Sukhothai: The Rich Man's Ayutthaya

We decided to visit Sukhothai, which is somewhat off the proverbial beaten path, because it houses 45 square kilometers of ruins from the first capital of Thailand, dating from the 13th century. Today, there are really two Sukhothais: the Old City which houses all the ruins, and the New City, which is modern Sukhothai and the location of nearly all the hotels and restaurants. We were hoping to be a little more wowed by the Old City than we were by Ayutthaya, and for the most part, the old city delivered.

The ruins consist almost entirely of temples, but many of the large Buddha statues throughout the city are still preserved. Since the Old City is so vast, we rented bicycles with the ambition to explore the entire historic park. Unfortunately, between the heat, humitidy, then the rain, and the fact that most of the temples look the same to our untrained eyes, we gave up after about 4 hours.

While the Old City of Sukhothai impressed us, the New City left us underwhelmed. The New City seems to have very little to offer, and last night we had a tough time find a restaurant that was open at 9pm. And the only restaurant that was open was called "Poo Bar" (operated by a man walking around in high heels, and a transgender waitress who was very sweet). We did, however, get a new experience riding back to our hotel. We had taken a few tuk-tuks in Bangkok, but in Sukhothai, they have a variation on the tuk-tuk them. While the tuk-tuks in Bangkok, like the auto-ricksaws in India, have a motorbike front with the passengers sitting in an enclosure behind the driver, here they have a wooden platform with two wooden benches attached in front of the driver, so that the driver is sitting on a motorbike behind the passengers. It was probably one of the least safe vehicles either of us have ever seen.

Overall, both of were glad we chose to stop here, as it made for a little out-of-the-way adventure.

Tomorrow we head to Chiang Mai, on another painfully early flight.