I am staying at a hotel with a row of bungalow-like lodges. The teachers' lodge on the school campus where I stayed in the past is full, so I am staying at a resort hotel close to the school. Orchids are blooming beautifully.

The mornings and evenings are very cold for Thailand, so I had to ask for two futons. Other than that, the shower has hot water, an electric kettle is available, and there is a refrigerator, so it is quite comfortable. I never use the air conditioner for cooling.

The most important work is to repair the seismograph. The horizontal seismometer was easy to fix. The problem, however, was the vertical seismometer.

The acrylic panel of the vertical seismograph's support was a little dirty. To my surprise, I found that the entire bottomside of the pedestal had been eaten by termites. The holes in the front and rear sides in particular were so close to the surface that the structure had become so brittle that it had already lost its function as a pedestal. It is truly amazing that it took only two years for the base to become so damaged.

The support clamps are wobbly and there is a hole through the pedestal. After only two years, the framework has been destroyed! Tropical termites are not to be underestimated! The wooden stand had been placed over the base because it was not stable. The termites seemed to have entered the pedestal all at once from there. Thanks to this, we had to rebuild the pedestal from scratch, but the next day, our specialist technician was able to restore the pedestal from a newly purchased board.

The backsides of the 3D printer's supports are covered with termite-infested wood. I had no idea that this would happen. The old KVIS and Mukdahan equipment was made of metal, so it was not exposed to this kind of damage, while the newer 3D printer components had a wooden base.

The car only goes halfway up the mountain, and from here I have to get off and climb up a path that is about 1.2 km long. It was a little too hard for a pre-dinner workout.

This mountain appears to be a granite outcrop, and the geological map says that the age is from the Permian to the Triassic period. As you can see, white aplite veins are running all over the place, very interesting.

When I finally reached the top, I could see the Mekong River at sunset time. The other side of the river is “Laos” as you know. The colorful bougainvillea is very beautiful.

Now, we are heading for dinner in Chiang Khan, a town in the northern tip of Thailand, famous for its tourist attractions. We were treated to dinner by the principal of the school, who was very kind to me on our previous visit. Thank you very much.

A view of the Mekong River side from the restaurant where we had dinner. Cyclists are running along the bicycle path. The right side of the river is the Thai side, while the Laos side on the other side is a little in darkness.

Members invited to dinner. Next to me is Principal G. The lady is his wife. And Mr. D and Mr. S, physics teachers. The photo was taken by Mr. P of geography.

I took this picture when I noticed that the car of Mr. S, the physics teacher, who was taking us to the inn, did not have a heater. It is a Toyota Hilux, but it seems to be a Thai model.

The following is a shot of the work of creating a travle-time curve, which some teams found difficult to complete due to the limited time of about 40 minutes.

As for the seismograph, we managed to get the base made to the original size, so we worked hard on it after class today. The magnetic folder is now being positioned and installed. The thickness of the pedestal is now about 5mm thicker, so we had to make some adjustments.

I managed to put it back together in about two hours. The pedestal is supported by screws and floated to avoid termite attack. Now I can resume 3-channel observation.

In the evening, we had a camp-like barbecue in the school. As expected, we decided to have a non-alcoholic day and refrained from beer. They have prepared a lot of food for us. We were accompanied by students working on a physics competition and even a dog roaming around the school. I wonder if it is rare to see such a lively scene inside the school after school in Japan anymore.

The field trip will follow the road west from Looi to the national park with its 1300m peak by three school vans. The first observation point was this site by the road, which was previewed last Sunday. The lower part of the Khorat Group, which dips slightly to the south, is exposed. The Jurassic period is indicated on the geological map, and dinosaur bones are abundant elsewhere in the upper part of the formation.

The siltstone is quite massive, and is interbedded with a thin white layer that shows the stratigraphic level, perhaps of the same origin as the tuff we will see later. The red oxidized iron color, characteristic of fluvial(land produced) formations of this age, is striking.

Enlarged view. This is a good key layer because it is very conspicuous. However, it is complicated by the fact that there are several pieces of this layer. I imagine it is a rhyolitic tuff because of its color. However, it is not clear if they are the same as the ones we will see later at the tuff site, because they are from different periods.

A closer look reveals that the silt layer has cross laminae. This is quite different from the coarse sandstone seen later on the summit. In any case, it is likely to be a feature deposited in a freshwater river or lake, showing water currents.

Do you know what this hoodie is?  They were participating in the Geography Olympiad in Thailand, and they were wearing something like this. And some of them are naturally very interested in geology, and they sometimes ask me pointed questions. This helped me a lot, because I was able to give additional explanations.

