Thailand (Lonely Planet, 13th Edition) - China Williams [452]
Rim Chi (no roman-script sign; 0 4571 4597; dishes 50-270B; breakfast, lunch & dinner) Enjoy superb Isan and Thai food and bucolic Chi River views from either the tree-filled terrace or your own thatched-roof raft. The picture menu will get you through your order. It’s 900m west of Krung Thai Bank.
For some more colourful eats, head to the dually misnamed Night Barza (Th Jangsanit; breakfast, lunch & dinner) at the north end of downtown, which is only busy during lunch, or the proper night market (Th Wariratchadet; 4pm-midnight), one block northeast.
Getting There & Away
Yasothon has a bus terminal (0 4571 2965) on Th Rattanakhet in the heart of town, but only Khorat (2nd class 170B, 4½ hours, every half-hour until 1.30pm) buses and 999 VIP (0 4571 2965) to Bangkok (32-/24-seat 483/644B, 8pm/8.30pm) use it. Most regular rides to Bangkok (2nd/1st class 322/425B, nine hours) leave from various spots along Hwy 23 in the northern half of town. The most frequent Ubon Ratchathani (2nd/1st class 70/90B, 1½ hours, hourly) and Khon Kaen (2nd/1st class 122/157B, 3½ hours, hourly) via Roi Et (2nd/1st class 50/65B, one hour) buses stop 100m south of the terminal next to TT&T, while some 2nd-class Ubon buses also depart in the morning from nearby, in front of Mitsubishi on Hwy 23.
AROUND YASOTHON
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Phra That Kong Khao Noi
A rather sinister myth surrounds Phra That Kong Khao Noi (Small Rice Basket Stupa; daylight hr), a brick-and-stucco chedi dating from the late Ayuthaya period found along Hwy 23, 5km out of town towards Ubon. According to one legend (which is taught to school children around the country as an example of why it’s important to keep your emotions in check) a young, and no doubt ravenously hungry, farmer who had toiled all morning in the hot sun murdered his mother here when she brought his lunch to the fields late, and in the smallest of sticky-rice baskets. The farmer, eating his lunch over his mother’s dead body, realised that the small basket actually contained more sticky rice than he could manage to eat. To atone for his misdeed, he built this chedi.
Or perhaps not. Others say it was built by people who were travelling to Phra That Phanom to enshrine gold and gems, but got to Ban Tat Thong and learned they were too late; so they built this chedi instead. Some locals combine the myths and say that the repentant son was unable to build a chedi of his own and so joined forces with the pilgrims and they built it together.
Further complicating matters, most Yasothonians claim the real Small Rice Basket Stupa is a little further north in the back of Wat Ban Sadoa, 7km east of Yasothon on Rte 202. All that remains is the base; when the original tumbled over shortly after the redeemed son’s death, locals built another petite chedi next to it. When we asked a monk here why Thai tourists visit the other chedi, he simply answered, ‘Gahn meuang’ (It’s politics).
Ban Si Than
Residents of Ban Si Than can’t leave their work behind when they go to sleep; this is a pillow-making village. Almost everywhere you look in the village (and most of those surrounding it) you’ll see people sewing, stuffing or selling mrn kít (pillows decorated with diamond-grid kít patterns), most famously the triangular mrn kwhn (‘axe pillow’). They couldn’t possible meet demand without using machine-made fabric, but the stuffing and some of the sewing is still done by hand. Prices here are far lower than you’ll pay elsewhere in Thailand, and this is also one of the few places you can buy them unstuffed (yang mâi sài nûn; literally ‘no kapok inserted’), which makes the big ones viable as souvenirs.
If you want to see monkeys, have someone point you to Don Ling, 4km out of town at Ban Tao Hi.
If you want to stay here, Ban Si Than has a homestay (08 7258 1991; per person incl 2 meals 300B) program. The village is 20km from Yasothon on Rte 202, then 2.5km south of Ban Nikom. Any