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Phimai Noodles (Kuay Tiaw Phimai)

Phimai, Thailand – Sometimes you have a feeling about a place before you’ve ever been there. Or at least I do.  I had a feeling about New York before moving there. I had a feeling about Bangkok even though everyone I talked to made it out to be a terrible place.  About Phimai, my guidebook said there wasn’t much to do after looking at the ruins and I’m not one for ruins.  I even thought about skipping it in my little jaunt through Issan, but decided for little reason to go anyway.  It was the right choice.

Sunny little Phimai feels gentle and slow, without being boring and nowhere.   In addition to being home to the Khmer temple Prasat Phimai, which predates Angkhor Wat by 100 years and shares some architectural features, it also lays claim to Thailand’s largest and oldest banyan tree, Sai Ngam. Although any superlative seems to be a misguided adjective.  Not that Sai Ngam is a disappointment.  Quite the opposite.  It is such a pleasant experience, so lovely, slow and contemplative, that superlatives seem a bit too macho to hit the point.

I rode a bike over to Sai Ngam and stopped at the outdoor restaurants across the way first to get lunch.  I thought it prudent to get the kuaytiaw Phimai or Phimai noodles since I was there afterall.  The Phimai noodles are made with thin rice noodles, topped with a scrambly egg and pak choi (a dark green).  They have a sour, almost fermented flavor, and taste quite salty, almost like a less complex phad thai.  Only after finishing my plate did I learn that I could have brought my plate down into the banyan tree.

Sai Ngam is spread over a tiny island.  The root system is spread throughout, but the branches extending upwards in various spots make it look like a small grove of trees with the braches twisting together up top creating a shading canopy.  I walked around the twisted little branch complex stopping to sit on benches and watch sun reflecting off ripples in the water so that little patches of light travelled down the branches of the banyan tree.

After Sai Ngam, I took the slow route back to town, circling the Phaeng pond.  With buzzing hum of nature’s smallest singers, the click-clicking of bicycle gears and the sun shining, it felt like the summers of my childhood, biking around the tree-lined streets of a small Western Massachusetts town.

Sai Ngam Banyan Tree

Sai Ngam Banyan Tree from a Distance

Prasat Phimai

Abandoned Building in Phimai (I *Heart* Phimai)