This is a spectacular outcrop of cross lamina by the toilet near the summit, which is over 1300m. Huge chunks of sandstone like this are left here and there. They look like they could be written up in a textbook. I explained the relationship between water flow and laminae, and that the characteristic of river sediments is that the water flow changes the path rapidly and laminae can be seen in various directions. The students could understand English quite well, but the technical terms were translated into Thai by the Thai teacher.

The sand grains are quite rough. The red oxides are not very noticeable here. I stressed that when looking at outcrops like this, it is important not to look at mosses, molds, or complicated structures added later, but only at the composition and overall structure of the rock grains.

This mountain is blooming with wild cherry trees. I remember that the students planted many cherry trees on the Loei school grounds. They are a little pinker than Japanese cherry trees. I think it is a wild cherry tree that blooms with leaves.

We had lunch at a restaurant in the parking lot near the summit. In fact, for a fee, a truck with seats will take tourists from here to the top of the mountain. Many Thai people do not like to walk, and on the day of the inspection, which was a Sunday, many tourists were riding on the seats of the truck.

To my surprise, the teachers made the meals themselves. Teacher. D, who specializes in astronomy, boiled his own noodles and added his own ingredients. Another lady teacher made Som Tam (papaya salad) by crushing chili peppers in a jar, and brought it to our table. Of course, we had to pay the restaurant later.

Here is a student making me a drink. She is also very good at squeezing lemon juice, so maybe she is always helping out with that kind of work at home.

On the way home, we stopped by a nearby temple. From the observatory, we can see a beautiful view of the landforms corresponding to a mesa. I explained this to the students.

This temple seems to be for sightseeing, but there is another building with amazing artworks, which seems to be a life story of Buddha. Mr. T of JICA, whom I wrote about in the main text, accompanied me and showed me this corridor.

This was the last observation stop of the day. It was identified as a rhyolitic tuff. It is of slightly older Permian age. A plate boundary existed between the Permian and Triassic periods in central Thailand, and the shallow Tethys Sea covered a subducting plate between the plate boundary. These volcanic rocks is thought to be the result of the intense volcanic activity that occurred there. A student who participated in the Geography Olympiad asked me what type of volcanic activity it was. So I added the above explanation.

This is a close-up of the rocks on this cliff. I guess it is a rhyolitic tuff because of its stratification rather than lava. The tuff looks very fresh after 200 million years since the Permian. It will be interesting to see how this tuff will be included in the above red sandstone (siltstone) strata later in the Jurassic period, or whether it is a different type of tuff.

The GPS record of the day's course is superimposed on the geological map. Stop 1 is the first red sandstone site and Stop 2 is the last white rhyolitic tuff site. The top of the mountain is in the upper sandstone, which is not shown on the geological map. The geological map was quoted from DMR (Geological Survey of Thailand) and the GPS path processing software was Viking for Linux.

After the field trip, I returned safely to school. After that, we went out for dinner at a nearby restaurant. It is a huge restaurant with a pavilion around the pond, but it was a weekday, so we might have been the only customers. Mr. S. and Mr. D., physics teachers who took care of us. And in the center is Mr. T, with whom we could talk in Japanese all the time during this trip. He is a very fresh young man, and I gave him my best wishes to become a good teacher. He is teaching the basics of image analysis using state-of-the-art AI to his students. One of his students' project developed a method to recognize drones flying in the sky and do various things with it. What is amazing is that he has been in Thailand for about a year and is already teaching in Thai to Thai students.  I was so envious of his conversation with the Thai teachers around him, and it made me realize that I have to do my best to learn Thai again! But still, He may have been a bit of a shut-in because of my long-winded, old man's talk about education.

This is a picture of Chiang Khan, a famous tourist town where we went for a walk and dinner on the last night. Shrimp skewers.

And for some reason, the old Midget was still there. It might be called a museum class. Long time ago, Daihatsu Midget was the main sponsor of the TV program “Tenamona Sandogasa”. How old!

This is the ice beer. When you order this beer, the waiter always taps the bottom of the stool with a bottle opener before opening the line. The answer is shown in the next picture.

This is the answer. The beer is probably chilled to about -7 degrees Celsius and surrounded by ice.............. Super-cooled beer. The bottom of the beer is tapped and when it freezes, the staff is quickly uncorked and served to the customer. I have never seen such an “iced beer” outside of this city. A physics teacher is experimenting with cola to show his students the same thing. Well, you can't show it with beer, can you?