For longer than I care to remember we have been talking about visiting Suriya Cocoa Farm in Makham, Chanthaburi province. Last weekend, we finally got ourselves over there.
The guys at Thai Cocoa Distribution set up a contact for us and we met Khun Bum at her cocoa farm.
Khao Khitchakut is a mountain peak in Chanthaburi province between Trat to the south and Rayong to the north.
The mountain peak is only open to the public for 2-3 months of the year between January and March. For Thai’s, it is a great act of making pilgrimage to the Buddha’s footprint at the top of the mountain and is considered as a great deed and way of making merit.
Budthamonthon can be found near Trat ‘Green’ City, a small but busy market town in Trat Province (population 20K) in the South-East of Thailand between the Gulf of Thailand and the Khao Ban That mountains that form a natural border with Cambodia. It is approximately 300km from the capital, Bangkok.
To find your way around Trat, here’s a map courtesy of our friends at The Koh Chang Guide.
The Koh Chang archipelago of 52 islands also lies in Trat province and includes the beautiful islands and national parks of Koh Mak and Koh Kood.
We recently moved from Koh Chang Island to mainland Trat province and have been busy developing our homestead and permaculture food forest.
As regular visitors to Trat we thought we knew it well. How wrong we were!
In the short time we have been living in the area we have found many places of interest in and around the city so we decided to write a series of blog posts here on Thinglish Lifestyle imaginatively titled; ‘Discover Trat’.
Trat is one of the three Thai provinces that have been earmarked for substantial economic investment for tourism as part of the ASEAN development. So if you are looking to discover all about Trat, you are in the right place.
This is the first post in the Discover Trat series, enjoy!
To find Budthamonthon, drive about 5km out of Trat City along the Sukhumvit Road (Route 3) towards Chanthaburi – Bangkok. On the right side is a 9.9 meter high golden statue of Buddha standing within a giant lotus flower.
What does it mean? In Buddhism people are compared to the lotus…
We have drove past this local landmark countless times and recently decided to take a Sunday afternoon stroll around the park.
The entrance draws you in to the Buddha statue that dominates the skyline. The surrounding park is spacious and cool with many mature trees and pagodas to take a rest under or seek cover from the sun or rain. We get plenty of both in this area of Thailand!
The tranquil lakes are a haven for wildlife and local people come to sit quietly in contemplation, feed the fish or twitch (bird watch).
If you are looking for a quite place to retreat for a few hours away from the sprawling metropolis of Trat, pay a visit to Budthamonthon park. We would certainly recommend it.
On the back of the wall of bells of Budthamonthon is an art instillation dedicated to the late King of Thailand Bhumibol Adulyadej, who passed on 13 October 2016 after reigning 70 years and 126 days. King Rama IX at the time of his death was the world’s longest reigning monarch and we dedicate this blog post to his memory.
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Discover Trat – Budthamonthon
