A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Sukhothai, Thailand

Our arrival in Sukhothai was a bit grim -- absolutely pouring down rain and we were instantly beset by guesthouse touts. Given the fairly remote location of the one Amanda had pre-chosen, I was on the verge of taking one of the touts up on his offer. However, we went with our original plan, and it was totally worth it, even more because of the rain.

The Number 4 Guesthouse featured lush landscaping, individual en-suite bungalows for guests, and a two-story main building of dark wood with an open-air dining area on its upper floor. From the main building was a winding gravel and brick path among potted palms, bamboo and other plants. But the genius of the Number 4 was in all the thoughtful details that gave the place a feeling of exotic tropical homeyness. The walls, both inside and on the deck of each bungalow, were decorated with woven wall hangings, carvings, hats, paintings, and anything else that might look good. Walls were covered with woven mats and fluorescent lamps were semi-hidden in terra-cotta fish, old gas lanterns, and decorative clay pots.

Only major problem with the Number 4 -- critters. In my room, crickets flew around above the mosquito net, and ants made themselves at home in the bathroom. Amanda and Geoff had it somewhat worse -- lots of ants, birds freaking out every time they left their porch, and a full-sized lizard fell out of Geoff's shorts when he went to put them on. Now that's a wake up call.

Our second day in Sukhothai dawned. That was a good thing, really -- it may not have been the most salubrious weather in the world (about 137 degrees with 99% humidity) but it wasn't raining, so we had few complaints. Well, a few, but who can help it in that kind of heat?

We caught a truck to the ruins 20 km away and rented bicycles. I'm pretty sure those bikes, with their one speed and dodgy brakes, weren't quite up to Geoff's competitive mountain biking standards. In fact, the one time he tried to do something the slightest bit adventurous ("showing off for the camera" you might call it) he managed to disengage the chain. Feeble as these bikes were, however, they were an excellent way to get around ruins that dot an area of about 100 square km.

Sukhothai was a (relatively) unified Thailand's first capital, a nd it is considered by many to be the greatest of Thai empires. The Sukhothai style of architecture and art developed during the empire's glory days of the 13th and 14th centuries, before its lands were essentially annexed by the Ayuthaya kingdom to the south through a series of political marriages, weak kings, flaking off of previously loyal principalities, and minor wars.

Today the former capital is in ruins, though unfortunately neither my guidebook nor my handy English-language brochure gives any indication how things reached that state, apart from the the passage of 600 years. It's probably safe, as in all things historical in Thailand, to blame the Marauding Burmese. Despite the crumbling state of hte buildings (that is why they call them "ruins" after all) Sukhothai has quite an impressive array of sights.

The Sukhothai kings were the first to introduce Theravada Buddhism to Thailand, and the capital reflects this strong religious bent as well as the general atmosphere of peace, prosperity and harmony that prevailed during the early years of the empire. The walled portion of hte city contains any number of ruined temples and other religious monuments built mainly in the Sukhothai lotus style but also incorporating some Khmer influences. The buddha figures are mostly smiling and happy, and the whole area is beautifully laid out in a parklike setting, well landscaped by the Thai government in cooperation with UNESCO and the Japanese. We practically had the place to ourselves (we saw only six other foreigners) and the three of us spent a delightful day tooling around the tree-lined lanes and taking photos of buddhas in all shapes and sizes, including a standing version that had to be five stories high. At that particular temple, some distance outside the walled city, Geoff was rather more impressed with the uneven 150 meters of stone walkway that led up the steep hill. I'm pretty sure that if he had had even a marginally better bicycle Amanda and I would still be making daily visits to a Thai hospital.

We all got out uninjured, however (apart from the usual evils of bike riding) and even managed to catch a truck back to town just a minute or two before the rain started pouring down. Of course, we did manage to get on a very slow truck, as we stopped for some time at a high school to allow approximately 87 uniformed adolescents to insert themselves in to all available airspace in our truck, including dangling out the back like "just married" tin cans.

And that's about it for Sukhothai. On to Ayuthaya!

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 2:48 AM