January 20 to 21
We had an afternoon bus from Chiang Mai to Sukhothai. The bus ride was sold to us as being 4 hours , but took more like 6 hours. In Sukhothai, we hired a tuk-tuk to take us to the hostel. We always called our hostel whenever possible to enquire about local transport prices and were able to bargain a good price for the ride.
At the hostel, we were shown into a room with really thin walls and not enough space. As we were staying there for only 2 nights, and mostly being out during the day, we decided not to complain and just went with the flow. Dinner was on a streetside cafe at night. We ordered a rather watery tom ga kai soup and shared a salad. After dinner, I was ripped off by a lady selling boiled peanuts!!! Why do peanuts cost so much????
The next day morning, we wanted to beat the crowds and went to take the earliest bus which would leave at 7am from the new Sukhothai district to the historic park. We had a little trouble finding the bus that goes between the two towns. The "bus" is a modified truck with two rows of seats. I never realized this before, but Sukhothai is a UNESCO world heritage center, and for a good reason, too. It has one of the biggest collections of wat chedis we have seen.
The bus pulled into the old city by 7.30am. We had breakfast at a local cafe, hired bikes and started our trip. By 8.30am the park already seemed full with crowds pouring in. I guess everybody reads the same guidebooks. Anyway, we had an interesting start in the park. On that particular day, a sports event was being held with the end point being the Sukhothai park. Outside our first Wat chedi, there was a huge stage and announcements were being made loudly over the speaker. Great!!! We were worried that this whole loudspeaker thing would ruin our trip, but 5 minutes later into the park, everything was quiet and peaceful.
There are too many chedis to name and keep track of. We essentially followed a basic map that was provided at the park entrance. Most of the chedis are made from red bricks, but there are some structures which are older and made from volcanic rock. The Buddha is found in various shapes and sizes and in various postures. There are some details around the stupas, but most of it has eroded.
Just before lunch, in the heart of the park, near the king's statue we found an old inscription stone in ancient Thai. I spoke with a couple of school kids regarding this. They were the ones who told me that this was ancient Thai script. They showed some text from their books and the difference was clear. What was remarkable, was the similarity this script had with some of the south Indian languages, including my own, kannada. I made a copy of the script to show it to my family.
We then broke for lunch where we went to a guidebook recommended restaurant. The restaurant name was a play on coffee something. We found half a dozen restaurants which had coffee-something for their name!!! We managed to find the original recommendation, and had a fairly heavy lunch.
Post lunch, I was in the mood for sleep, but we had too many places to see. We biked around to two ruins outside of the main park.
The first was a stupa which had elephant pillars at the base. This was a very unique stupa and was appropriately called Chang Lom. Chang is a Thai word for elephant. From Chang Lom, we headed north to another park. Here we first encountered ruins of what appeared to be a huge temple complex, but only the foundation had survived. Right across from this ruin and in the midst of tamarind trees stood, two Hindu styled gopura. This was another older Hindu temple belonging to Shiva which had been converted to a Buddhist place of worship. Interestingly some of the naga and garuda motifs were still intact on the outside walls. Here again, the ancients had stacked up massive stones to build a 60ft tall gopura. The trick behind stacking up huge stones was eating away at my mind. Even with beasts of burden (in this case, elephants), they must have possessed extraordinary skills for their time to pull this off.
North of these gopura structures, we visited one of the biggest sitting Buddha statues we have seen. The Buddha is enclosed in a massive fort like structure which pretty much hugs the statue. The statue is atleast 70 ft tall. It had some of the most beautifully long Buddha fingers we have seen. Locals who come to pray have attached gold leaf offerings to the Buddhas fingers and this part of the statue was shining yellow. Nicole and I had managed to come to this statue before any other tourists waltzed in, so we were lucky to get a unhindered shot of the Buddha. The fort enclosing the statue has a few narrow passageways and is supposed to have some carvings. These are now closed for the public and we could only make out a few lotus carvings at the entrance gate to the passages.
