Monday, January 27, 2014
After our morning coffee we headed to Sangkhom some 120 kms East. The view of the river from the road continued to be spectacular. And we made very good time on the excellent road. After reaching Sangkhom for lunch and seeing that there was not much to this little town, we decided to push on to Nong Khai, another 60 kms or so down the road. Along the way stopped at Si Chiangmai and two temples. Si Chiangmai is a border town on the opposite bank to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Vientiane is just across the river. All going to plan we will be on the other side of the river in about two and a half months after completing our journey south through Thailand and then heading north again up through Cambodia and Laos to a place maybe 400 meters from where we stand now.
The first temple we stopped at was Wat Hin Mak Peng which is a vast forest temple respected as the founding abbot is said to have reached enlightenment. The temple has a beautiful perch on rocks hanging over the Mekong River. All quite nice really. When we visited this huge complex, it was completely deserted. Not sure where all the monks were.
The second temple stop was at Phra That Bang Puhan, which (apparently) is one of the regions most sacred temples. Here we found many monks, young and old, wandering around or sweeping up leaves. The Chedi was impressive, but much of the rest of the complex was a bit run-down. At this second stop, Sterlin also decided to stop. And just like 6 days earlier, refused to start after losing all electrical power. Popped the hood and fiddled with the battery for a few minutes before things starts working again, cause unknown. Very concerning and we did not stop the engine until we got to our hotel.
Once at the hotel and with the help of the Internet the likely cause of this issue was determined, well at least a theory was emerging. 7 days ago I disconnected the engine battery, just as a precaution, while I re-routed the power cable for the GPS unit. And at this time I suspect I did not reconnect the battery leads sufficiently well and this is now causing the failed starts. The battery leads supplied by Land Rover are particularly difficult to atttach correctly to the terminals of batteries made in the US. I know, sounds silly, but believe me when I say they are hard to connect “just right”. Probably an empirical vs metric thing. So in the parking lot of our hotel and with quite a few other hotel guests offering opinions, I tightened everything up, this time correctly. Time will tell if this is indeed the issue. If not we have much bigger issues on our hands. And ironically, just on the over side of the Mekong is Vientiane (capital of Laos) which has Laos only Land Rover dealer and repair shop. We did consider crossing the border just to have them check everything out.
We had a lovely dinner on a river boat which was on the Mekong. Caroline had river fish, very appropriate and very yummy. We found the local bar full of foreigners to finish the evening.
