Business is slow at girlfriends job, so is encouraged to take time off, or told not to show up that day. Rented a car for a few days for a quick out of town trip. Planned on hitting a few regional tourist spots, staying overnight at favorite hotel on the mekong, coming back. Mr 'alert to details' did not realize it was a national holiday, yesterday, and possibly a buddhist holiday the day before....until I noticed kids were not in school....but in the streets of every village we passed through.
When we approached the first tourist place, (regionally famous temple), traffic was backed up 10 km away, ended up skipping the tourist stuff. Just headed to hotel, planned on tourist stuff the next day. The next day it rained. No tourist stuff, except shopping at the indochina market, which fronts the hotel we stayed at.
The market and hotel are in Mukdahan, Thailand. Across the river from Laos.
The indochina market used to be underground on the mekong riverfront, accessed via subway like entrances and descending stairs. Flooded too often, now the shops are on the street......it looks like some improvements are being made to the old underground shop area...but need to research. To access the hotel now you have to drive through the market. Luckily not too busy. Further north is a large 'night market', also.
I've stayed at this hotel maybe yearly for the last 5 years. Nice older hotel, well run. The older owner is always on site, friendly., attentive They shut down for 4 months during covid, laid off a lot of staff, and are open, with some reduced services. I get a room with a riverfront balcony, teak furniture. Price is now up to $35, still a good deal.
Market is not so busy in this video, B1W hastily slapped into a 4 door Isuzu DMAX, which had a built in dashcam that displayed on the RVM. I found the display annoyring, distracting. Not sure how you download the files, but kept saving files trying to turn the display off. The RVM was plagued with some tinting or glare crap on the mirror itself, tinted rear window on truck cab, and two more tinted windows on the fibreglass cap. You could barely see anything in it.