Sukhothai

Sukhothai was further away than we thought – we’d prepared for a 5 hour coach journey that ended up being 6. The only plus side of the trip is the lunch stop – where you get a nice little green curry thanks to the 1^st Class VIP ticket. The long, delayed journey resulted not only in aching bodies, but also a guesthouse owner who’d given up waiting for us at the bus station.  However a quick call later and Luc, our host returned to ferry us to the luxury that is ‘Baan Georges’.

Sukhothai is an even older capital of Siam (before Ayutthaya and of course, Bangkok). It is famous for the wonderfully preserved and cared for ruins of the old city – this is located about 12 km away from the new city where we were staying. ‘Baan Georges’ (our guesthouse) was excellent – only a year or so old with huge rooms, beautiful bathrooms, large swimming pool and nobody but us for the owner to look after. We knew it was going to be difficult to motivate ourselves to swap the balcony and swimming pool for looking at a ruined city!

So (rather predictably) the first day we didn’t - we ate at Poo’s restaurant (the name having no reflection on the food, in fact the restaurant was also owned by Luc and his bubbly wife/partner Poo) and then we had a massage to soothe the aches in our bones sustained during the previous day’s journey.

Poo is a lovely lady – she gave us her life story in thirty seconds, pretty much thirty seconds after meeting her. She comes from a fairly poor family in New Sukhothai and had built her own businesses from scratch: first a pancake stall (now run by her sister); then a motorbike rental shop; and now with Luc, her own restaurant and hotel. She was rightly proud of her achievements and it showed when she told us about her encounter the previous day. A group of opinionated young French backpackers had mistaken her for just a cleaning lady rudely insisting that they wanted to speak to the manager about the price of a room.  It seems she made it pretty clear that she was the boss and that the prices were a true reflection of the hotel’s standard (as they are). Seems Luc had to calm down the situation!

Pure concentration (so as not to fall off)...does anybody else think she looks a little like Tintin in this shot?

The next day we decided to visit the old city and so after replenishing our energy reserves with Luc’s delicious Belgian pancakes, we caught the bus (covered truck with bench) to the Old City. Old Sukhothai covers a massive area – so for around 60 pence each we hired bicycles on which to explore. Luckily much of the sightseeing is done within an enclosed, traffic free historical park as Monali’s cycling skills are comparable to those of a six year old who has just had the stabilisers removed from their bike.

The buildings within the park and outside on the periphery of the city are most impressive – I’d love to tell you more about the symbolism and heritage of each structure, but I’m afraid we were too interested in not getting hit by mad Thai drivers on the main road and finding somewhere clean to eat (and use the bathroom) than we were in studying guide books in detail. All in all though, we were both very glad to have spent the day cycling around – the city and its contents are a beautiful spectacle and offer a relaxing haven.

The visual stimulants of the Old City must have been too much for my feeble body as the next day Monali was aghast to find a mean looking blood clot in my eye. Being the caring wife she suggested (‘nagged and dragged’) that I went to the local eye doctor. After waiting for an hour, the lady doctor (I think she might not have always been a lady) turned up. She examined my eye through the microscope, looked up nonchalantly and informed me that my ‘horrendous eye infliction’ was not in the slightest bit serious, likely caused by some dirt in my eye and should be fine in 7 – 14 days. Then for three pounds, she sold me some anti-biotic eye drops (labelled ‘sample use only’) and sent us on our way.

We were not looking forward to our next coach journey – another long one, this time about 5.5 hours north to Chiang Mai. Things were made worse when we found out that there were no 1^st class buses operating on the route between Sukhothai and Chiang Mai! We eventually bought a ticket on the government bus after nearly being sold a ticket on a duff old non-a/c bus by a lady who (so helpfully) came out to greet us at the bus station. At 10:30 we left – a coach load of monks and Thai pensioners (who must have got up hours ago) returning after their daily shop to their homes out in the countryside.