Today I visited Bang Khla district in Chachoengsao Province. The “Unseen Thailand” attraction here are the thousands of fruit bats (or flying foxes) that inhabit the temple at Wat Pho Bang Khla. This is another one of those unique places that you won’t find in any Western guidebook. In fact, the Lonely Planet doesn’t even mention Chachoengsao Province. This was my third visit here. You may remember me writing before about going on a boat trip to see the dolphins. There is a lot to see in this province and I have only scratched the surface. You do sometimes see foreigners here but they usually come with Thai friends and they only seem to be going to pay homage to Luang Pho Sothon. You never see independent travellers which is surprising as it is only 90 minutes away by train from Bangkok. And the cost of the ticket? I think only 20 baht or so.

I was telling you the other day about my trip to Bang Pakong to watch the dolphins. My Thai guidebook only told me about the dolphins, the bats on Bird Island, and the fishing nets. Nothing else. So, I decided to drive around a little to see what I could find. What a found was Wat Tha Kham. Usually temples are all much he same as each other. But, this one was pretty surreal. Dotted around the grounds were parts of a gigantic walking Buddha. They even had a melting works in the temple grounds where I saw casts for different sections of the Buddha image. The head was already in a shrine. In front of this were some giant upside down feet! I am not sure how many years it will be before it is finished, but go and take a look at this temple now before they complete it.

I have been racking my brains recently trying to think of a good day trip to go on in the Bangkok area. December this year has three long weekends, so I decided I should make the most of this and try and go somewhere new. Most of the other teachers already had plans, like going to see the sunflower fields in Saraburi. Although these fields are very photogenic, I was there last year. Then, one teacher asked if I had been to see the dolphins yet in Bang Pakong. I hadn’t, so that was the start of the idea for this trip.

In my library, I probably have just about every guidebook that has ever been published about Thailand. My rough rule of thumb to judge a good guidebook is to look up my home province of Samut Prakan. If the guidebook has it, then I consider it to be a comprehensive guide. Another place to look up in the index is Chachoengsao, a province about 100 kms east of Bangkok. Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Moon, Footprint, National Geographic and many others don't feature this province. To the credit of Lonely Planet, they did give it half a page about ten years ago. But, not any longer. Joe Cummings did tell me once that he was under pressure from the publishers to cut out little visited provinces as the guidebook had reached its limit in number of pages.