Sukhothai

Leaving Chiang Mai and the north behind, we're now heading east to the city of Phitsanulok for more caving and our first real Thai ruins. Perhaps because of a nearby elephant festival several towns away, there were no rental cars available, so we took a city bus directly to the Sukhothai ruins. When we arrived, we spent some time trying to find the best place to rent bicycles (a recommendation from the Lonely Planet, but one we decided to follow), and while we were doing so, we ran into some Cave Lodge pals.
November 18, 2009

Leaving Chiang Mai and the north behind, we're now heading east to the city of Phitsanulok for more caving and our first real Thai ruins. Perhaps because of a nearby elephant festival several towns away, there were no rental cars available, so we took a city bus directly to the Sukhothai ruins. When we arrived, we spent some time trying to find the best place to rent bicycles (a recommendation from the Lonely Planet, but one we decided to follow), and while we were doing so, we ran into some Cave Lodge pals, Graham (the Scot) and Ima.

The city of (ancient) Sukhothai is about an hour outside Phitsanulok. It is considered the first Thai Kingdom, and reigned for 200 years starting in 1238. Chiang Mai itself was established by a Sukhothai king in 1296, and the height of Sukhothai power came in the 15th century. During this time, artistic styles moved in a new direction as the influence of the kingdom grew. As a result, there are some very beautiful Buddhas and chedis among the ruins.

I hope our pictures speak for themselves, conveying the majesty of these ancient ruins, but there are a few highlights I'd like to mention specifically.

Wat Si Sawai

At Wat Si Sawai, there were hundreds of birds nesting in the crooks of the prang. We had fun stomping on the ground to make them take off into the air and trying to capture it on camera. I think we don't have any good still photos, but I got some really great slow-motion video of the birds taking flight, which I hope we will be able to post soon.

Wat Si Sawai (from Sukhothai)

Wat Si Chum (Phra Atchana)

This is a famous Buddha that's put on hundreds of postcards. There's a practice of applying gold foil leaves to images of the Buddha as a beautification. This particular Buddha, believed to be the Phra Atchana mentioned in a famous historical text, has the fingers of one resting hand well-covered with gold. We had been hoping to get to do some gold leaf application in Thailand but hadn't found an opportunity to do so yet. We were lucky to find a souvenir stand near the Wat which was able to come up with a packet of gold foil when we asked, so we got to apply gold to the Phra Atchana during this visit.

Applying gold leaf	Fingers of the Phra Atchana
(from Sukhothai)

Wat Chetuphon

We biked out about a kilometer or so from the main ruins to Wat Chetuphon where there were four ruined Buddhas in four different poses. The statues were nearly gone, but there was enough of each of them to imagine what it had once been like. It was a fun bike ride out into the countryside for us and we passed many rural houses along the way. Many houses looked like they had little markets in their front yards; others had the rice harvest or water collections. On the way back we stopped for some khao gip - the sweet fried rice cracker that we'd had once in Chiang Mai - from a cart outside someone's house.

Rice from harvest (from Sukhothai)

More pictures from Sukhothai here...