Thailand: Ayutthaya & Sukhothai

After the beauty of the beaches, we travelled overnight to Bangkok to begin our journey north to Chiang Mai. To break up the trip and see some more of Thailand we made two stops on the way, first at Ayutthaya, the former capital of Thailand, about two hours north of Bangkok, and second at Sukhothai, about halfway to Chiang Mai, which was the first independant kingdom of Thailand.

To get to Ayutthaya we took a break from the buses and headed to the train station. As it was such a short trip though we ended up on a local train, that only cost about $1 for both of us, but was also not air conditioned, had very hard wooden seats, stopped EVERYWHERE, and got so crowded that even the vendors selling bottled water, snacks, hammocks (!?!?) struggled to move around. Needless to say, i didnt manage to convince Em that rail was the best option for future travel...

Ayutthaya is unique - it is where three rivers converge to form this island city. Since the rivers form a natural barrier to invasion. The city was the capital of Thailand from 1350-1757, when the Burmese attacked. Ayutthaya was an interesting place to stop for a day. We took a small boat around the island the afternoon we arrived, viewing some wats and some impressive large golden buddhas. Our full day there, we rented bicycles and spent about 3 hours cycling around exploring the island and visiting the historical park, with many more ancient wats.

The new city of Sukhothai is unimpressive, however, the old city, about 12km away, is the home of all the ancient ruins. We arrived at our guest house in the new city to find it was a small bamboo bungalow in the 'jungle', with a bathroom made of wooden slats, offering very little privacy. As we have had many recent problems with our toilets, I promptly took the lid off the toilet cistern to see if it would flush, only to be suprised by two frogs splashing around! All very rustic. :) We spent our night cowering under the heavy mosquito net, surrounded by man eating mosquitos.

Again on our full day in town we visited the ruins on bicycles (who needs gyms!?!) , with Em's rounded handlebars, she looked like a 1950s model, all she needed was a basket filled with daisys and a pair of bloomers! The ruins were impressive, at their center were two huge standing buddhas, and the whole site was much more rural than in Ayutthaya helping to give a sense of how the old city used to look.

After our night in the "jungle", we found a great guesthouse around the corner, with four brick walls, a frog-less toilet, and a swimming pool! all for the same price... needless to say,we moved for our second night and enjoyed a great afternoon splashing around in the pool to cool off!

We are now in Chiang Mai for a week of trekking, canopying and general adventure before our three week volunteer stint.


Places we stayed:
Ayutthaya - PU Guesthouse (simple, cheap, clean)
Sukothai - No 4 Guest house (rustic and rural, and lots of bugs); 4T Guest house (swimming pool!)