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Published: January 31st 2007
Ayutthaya is a fairly quiet little place just north of Bangkok with ruins scattered throughout. Each wat (temple) site of which there are many was a cluster of monuments - chedis, stupas and towering prangs. The ruins had a quiet park-like setting and it was peaceful yet moving to wander among the ruins. They're constructed of brick with a plaster coating, most of which had crumbled away, unfortunately taking much of the fine detail and sculpture with it.
The heat was oppressive and we staggerred from ruin to ruin, getting the highlights, but not really doing the town justice. We finally caved in early for a nap - we think our sleep was interrupted in Bangkok, they'd had a tremendous population of roosters somewhere near our guesthouse there, possibly in the nearby temple. They do crow in the morning and other times as well.
We carried on northward to Sukothai by bus; unfortunately the air conditioning failed and we slowly baked in the stuffy heat. The land is surprisingly dry; I'd expected Thailand to be wetter, but some of the browned 'scapes reminded me of India. Water seems plentiful from rivers however, and there's lots of rice production.
The king is extremely popular! You'll see huge shrines along the road or in homes and businesses and the people wear a special yellow shirt with the royal crest. The sprit of it seems quite nice, and the king sets a good example having an impressive list of achievements, artistic, athletic and otherwise. The scandal hunters have not yet reached Thailand. (If I was king I'd always be saying "...you are? Riiight, and I'm the king of Siam" until everyone was just sick of it.)
In Sukothai, the monuments are in a designated park area beside the new town. We found a nice guesthouse with nice old teak houses on stilts. Thailand is full of fish ponds, hanging orchids and other tropical plants, and the gardens here were typical. It was too late to see any monuments, so we wandered through the village and found the night market. It's extremely fun if you're interested in trying things because there are so many different vendors. You can cruise past and see what's on offer and then try a few. We had coconut custard with steamed bread cubes to dip - the custard was such a deep green you would have
guessed pea soup with croutons. Oh but good. The Thais are carnivores and though we'd gotten used to no meat in most of India, we're certainly back into it here. I have to remember to take more pictures of the food.
Thailand has a wide variety of transportation options. The tuk tuks here are a go-kart style with bigger wheels and a more powerful throaty engine than the Indian variant - giant go kart taxi! Also, a sort of motorized push cart with the back half of a motorcycle for power - these also come in taxi format, which is an unusual experience to ride, but they don't go very fast - too fast and I imagine they could get the speed wobbles. Popular transport in the north are the suktheow (definitely misspelled) - a pickup or small flatbed truck with lengthwise benches in the back. On the topic, Bangkok had the longtail boat - a long thin boat turned up at the front, but with a remarkable propulsion system - what looked like a large truck engine balanced on a pivot with a steering handle on the front and an eggbeater style propeller on a long shaft directly
out the rear giving decent speed and a rooster-tail spray.
Next day we hopped into a suktheow and explored the Sukothai monument park. Very impressive structures, more so than Ayutthaya in our opinion. The temperature was also much more liveable, so that helped. Very beautiful and well maintained grounds with large ponds, great to just walk around and marvel. There's a very pretty bush also common in India that we believe is bougainvillea?
On to Chiang Mai...
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