Outside the Buddha statue, we encountered a massive mango tree at least a 100ft tall. This completely unleashed suppressed emotions in me and I could not help but hug the tree. At the entrance of the road to our house, in Bangalore, for the longest time that I can remember, there once stood two similar trees. Two giant pillars that had probably taken a hundred years to grow so tall and big. Then one fine day we (people) cut them down, so that we (people) could make room for one more car to pass by on the road. When the trees went down, I was in the US, and of course, coming back home did not feel the same ever again. This tree in Sukhothai had brought back those forgotten memories and had cheered me up. I hope that the tree survives for years to come, and that the Buddha has mercy on us wretched selfish creatures who brought down the two trees in Bangalore.
From here, we embarked on one of the most fun parts of the trip to Sukhothai. It was getting late in the evening and we were debating if we had enough time to visit the smaller stupas which are much further away from the main center. We decided to go along with the plan and were richly rewarded. The entrance to this part of the park was about 5km which we covered on the main highway by bicycle. Once we entered the park, we took a smaller gravel road, which went along various stupas, hidden away in wild country and atop small hillocks. We had some great views of the Thai countryside from one such hillock. We also encountered a small fire burning in the forest and later realized that this was a controlled fire that was set by the forest trooper to burn off all the excess leaves around the monuments (what a dangerous way to handle dry leaves in a dry forest!!!!). [Nicole writes: I began to freak out. Even though part of me wondered whether it was a controlled fire, another part of me wondered if it was arsen (the latter taking hold of me)! There was nobody in sight for a while, but then luckily, a trooper came by and with some sign language, my nerves were appeased - he motioned to us that it was ok, but then he continued on!!??]. Finally the road leading back to the main park, took us through some Thai countryside and this was a spectacular bike ride. Nicole and I even managed to shoot a video from our cycles to record this moment for posterity :).
We got back in time to return our rented bikes and headed back to the new city. The evening was spent in our hostel eating some more great Thai food and chatting to fellow travellers (mainly with one from Scotland). Later, we caught a night bus heading off to Ayutthaya (or so we thought...!).
Postscript:
Unfortunately, the bus that we got on was heading off to Bangkok and stopping along the way at various cities. Nicole and I having no clue as to what Ayuthayya looked like, and also being sleepy in a night bus, missed our stop in Ayutthaya and headed off straight to Bangkok!!!!
Ayutthaya it seems , had to be conquered another day.....
We had an afternoon bus from Chiang Mai to Sukhothai. The bus ride was sold to us as being 4 hours , but took more like 6 hours. In Sukhothai, we hired a tuk-tuk to take us to the hostel. We always called our hostel whenever possible to enquire about local transport prices and were able to bargain a good price for the ride.
At the hostel, we were shown into a room with really thin walls and not enough space. As we were staying there for only 2 nights, and mostly being out during the day, we decided not to complain and just went with the flow. Dinner was on a streetside cafe at night. We ordered a rather watery tom ga kai soup and shared a salad. After dinner, I was ripped off by a lady selling boiled peanuts!!! Why do peanuts cost so much????
The next day morning, we wanted to beat the crowds and went to take the earliest bus which would leave at 7am from the new Sukhothai district to the historic park. We had a little trouble finding the bus that goes between the two towns. The "bus" is a modified truck with two rows of seats. I never realized this before, but Sukhothai is a UNESCO world heritage center, and for a good reason, too. It has one of the biggest collections of wat chedis we have seen.
The bus pulled into the old city by 7.30am. We had breakfast at a local cafe, hired bikes and started our trip. By 8.30am the park already seemed full with crowds pouring in. I guess everybody reads the same guidebooks. Anyway, we had an interesting start in the park. On that particular day, a sports event was being held with the end point being the Sukhothai park. Outside our first Wat chedi, there was a huge stage and announcements were being made loudly over the speaker. Great!!! We were worried that this whole loudspeaker thing would ruin our trip, but 5 minutes later into the park, everything was quiet and peaceful.
There are too many chedis to name and keep track of. We essentially followed a basic map that was provided at the park entrance. Most of the chedis are made from red bricks, but there are some structures which are older and made from volcanic rock. The Buddha is found in various shapes and sizes and in various postures. There are some details around the stupas, but most of it has eroded.
Just before lunch, in the heart of the park, near the king's statue we found an old inscription stone in ancient Thai. I spoke with a couple of school kids regarding this. They were the ones who told me that this was ancient Thai script. They showed some text from their books and the difference was clear. What was remarkable, was the similarity this script had with some of the south Indian languages, including my own, kannada. I made a copy of the script to show it to my family.
