out of a van full of nine girls so many times, ya feel?! We were so close we could see it and the van makes some noises, we reach a huge hill (honestly not that big) and BAM! We start rolling backwards!

Ok, that’s a bad joke, but really, we thought we weren’t going to make it up this poor hill. After a little bit of struggling, moving at what felt like 2 mph we made it to the top and the big white buddha heads caught our eyes before the actual glass temple so away we went. I think we took a good five hundred pictures or so before actually walking around the grounds and taking in the green mountains (my favorite part.) I’m not sure why but water and mountains are my two obsessions, you can call me my fathers daughter for sure. After an hour or so we walked across the street to the glass temple and took another million pictures, of course. I swear experiences these days aren’t complete unless you have a picture worth posting (something I suck at, not a great photographer that’s for sure.) I will say my first thought was, this reminds me of Spain, but the details were AMAZING! The ground, the walls, everything was made from tiny ceramic pieces and I loved it!

Once we’d spent a couple hours touring the grounds we went in search of food. Found a restaurant with the perfect view and Pad Thai, so of course we were in. Little did we know that it’s made with tiny little dry shrimps. GROSS! Needless to say we weren’t big fans… Thankfully we have this minor obsession with sandwiches from 7 Eleven. I know sounds gross, but they are rather good and cost less than a dollar! I think we’ve resorted to eating them a few too many times this first semester… OOPS!

Post lunch our driver took us to some strawberry fields, we had zero interest in, but might visit in December when they actually have strawberries. Next stop, a pretty neat waterfall with a fun little swimming area and cliff jumping. Sadly we didn’t have our swimsuits so it was just another photo op and a potential future trip. At this point we were exhausted and couldn’t wait to get home! We loaded back up and away we went, anticipating our next stop being home when SURPRISE! We stopped at another swimming place just down the river that was packed with people. At this point we were just sad we weren’t prepared for swimming and wished we knew about all the fun little pit stops we’d be making.

In the end, it was a really nice day! The weather wasn’t too hot, we got some great photos, learned a little about Buddhism and had a great bonding experience over lunch and unexpected pit stops. Thanks for reading and come again!