Wanderings Around Ubon

Ok, break for Michael's suit fitting over.  Back to details of my Easter trip!  

 

We spent a few days in Ubon, showing my parents around so that they better understood the neighborhood, school and communities that constitute my sister's Fulbright experience.  Although I had seen most of it before, we still hit up a few spots that were new, namely:

1. Wat Ban Na Muang, which also contained a boat-shaped viharn in the pond:

The wat's roof is carved out of wood

The boat-shaped viharn

Cut mirror details

2. the silk village, where a small community takes part in the entire production process of beautiful silk products, from the cultivation of the silkworms to the preparation of the silk threads to the hand weaving.  All of the scarves that we looked at were of incredible quality, and the variation and intricacy of the designs were breathtaking.

The loom - note the bamboo pedals

3. the brass village, where local villagers make brass objects by hand.  They make bells, bowsl and benjarongs, which are commonly used in worship and as home decor.  The process of making these brass designs is incredibly time consuming, involving a total of twelve painstaking steps. I really wanted a brass ring but alas, they were all too big for my bird-like fingers.  I picked up a couple of brass bell key chains instead.  Now everyone can hear my keys jingling as I approach (helps me find them when they're lost in my bag!)

 

The brass making process

4. the Ubon Ratchathani zoo.  Usually I am pretty anti-zoos, especially if the zoo contains a big polar bear left to suffer in the blazing heat, or a gorilla given the space of a small closet.  This zoo seemed alright though - animals were given a pretty wide berth and the surroundings were as natural and as open as possible.  We saw deer, white tigers, white lions, ostriches, zebras and giraffes.