Wat, wat, wat!

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I figured out how to get a taxi from the Lopburi hotel in the end. There was another way out leading to a parking area where taxis and tuk tuks congregated. Sensibly enough, they don't wait in the main road.

I packed yesterday morning and caught a taxi to the station. Sukothai isn't on the railway, so I would have to get a bus from Phitsanulok. In fact, though, I was stopped by a tuk tuk man at the station who offered to take me all the way to my guest house in Old Sukothai for 1,000B. It's about 60km and it seemed like a good deal, so I accepted.

My guesthouse is right in the centre of the old city opposite the entrance to the historical park.

By the time I'd washed and changed it was already 4 o'clock and I set out for a little exploration. I walked past the King Ramkhamaeng Museum as it closed at 4 but resolved to go there today and walked on to the entrance to the central area of the park. I was warned that this part closed at 6 but that if I walked farther along I'd be able to get out until 9 o'clock.

There are an incredible number of wats, ruined and still in use in Old Sukkothai. Not all of them are in the parts of the park you have to pay entrance fee for, but most of the biggest and most interesting are. I am currenlty all watted out and wil find it hard to describe even some of the most important details of the wats I've seen.

The first one I cam across in the park was Wat Mahathat. Most cities in Thailand have a wat by this name and my understanding is that it's the wat dedicated for the king's use if he comes to visit. Alongside this wat, in fact, was the ruuined palace of the Sukkothai kings. The wat is surrounded by a moat and you have to cross a bridge to get to it, which bears the warning "Danger: balustrade decayed!"

I wandered through the park, seeng wat after wat. They are fairly close to one another and as sson as you have passed one wat another comes in sight. Most have explanatory notices in English as well as in Thai.

The whole park is very beautiful with many lakes. My understanding is that the layout of water features now largely reflects the layout in the heyday of Sukothai. Certainly many of the largest wats were on islands. Lotus flowers and fish of many kind live in the waters and I saw small children swimming in the streams and lagoons.

I left the park by the way I'd come in just before 6 o'clock having managed to fit in most of the wats in the main area. I went to the Coffee Cup 2 restaurant, which is just by the side of my guesthouse for a bite of supper. Then I strolled up and down the main street of Old Sukothai. There were many interesting shops, some touristy but others obvously aimed at Thais, and it was an interesting walk.

My guesthouse had a sign advertising that the intenet could be used. But when I asked the owner she said that it could only be used when her son was around and he was away now. The original Coffee Cup restaurant (on the other side of my guesthouse from Coffee Cup 2) did have internet but only two screens and both were in use. I couldn't see any other internet cafes along the road, so I went back to the guest hous and had an early night as I was a bit tired from so much travelling.

I slept well and had breakfast this morning at Coffee Cup and then went straight to the King Ramkhamaeng Museum, getting there just before its opening time of 9 o'clock. It's a really interesting museum and explained a lot that I hadn't known about the different potures of the Buddha and the history of Sukothai.

The museum is named after King Ramkhamaeng the Great who extended the kingdom to its greatest size and is credited with devising the prototype of the Thai alphabet. His verson was modelled on a South Indian alphabet and apparently included more characters for vowels than the presetn Thai alphabet. There was a display showng the changes in Thai writing over the years and I was interested to see that there was a major change as recently as 1907.

There are many Buddha images in the museum. In some he looks serene and you can imagine that this man has acieved enlightenment. In some, to me anyway, he looks rather smug. One walking Buddha image in particular looked to me like a sneering imperialist looking down on inferior subject peoples.

I'd already decided that one of the places I wanted to see today was Wat Si Chum, which is outside the city walls to the north of the city, and there was a very interesting exhibit in the museum about this wat. There is a coridor in the wat decorated with cartoon style drawings about the lives of Boddhisvatas (those who have attained perfection apart from Siddhartha Gautama. Apparently these are similar to ones found in Sri Lanka. Some of the stories were quite fun:

A king had an affair with a woodcutter's daughter and she came to court some time later with a baby that she claimed was his. The king didn't beleive her and was going to send her and the baby awy. But the girl took the baby out of his pram and through him high up into the air - where he stayed hovering. The knig was convinced that this was his child and the boy became boddhivasta.

Another time a different bodhivasta saw a dead mouse and remarked that it would make someone's fortune. A peasant noted his words and took the mouse and fed it to a cat. The cat's owner gave him a coin in thanks and the peasant used that coin and made his fortune!

There were two sadder and similar stories. In one a mother tells her, rather stupid, daughter to kill flies and the daughter does so with a will - and a rolling pin - but accidentally kills her mother too. Then in another story a father asks his, perhaps even more stupid, son to kill some flies. The son uses a wodchopper to do this and ends up killing his father. In both instances a bodhivasta draws the moral "it is better to have an enemy who is a scholar than a friend who has no brains".

All these stories are illustrated by delightful line drawings.

I stayed in the museum for over one and a half hours and then made my way to Wat Si Chum. It's quite hard navigating in Old Sukothai as most roads have no names, or if they do they're neither on the maps nor by the roadsides. The most practicable way, I found (short of asking someone of course) was navigate from wat to wat.

I soon found the old city walls, now just earth banks, and walked alongside the moat that surrounds Wat Phra Phai Luong. I was fairly sure I was getting near my destination, but it was reassuring when I saw a sign to "Wat Si Shum". There is little consitency in translitertation of Thai. The wat's name also appears as "Wat Sri Shum". I suppose it's really English that's the problem - after all sh and ch can both be pronounced sh.

The wat is really impressive with a tall seated Buddha in the position which from my time at the museum I knew to be "subduing mara (ignorance)" becoming visible framed in an entrance way.

Thw main distinguishing feature of this pose of the Buddha is that the fingers of his left hand dangle towards the earth. This is supposed to show that he has acheived enough merit to subdue ignorance. This image has really amazingly delicate golden fingers. Just after I'd visited a party of monks came to honour the image.

After this I went to explore the island of Wat Phra Phai Luong and then walked back to the centre of town via the nrthern part of the park and the central part where I visited the statue that has been erected to King Ramkhamaeng.

I lunched in Coffe Cup and was going to use the internet there but just as I was finishing two people came in and grabbed the places! So I decided to come to New Sukothai, where I am now. My tuk tuk is waiting, so I will have to stop updating. Tomorrow morning I must catch the bus to Chiang Mai!

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