Sukhothai

Monday 7th

The original plan was to go to Phitsanulok, about an hour from Sukhothai and on the main train line. When we arrived at Chiang Mai station we had missed the 9:30am train and the next one was at 3pm, arriving at 11pm, if it wasn't delayed. So we decided to change plans, go to the bus station (more money on tuk tuks) and stay in Sukhothai instead of Phitsanulok as we would be travelling to Sukhothai as a day trip.

We choose to go to Sukhothai for a few reasons. Firstly, it is halfway between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, saving us from a 12 hour bus ride or longer train ride. Secondly, we had two days to spare in a sense and lastly it is an old capital of Thailand and an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We arrived around 4pm and were approached by a hotel employee about his place. It ticked all the boxes so we decided to stay there. We put our stuff in our room and immediately went out for dinner as we were starving. It was quite hard to find a restaurant but we did. Dinner was disappointing and small so we both got more food from street stalls along the way back to the hotel. We planned on using the internet but the only net cafe we could find was full of school children.

The hotel room had a t.v with 136 channels but alas only two English channels, both of which were Christian channels. The entrance to the bathroom was ridiculously short, level with my nose. Eventhough i bowed my head each time i still managed to hit the top of my head twice.


Tuesday 8th

Since Sukhothai is a small town we decided that to rent a motorbike was the best option to see Old Sukhothai. Old Sukhothai is around 12km from New Sukhothai where we were staying. It was a kick start bike which i had never used so it wasn't always the easiest thing to start but i managed. On the way to the old city we stopped off at the bus station to see when the bus comes and to buy our tickets. 

The old city was said to be similar to those of Angkor although i didn't notice too much similarity. The easy way to describe most of the ruins is that they were simply ruins. Some of the sites we didn't even bother to get off the bike and see in person. It was quite hot out in the sun but we managed to find one spot next to a pool of water which was so nice to sit next to.

At dusk we went to the small night food stalls and market, although we ate at a restaurant call 'Poo Restaurant'. However it had a picture of Winnie the Pooh but the signs had the unfortunate typo.

All in all Sukhothai isn't really worth visiting unless you have the time and want to have a break between Bangkok and Chiang Mai.