Ubon Ratchathani

Ubon was founded late in the 18th century by Lao settlers who moved down from the Champasak and Vientiane lands and established themselves on the Mun River. The Siamese court recognised the settlement as a town in 1792, granting it the name Ubon Ratchathani, the royal city of the lotus, and confirming its Lao ruling family as hereditary governors. For a century it governed a wide territory of small Lao muang on both banks of the Mekong.

That arrangement ended as Bangkok centralised its administration around the turn of the 20th century. Prince Sanphasitthiprasong, a son of King Mongkut, governed the northeastern monthon from Ubon for more than thirty years, replacing the old hereditary lords with salaried officials, and treaties with France in 1893 and 1904 fixed the Mekong as the frontier and cut the town off from the Lao territory it had once managed. A railway from Bangkok reached Warin Chamrap, across the river, in April 1930, and the province became a centre of the Thai forest monk tradition around Ajahn Mun and later Ajahn Chah, whose monastery west of the city drew followers from abroad.

During the Vietnam War, American aircraft flew from Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, and the town grew quickly around the money the base brought. After the Americans left in the 1970s it settled back into the role it holds now: a provincial capital of universities, hospitals and government offices, a base for trade and travel into southern Laos, and the seat of a candle festival that has become the best-known event in the region.

The city's calendar turns on its temples, and its great expression is the Candle Festival at the start of Buddhist Lent in July. The custom grew from the ordinary offering of candles to monasteries for the rains retreat, and became a competition in wax sculpture, developed into the province's principal festival by Prince Sanphasitthiprasong in the early 20th century: teams work for months on floats carved or moulded in relief with nagas, garudas and scenes from the Buddha's lives, then parade them from Wat Si Ubon Rattanaram through the centre with dance troupes, drums and khaen players. Copies of past winners stand in the central field all year.

Ubon is also one of the homes of the Thai forest tradition. Ajahn Chah's monastery at Nong Pah Pong and the international monastery founded nearby in 1975 for foreign monks made this corner of Isan familiar to Buddhists in Europe and North America, and visitors who come to meditate are a small but steady part of the city's life.

In ordinary conversation people use Isan, closely related to Lao, and switch to central Thai at work and in school. Mor lam, sung poetry accompanied by the khaen mouth organ, is heard at temple fairs and from passing pick-ups, and luk thung country music has strong local roots. Manners are those of provincial Thailand — the wai on greeting, quiet voices, modest dress at temples, seniority respected — with the extra reserve that a town full of monasteries brings.

The registered population of the conurbation is about 390,000, roughly 224,000 on the Ubon Ratchathani side of the Mun and 167,000 in Warin Chamrap across the river, which makes Ubon one of the four main cities of Isan. It is a government and service town: provincial offices, courts, two large hospitals, Ubon Ratchathani University and a rajabhat university, the air force base, and the shopping malls and car dealers strung along the northern road.

The surrounding province is agricultural, growing hom mali fragrant rice on sandy soils that depend on the rains, along with cassava and rubber. Incomes are among the lowest in the country, and as across Isan many families have members working in Bangkok, on the eastern seaboard or abroad, sending money home; grandparents raising grandchildren is a common household pattern. Trade with southern Laos through the Chong Mek crossing supports a further part of the local economy.

The day starts early, with the alms round at dawn, the markets busiest before eight, and offices and schools opening soon after; the middle of the afternoon is quiet in the hot months, and the evening belongs to the riverside and the night stalls. Recurring concerns are drought in some years and flooding in others — the Mun and Chi rivers have inundated low-lying districts more than once in recent years — along with rural debt and the steady drain of young people to the cities.

Ubon eats Isan food at its plainest and best, always with khao niao, sticky rice taken by hand from a woven basket. Som tam, green papaya pounded in a mortar with chilli, lime, garlic and fish sauce, is ordered by how it is seasoned: the local preference leans to versions with pla ra, a strong fermented fish sauce, rather than the sweeter Bangkok style. Gai yang, butterflied chicken marinated and grilled slowly over charcoal, is sold from smoking braziers on almost every main road.

Larb and nam tok — minced or sliced meat dressed with lime, chilli, mint, shallot and roasted ground rice — are the other everyday dishes, alongside tom saep, a hot and sour offal soup, and sai krok Isan, the short, tangy fermented pork-and-rice sausages that are grilled and eaten with raw cabbage, ginger and bird's eye chillies. River fish from the Mun appear grilled whole in salt crust or in sour soups.

Lao dishes cross the border easily. Khao pun, soft fermented rice noodles served in a spiced broth with herbs, is a breakfast staple, and Vietnamese food from the Mekong towns — grilled pork rolled at the table in rice paper, and the herb-heavy sausage called naem nueang — has a long presence here. Seasonal foods include red ant eggs in the hot months, bamboo shoots in the rains, and crickets and silkworm pupae sold by the scoop. Drinks are simple: iced coffee thick with sweet milk, beer over ice, and lao khao, the strong white rice spirit of the villages.