After seeing most of the ruins in the old city and the fact that my legs were killing me from all the bike riding I had no idea what I wanted to do for the second day in Sukhothai. One of the guys at the guesthouse suggested that I rent one of their motorcycles and go out to the other old city Si Satchanalai, the sister city to Sukhothai, which was 56km (~35miles) away. He said it was easy to find, “just follow the signs”, which was true…except for the signs were obnoxious. In Thailand signs for tourist destinations are usually blue and in English, and they started that way until you got out of town. Then suddenly the signs changed to white (still in English) and they were oddly placed. There were a few times I thought I was lost because I hadn’t seen a sign in a while. Luckily, I make it out to the park, in a little over an hour, with no problems.

The view of the park from the first site

Wat Khao Phnom Phloeng

The park was so much different from Sukhothai old city. There were almost no tourists there, it was super quiet, and everything was more spread out. At the first ruin I ran into a group of Buddhist monks who took a ton of pictures with me. They kept waving me over for another picture. Then I basically wound up following them to the next three sites. One of the things I loved was that the ruins actually looked like ruins...at the old city many of the ruins had been heavily restored.

Wat Chang Lom (The Elephant Surrounded Temple)

Some of the giant elephants
(It was so cool seeing all the construction that went into them)
These elephants are larger than living Asian Elephants

The elephant temple from across the road

Wat Chedi Chet Thaew (The Temple with Seven Rows of Chedi's)
Chedi's are built to hold Buddhist relics

Nap time at the temple

Wat Khao Suwan Khiri
This temple was at the top of a hill and
it was the last place I saw my monk friends

On the way home I made a detour down to Wat Phra Si Rattanamahatath Chaliang, which is part of the park but it is not within the main section. I spent a little while walking around the area and climbing up to the top of the main structure. It still surprises me at how tall, narrow, and inconsistent all the stairs are in Thai temples! Everyone watches their feet and hugs the hand rails while they go up and down.

Once I got back to the guesthouse one of the Thai staff members offered to take me out to see the sun set. We wound up missing the sun going behind the mountains but it was still a fun ride and I got to see some interesting houses.

I think the crayola box exploded

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So the school decided to give us a two week holiday in the middle of the term for no real reason. I spent the first half of the holiday catching up on my grading and paperwork and then decided that I needed to go on an adventure for the second week.

So, do I decide to go somewhere near by? Of course not! I decided to go on a 20ish hour adventure up to Northern Thailand to explore the ruins of Sukhothai. Sukhothai was the first capital of Thailand and was founded in 1238.

When I decided to go on the trip I was planning to stop in Bangkok to pick up my new passport and travel with my co-workers wife, View (so she could get her American visa and visit her family). Unfortunately, my calendar only has Thai holidays (shocking I know!) so I had no idea it was Martin Luther King day on Monday…which ment that the embassy was going to be closed. I found this out Sunday about 5 hours before my night train left. View decided to change her ticket since her main reason for going wasn’t going to happen as planned. It didn’t change my plans too much though.

So, I took the train…which was of course running late. The trip was uneventful but I got surprisingly little sleep. Every time we stopped I wound up waking up :( Once we arrived in Bangkok I jetted off to the Northern Bus Station and wound up being able to get on a bus that was leaving about 15 minutes later!

The Surat Thani Train station
(be careful the trains attack!)

Zipping through BKK at 6am!

After traveling 12 hours by train, 1 hour by tuk-tuk, and 7 by VIP bus I finally arrived in Sukhothai! I had reserved a room at a guesthouse before I left…but one of the classic Thai touts offered me a room that was just as nice, with air conditioning, for 100 baht less a night :) The bonuses of this guesthouse was that it was off the main road so at night it was incredibly quiet and the staff were really nice.

The next day I woke up early and went out to Sukhothai Historical Park, which was the sole reason I went there. The evil main gate woman wouldn’t let me in at Thai price, even with my work permit. But I’m pretty sure that it was because Thai people were getting in for free for the festival they were having. So, I paid the woman and biked around the park for the day. I seriously forgot how exhausting biking can be! I spent a good portion of the day in the main section of the park and at one point wound up with a gaggle of young students following me around. The students didn’t speak much English but they were cute and funny.

Map of the old city

(if you click on it you can see the names and locations of everywhere I went)

Wat Mahathat

Wat Si Sawai

My student stalkers!

And a packed 'school bus'

After the students went back to their field trip group I ventured out of the main section. First I went up to the Northern Zone and looked at some of the ruins. Then I went down to the Southern Zone. I was getting frustrated by this point because I could not find the one ruin I wanted to go to. I was trying to find the Buddha that was in a number of pictures and postcards that I had seen. While I was wandering around the little market at the park I spotted a postcard of the Buddha I wanted to see and it had the name of the site (Wat Si Chum). So, I dug out my fairly destroyed map and searched for the site…I found it in the Northern Zone right behind the temples I had gone to earlier. I checked the time and saw that I had plenty of time before the last Songtail into the city left.

The Southern Zone
( I think this was at Wat Chetuphon)

So, I biked my way back out there only to be faced with ANOTHER ticket counter…and she wanted ANOTHER 100baht (each zone costs 100baht for tourists)! She was much nicer than the main gate woman and she let me in for free after reading through my work permit :D Wat Si Chum was amazing. The Buddha statue is huge…and the way they designed the temple it’s like you’re looking through a window, when you’re outside. The temple was amazingly peaceful. It was well worth the trip back up to the Northern zone, even though I had to bike up a hill.

The only way to get the whole Buddha in one picture
was to stitch 9 pictures together in photoshop

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