Before the morning meeting, we went out to the lakeshore for a while. It is a dam lake, and the scenery is very beautiful. And as expected in the Thai winter, it was very cool and pleasant in the morning. It gets hot in the daytime.

The same restaurant as last night, but this morning we had breakfast in the open area instead of the inside room. Flowers are arranged very beautifully.

Breakfast was a choice of several menus, I chose a Western-style breakfast, and instant coffee is a Thai tradition.

We went down, crossed to the other side of the river, and climbed back up to the dam. You can see that it is a rock-fill dam, and this rock is the Ordovician limestone that we are about to see. On the other side of the river, you can see a huge hydroelectric pipe. I had been to this area last September, but this is the first time I have been up to the dam. There are several other large dams in the area. I think they were built with the leadership of the former King.

Next up was this outcrop, located well into the "Ninth Military War Memorial Park". It is a Felsic intrusive hosted in siliciclastic mica schist. The university van is directly drived on, which is very helpful in the heat of the day time.

The granitic veins contain fairly recent (48 Ma) Cenozoic tourmaline bearing granite and pegmatites. The impact of the Indian continent on Eurasia caused structural forces in Southeast Asia. Magma penetrated the partial rift from underground, and these igneous veins can be seen in some areas. Depending on the location, they are either Felsic or Mafic, which I will show you later. The explanation was that it is related to the depth of the cracks. Naturally, the Mafic ones are deeper. Here is a nice little hexagonal looking tourmaline!

The war memorial is not the World War II, but the biggest war with Burma in the 18th century. I took this video because a military drill for high school students was being held here at the time. Thai high school boys are mobilized for this kind of training once a year for three years.

This is a large-scale limestone mining site of a company that usually does the work. We were able to visit the site because it was a Sunday. It is one of the largest dolomite mining sites in Thailand, with a MgO content of up to 20%. It was described as Ordovician in the past, but now is revised as Triassic. It is not a construction material, but used for Flux production and other purposes. https://www.morex.co.jp/product.html　Japan is their main customer.

The next location is where granitic mylonite is found. I had been vaguely aware of mylonite as being structurally generated, but this was an eye-opener when Dr. Prinya told me that plagioclase crystals rotate in Right Lateral structural motion and are dragged and tailed by the structure. It may not be so obvious in this picture, but

An elderly Russian couple and myself. This is a shot of lunch that day. The wife is a specialist in Coal to Permian fuzulina (she said Foraminifera). The husband is a man of few words, but I believe he specializes in structural geology. He must have co-authored several books on the geology of Thailand with Thai researchers.

This is the biggest present of the two days excursion. Basalt veins that were introduced and penetrated from a deeper location at about the same time (37 Ma?) as the granitic pegmatite penetrations of a while ago. Many of my coveted items are included here. Please forgive the shaking of the video, it's so exciting. I've stayed too long, and I'm being urged to Yoshi Let's Go!!

This is an example of Xenolith, a sapphire-bearing basalt with numerous peridotites, similar to the one I saw six years ago at Chanthaburi in southeastern Thailand. Of course, we collected many samples here, but when I weighed them with other samples later, I realized that they were too heavy to send to Japan at once, so I asked Silpakorn University to drop off half of them. The story of the Chanthaburi gem mine six year ago is below.
http://yossi-okamoto.net/KVIS/2017/Photo_diary_Part3.html

Xenolith is not only peridotite, but also granitic, etc. It is very diverse. A female researcher from MUKA (Faculty of Geology, Mahidol University) asked me to tell her about the thin-sections when I made them. I am looking forward to making the thin-sections.

We worked very hard to break the rocks for the sample. I carefully selected the rocks to take home as samples. This is about half a bag of samples. The other members of the group were a bit surprised, but as an ultra-mafic-lover, it was a natural quantity for me.

Now we have a tea break at another dam site in the afternoon. It is good that overseas excursions take a proper break like this. While in Japan, we would have to cycle through many places in a day, but it is fun to enjoy the scenery like this. But here again, Dr. Prinya explained to me that between the Sibumasu block and the other block at which collision zone aound here, there are repeated accretions of the Ordovician and Triassic strata of different ages.

This is a beautiful ribbon chert with a fold structure that corresponds to the Permian-Triassic period. You can see a fault on the right side. I looked for radiolarians here, but could not see them well, probably because of the muddy (hemipelagic) environment. I showed the Thai researcher accompanying me this red chert gravel, which was easy to see with a loupe, in a puddle at a golf course where a sapphire mine I visited before coming here had been converted into a pond. I showed this to another Thai researcher M-san who was retired DMR, and he was very impressed that he had never seen them before. It was unexpected.

This is the last site of the second day, an old quarry where we searched for granite pegmatites. On the way there, we found a lot of fruits that Dr. Prinya said were Thai plums, and he was tasting them.

Here they are, falling all over the place. I tried some and found that they were indeed slightly sweet. He offered me a lot of berries to eat, but I didn't want to. I wanted to see the granitic pegmatites as soon as possible.

Dr. Prinya, who is probably older than I am, was leading the group ahead of me, and the other members were chasing after him. It was a very dangerous foothold, but those who have trained in the field have very strong legs. I wanted to follow in their footsteps.

Finally, I found the pegmatite containing the electroxene on the back side of the cracked huge rock. However, the foothold was not good enough to collect the pegmatites, and I gave up collecting them. Prinya sensei's enthusiasm was astonishing. He is very strong on his feet for his age, and even I, who train hard every day, was defeated by him.

We were supposed to go home, but we decided to stop by a well that used to have a hot spring of 40 degrees Celsius. Prof.Prinya wanted to check the temperature, so he made a sampler. The man holding the stick is our van driver. The van, another staff car, and I was also allowed to ride in the car of M san, a retired DMR employee, so that I could talk with him.

This is the hot spring water sampler that he made on the spot. It is a great idea, and I am amazed at Dr. Prinya's passion. A lady researcher is laughing in the background. But the expected temperature was not there at all, and it was a little lukewarm, which was disappointing. 30 years ago, according to M-san, it was indeed hot, so something must have caused the heat source to run out.

So we had a sumptuous Thai dinner at the hotel's cafeteria. The Russian couple does not like spicy food, so the dishes are a little more ordinary. Rice porridge was served this day. Of course, beer was Chiang.

I wanted to watch the Asian Cup, but I found a live video on YouTube. I was happy to see Ueda's goal, but my favorite team, Troussier's Vietnam, was very strong. This is just a little recap from the beginning as I write this diary.