Sukhothai trip: Part 2- An Adventure out to Si Satchanalai Historical Park

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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