Blogs from Sukhothai, North-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 4

Thai New Year - Songkran Festival (12-15th April)*, well known to 'falangs' as Water Festival met us already in Pai and together with hundreds of other tourist we went to Chang Mai which apparently is THE place to be for these celebrations. But we don't like to be like everybody else so we decided to continue our journey more south to Sukhothai to experience Songkran between temple ruins of its historical park. Again we achieved our everlasting goal of being ones of only a few westerners in town and we enjoyed this selfish felling a lot. On the way to Sukhothai we could observe water being splashed everywhere around. We felt lucky that we were arriving late in the afternoon as this 3 day long water fight ceases before dusk. There is no fun in being ... read more

Mittwoch, 7. März 2012 Um 05:30 kam unser Nachtbus in Sukhothai an. Die Bushostess hielt es nicht für nötig uns zu wecken oder speziell darauf aufmerksam zu machen. Glücklicherweise bemerkte Delia, dass wir bereits angekommen waren; Benj wäre sonst wohl, nichts Böses ahnend, schlummernd ohne Halt bis Pjöngjang gefahren... Egal, wohlbehalten und mit komplettem Gepäck, wenn auch etwas übermüdet, waren wir also in Sukhothai angekommen und das Abenteuer Nachtbus nahm ein gutes Ende. Ein Tuktukfahrer brachte uns zum Hotel Ruean Thai, welches wir im Internet gebucht hatten. Kurz vor sechs Uhr klingelten wir die Besitzerin aus dem Schlaf, was wir allerdings zuvor auch per E-Mail angekündigt hatten. Ohne Groll wurden wir von ihr begrüsst und statt nur die Koffer zu deponieren, durften wir bereits das für die nächste Nacht gebuchte Zimmer beziehen - „no charge“! Das ... read more

The culture tour continued further north to the ancient ruins of Sukhothai. These are heralded as the best in Thailand. Different from Ayuthaya because they wear no battle scars from humans but from nature. The now converted historical park had been recovered from the overgrowing jungle. No traffic was allowed inside and was perfect for a peaceful bicycle ride. The park is well manicured with shaded pathways. As long as I stayed here I wouldn't die of the heat. My first stop was the largest temple, Wat Mahathat. This set of ruins covered a huge area with many variations on Buddha images and architecture. A pleasant place to stroll around until I realised I was taking all my photos in "Sunset Mode". What this does is dim the light on every photo I took, making the ... read more

What a bizarre little city this is. I can't make my mind up how I feel about the place. It was the first capital city of Thailand and not too many tourist/travellers make a stop here. Although at least for the experience (if not the incredible ruins), they should. Last night, I took a walk into the old city and it became obvious just how few people actually do stop in Sukhothai. Everyone and I mean everyone was staring at me. Kind of like how I would expect people to look at aliens like the District 9 type walking down Oxford street in London (actually, would anyone even bother turning their heads?)People were laughing and pointing and one boy found me so amusing that he ran in to grab his mum so that they could both ... read more

Ruins and a lesson on Buddha Hi again everybody! I’m really excited for this post! We’re in a town called Sukhothai, which means rising happiness. It’s pretty crazy how many dogs there are here. Everywhere you go you can see dogs lying down on the sidewalks and even in the street. It’s been really interesting with Nate and Jessie being 2 of the only foreigners here and me being the only monkey. Everyone stares at us everywhere we go because we really stand out. What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen a monkey traveling with his friends before? I’m just joking around. Everyone here is really nice, and the kids like to wave at us so we’ll smile and wave back to them. I don’t think they see many people here who aren’t Asian. The one ... read more