We then broke for lunch where we went to a guidebook recommended restaurant. The restaurant name was a play on coffee something. We found half a dozen restaurants which had coffee-something for their name!!! We managed to find the original recommendation, and had a fairly heavy lunch.
Post lunch, I was in the mood for sleep, but we had too many places to see. We biked around to two ruins outside of the main park.
The first was a stupa which had elephant pillars at the base. This was a very unique stupa and was appropriately called Chang Lom. Chang is a Thai word for elephant. From Chang Lom, we headed north to another park. Here we first encountered ruins of what appeared to be a huge temple complex, but only the foundation had survived. Right across from this ruin and in the midst of tamarind trees stood, two Hindu styled gopura. This was another older Hindu temple belonging to Shiva which had been converted to a Buddhist place of worship. Interestingly some of the naga and garuda motifs were still intact on the outside walls. Here again, the ancients had stacked up massive stones to build a 60ft tall gopura. The trick behind stacking up huge stones was eating away at my mind. Even with beasts of burden (in this case, elephants), they must have possessed extraordinary skills for their time to pull this off.
North of these gopura structures, we visited one of the biggest sitting Buddha statues we have seen. The Buddha is enclosed in a massive fort like structure which pretty much hugs the statue. The statue is atleast 70 ft tall. It had some of the most beautifully long Buddha fingers we have seen. Locals who come to pray have attached gold leaf offerings to the Buddhas fingers and this part of the statue was shining yellow. Nicole and I had managed to come to this statue before any other tourists waltzed in, so we were lucky to get a unhindered shot of the Buddha. The fort enclosing the statue has a few narrow passageways and is supposed to have some carvings. These are now closed for the public and we could only make out a few lotus carvings at the entrance gate to the passages.
Outside the Buddha statue, we encountered a massive mango tree at least a 100ft tall. This completely unleashed suppressed emotions in me and I could not help but hug the tree. At the entrance of the road to our house, in Bangalore, for the longest time that I can remember, there once stood two similar trees. Two giant pillars that had probably taken a hundred years to grow so tall and big. Then one fine day we (people) cut them down, so that we (people) could make room for one more car to pass by on the road. When the trees went down, I was in the US, and of course, coming back home did not feel the same ever again. This tree in Sukhothai had brought back those forgotten memories and had cheered me up. I hope that the tree survives for years to come, and that the Buddha has mercy on us wretched selfish creatures who brought down the two trees in Bangalore.
From here, we embarked on one of the most fun parts of the trip to Sukhothai. It was getting late in the evening and we were debating if we had enough time to visit the smaller stupas which are much further away from the main center. We decided to go along with the plan and were richly rewarded. The entrance to this part of the park was about 5km which we covered on the main highway by bicycle. Once we entered the park, we took a smaller gravel road, which went along various stupas, hidden away in wild country and atop small hillocks. We had some great views of the Thai countryside from one such hillock. We also encountered a small fire burning in the forest and later realized that this was a controlled fire that was set by the forest trooper to burn off all the excess leaves around the monuments (what a dangerous way to handle dry leaves in a dry forest!!!!). [Nicole writes: I began to freak out. Even though part of me wondered whether it was a controlled fire, another part of me wondered if it was arsen (the latter taking hold of me)! There was nobody in sight for a while, but then luckily, a trooper came by and with some sign language, my nerves were appeased - he motioned to us that it was ok, but then he continued on!!??]. Finally the road leading back to the main park, took us through some Thai countryside and this was a spectacular bike ride. Nicole and I even managed to shoot a video from our cycles to record this moment for posterity :).
We got back in time to return our rented bikes and headed back to the new city. The evening was spent in our hostel eating some more great Thai food and chatting to fellow travellers (mainly with one from Scotland). Later, we caught a night bus heading off to Ayutthaya (or so we thought...!).
Postscript:
Unfortunately, the bus that we got on was heading off to Bangkok and stopping along the way at various cities. Nicole and I having no clue as to what Ayuthayya looked like, and also being sleepy in a night bus, missed our stop in Ayutthaya and headed off straight to Bangkok!!!!
Ayutthaya it seems , had to be conquered another day.....
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