Sukhothai

Once in Bangkok, I thought I'd finalized my travel plans for the rest of my stay in Thailand. I was going to go from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, which is a 14 hour overnight train ride to the north. Then I'd take a bus to Sukhothai, then another bus to Ayuthaiya, then another bus to Bangkok for my flight home. This plan did not take into account the (at the time unknown to me) fact that demand for overnight trains from Bangkok to Chiang Mai tends to surpass supply, and the trains were sold out. So I took a seven hour daytime bus trip to Sukhothai instead, and I eventually scrapped my plans to go to Ayuthaiya. 

A songathaew - a truck that acts as a kind of taxi in which passengers sit in the bed of the truck - dropped me off at the guesthouse that I'd circled in my guidebook. The owners told me that they only had one room left, and that it was a bargain at 200 baht (about five euro, or seven dollars) per night. Naturally, rooms at this price have a few drawbacks. This one had a shower, but no hot water (or, at least, no temperature control for the water - it was freezing in the morning and quite warm in the evening), and the toilet was "Thai style" rather than Western, meaning the flushing mechanism involved scooping water from a large bucket into the toilet to make it "flush." My physics knowledge is insufficient to understand how this works, but it apparently does.

This was the closest I was to roughing it during my trip. There was a loud buzzing noise from some of the wiring in the room, and I had to wear ear plugs at night. There was no air conditioning, but the fan and the metal screens on the windows were mostly effective at keeping the mosquitoes off of me at night. Ultimately, I didn't get any rashes, and I slept reasonably well, so I'll consider it a bargain.

Sukhothai itself was the smallest city I visited. I got the feeling that the current city's economy is largely driven by tourism based on the "old city," the ruins of the ancient capital of Sukhothai, which dominated the region in the late 13th century and the 14th century. It was a relief to be somewhere relatively quiet after the chaos of Bangkok, though there was one night in which a fellow traveler and I could not find a place to get a beer after 9:00pm.

I only had one full day in Sukhothai, and I spent it on a rented bicycle riding around the ruins of the ancient city with my camera. 

Bowls and jars with incense candles sat below many of the statues

A monument to King Ramkamhaeng, who seemed to be a real philosopher king, and enjoyed borderline divine status.

It felt very dry compared to Bangkok, Khao Sok, and Koh Samui, which were all adjacent to large bodies of water, and the dirt ground in the ruins was covered by only a patchy, yellow-green layer of grass. There were plenty of others touring the ruins, but the complex was about a square kilometer, and I often got to tour the statues and temples in silence. The sound of the soft wind blowing through tree leaves and the sight of little ribbons of dirt swirling above the ground gave the ancient capital a bit of a mystical, almost eerie feeling.

The typical mangy Thai dog, resting in the ruins.

There were several orange robed monks touring the grounds, though I felt it rude to take any direct picture of them.

After my second night in Sukhothai, I grabbed another bus to go to Chiang Mai, which would be my final stop in Thailand before returning to Amsterdam.