More ruins and melting in the heat...

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On the way to Sukhothai, the bus passed through the "old city" where the Sukhothai Historical Park (and all the interesting ruins) is located. We debated getting off there but weren't really sure so we continued on to the "new city" bus station which is about 12 km away. We were greeted by the usual group of tuk-tuk drivers wanting our business and after hooking up with two other travelers we worked a deal with one of the drivers to take us all to the guesthouse area. After checking several of them, we got the impression that prices were being jacked up to compensate for our driver's commission, so we ditched the tuk tuk and found a place on our own from the very limited selection of guesthouses. It was super cheap and not bad for the price, but not a place we were eager to stay two nights either. It didn't take long to explore the "new" part of town as it was very small. It had lots of street food stalls so dinner was pretty easy and cheap.

This morning we got up and decided for sure not to stay here another night as there was really no reason. We packed up our things and took the local bus over to Old Sukhothai where we were immediately greeted by a friendly bike rental shop owner who offered to store our bags for free while we rented bikes for the day. Sounded pretty good so we picked out our bikes (always an interesting process) and went to start touring around the Historical Park.

The Sukhothai Historical Park is supposedly the best place to see ruins from the Ankor era in Thailand so we had high hopes. There were definitely some interesting ruins to see, but nothing as impressive as what we'd seen in Ayuthaya. The nice part is that they are mostly all in this beautiful park area which is really nice to bike around, but they are also pretty spread out (if you want to get to all of them) so perhaps the hottest month of the year in Thailand is not the best time to go. Luckily there were a couple tourist policemen stationed in one of the more remote parts of the park selling water and offering us cubes of ice to melt over our heads! At one point we were checking out the remains of an old pottery kiln off in the forest a bit and we heard a strange noise nearby, like someone plowing through the trees knocking them over...before long we discovered this was actually a forest fire raging through the bamboo trees! It was very strange, nobody seemed to be too concerned.

By late afternoon we were pooped and headed back to get ice cream and return our bikes. Once again the very helpful bike shop owner directed us where we could sit and wait for the bus to Phitsanoluk, our next destination.

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