Local Cuisine
Near the Red Lotus Lake pier, there is a long food street where grilled fish and grilled chicken are the most common grilled items. The grilled fish is wrapped in a thick layer of salt, giving it a salt-baked flavor. Many locals dine here, enjoying the leisurely pace of life in Thailand and Laos, which is slow and contented despite a potentially lower income index but a high happiness index.
At the restaurant in the afternoon, we enjoyed a communal meal with six people per table. The dishes were rich, with two pots on the table: one containing chicken and mushrooms, and the other with cabbage, eggs, tofu, and mushrooms. There were also many other dishes, which I enjoyed without knowing their names, relying on ‘looking’ and ‘tasting’ to imagine them. The fish had a succulent texture with few bones, large and easy to remove. The meat can be eaten with the side vegetables dipped in sauce. For dessert, we had a fruit platter of watermelon, pineapple, and papaya, along with some salad dressing.
The Ban Chiang Cultural Museum
The Ban Chiang Cultural Museum, located at the Ban Chiang site, is not a large museum. The exhibition area is a two-story building, and the entire museum compound presents the unique natural features of Southeast Asia. The Ban Chiang site, situated in the Udon Thani region of Thailand, gained global attention in the 1960s and 1970s after the discovery of a prehistoric cemetery, numerous bronze artifacts, and prehistoric human remains underground, making it an important chapter in Thai history.
Ban Chiang is considered the most significant prehistoric settlement in the excavated areas of Southeast Asia and was a center of human culture, society, and technological progress. The museum’s main exhibits are various unearthed pottery artifacts, and it also features painted sculptures that recreate the prehistoric scenes of the artifacts’ era. Additionally, the museum has a special display of the archaeological discoveries made by Chester, the American archaeologist who was the director of the joint expedition team at the time, in honor of this great archaeologist.
