Ferg & Jude\'s Thailand Adventure 2002

Saturday 16th November
Old and New Sukhothai

We picked up a minivan to Sukhothai (100bt each) and the air con worked. We had an obsessive compulsive Thai man sitting in front of us. He kept sniffing, picking his nose and eyes, coughing and stretching his neck. Besides the vile noises he was emitting it was extremely annoying. He finally got off in old Sukhothai. The old city was in full swing for the Loi Krothong festival. Lots of decorations and hundreds of people. We arrived into new Sukhothai at 3.30pm and checked into the Riverview Hotel (350bt). We had a corner room with a slight river view, it was fairly run down, a very hard bed but at least the air con works. We were both a bit frazzled from the journey and we hadn't eaten since breakfast. We found a nice café across the road and had a couple of fruit shakes and a plate of Thai food (125bt). Feeling a little revived we found an internet café for our emails. The connection was bad and we could only manage to send a couple. After a hot shower and consulting the L.P. book we went in search of the Dream Café for dinner. It was very fancy and decorated with Thai antiques and wood carvings. The dinner was nice but very expensive (435bt).

Sunday 17th November
Old Sukhothai....impressive!

We were up early and found a tuk-tuk to take us to old Sukhothai. It had rained overnight and the sky was threatening to open up at any minute. We had negotiated a price with the tuk-tuk driver to take us around the park, 80bt park entry and 200bt for the driver. There were many vendors camped in and around the ruins due to the festival and there was a lot of rubbish lying around. Some of the statues were covered in electrical wiring. We managed to get around several of the Wats and Buddha statues before the heavens opened up. What we saw was very impressive, I would like to return one day with better weather and no festival.

The rain finally eased when we returned to town. We checked out and grabbed a coffee and banana pancakes at the Rainbow Café across the road. The coffee was vile but the pancakes made up for it. We had arranged for our tuk-tuk driver to take us to the bus station. We finally lucked a good air con bus with reclining seats for the trip to Bangkok which departed at 8.45am.