Blogs from Sukhothai, North-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 18

Today we visited a rice mill at Baan Suan. The Thais take rice very seriously - it's their biggest export. If your idea of rice is a box of Minute Rice, you have missed out! Try getting a bag of jasmine rice at your local Asian market. It has a fragrant aroma and tastes light and delicious. I rinse the rice before boiling it, which makes it less clumpy. Anyway... we saw how rice is hulled and produced in various forms, from whole brown rice to fine rice flour. We then stopped at Sukhothai historical park. It is an amazingly beautiful park with many ancient monuments. Sukhothai was the first kingdom of Thailand in 1238. The Buddhist statues and wats obviously had old Cambodian influences. Ole showed us some artist renderings of what the original buildings ... read more

Yesterday I left my friends in Chiang Mai. They grabbed a cheap flight to Kuala Lumpur and i was strolling around to buy a couple of bananas and a rich brunch before leaving for Thailands first capital, Sukhothai, now only ruins, but not to be underestimated... Just having sat down on the bus i saw a monk walking close by. "Maybe he's going with this bus and will come sit down just next to me", i thought. Some time passed and then suddenly he sat there next to me! Surprised and shy as i hadn't approached anyone yet on my solo trip we just exchanged some smiles and i was thinking maybe he didn't speak english and sure there would be alot of time to talk before arriving to Sukhothai. So I continued reading the book ... read more

Though I had already waited out an eleven hour layover after a very short last night in Germany, I could scarcely think of sleeping on the equally long flight out of sheer excitement at FINALLY being on my way to Southeast Asia. Five years ago I had heard of the Freeman Foundation’s scholarships to study in Asia and had started this lovely obsession with the region, which continued long after my university nixed my plan to spend yet another semester abroad in Malaysia. After two failed holiday attempts to Southeast Asia, however, I was finally on board a Bangkok-bound plane and could hardly contain my enthusiasm. A couple of afternoons at the Hugendubel in Berlin allowed me to peruse most of the guidebooks, which all seemed to echo a common strain about my first destination: “You ... read more

Today we left early in the morning to go to Sukhotai, one of the oldest cities in the Thai kingdom (which as I mentioned before does not mean it it that old, but still). We had a bit of trouble getting out of Ayuthaya because the first bus that was going in our direction turned out to be full, which we did not even realize until it left, so we were not that dissappointed. We passed the next 1.5 hours trying to read the schedule that was all in Thai (well, there was a little schedule in english, but we really wanted to fin our bus in the long Thai list) and figuring out how the bus system worked. And this is how: when there is a bus coming pretty much all the people waiting run ... read more

Wats of Sukhothai Biking the Old City grounds Pass the water please! After an awesome breakfast of toast, eggs, bacon, lettuce, tomato and fruit (btw, all for 95 TB…about $3CDN!) we headed off for Old Sukhothai to check out some of the ruins/temples. We grabbed bikes and rode around to the various sites. Was a pretty relaxed bike ride mixed in with lots of stops...so basically it barely felt like we were biking at all. We had a local guide, Tong, take us around. He kept bugging me all day that I was Thai. He would not let up that I wasn't Thai. Always speaking to me in Thai. Too funny. So perhaps all those "stories" from my siblings that I was adopted are true?? lol Tong was really informative telling us all about the Enlightened ... read more