Adventures from around the World

Welcome to week #2.  We begin with our flight out of Bangkok and head north to the rural town of Sukhothai, which besides being rural and a welcomed change from the hectic Bangkok, is also the area of the 1st kingdom of Thailand so there are lots of ruins and stuff (fun times).
Anyway this is where it is, because most people don’t know:

Unfortuatly this journey did not begin so smoothly.  I didn’t get a confirmation email from Bangkok Airways for the flight so I tried emailing them to find out when exactly the flight was.  Justin had written down 3:00pm in his little book, but for some reason was second guessing this and thought it was really 1:00pm.  So we wake up early to have breakfast before, what we think is an hour long trip to the airport.  The trip to the airport works out to be more like 15 mins and we arrive around 10am.  It turned out that our flight was at 3:00 not 1, so we now have to spend 5 hours in the airport…always fun
At 3pm we board the propellor plane that will take us on our 1 hour journey to Sukhothai.  This whole trip was pretty great though, 1. I had never been in a propellor plane before 2. They fed us a pretty decent meal, icluding chocolate glazed banana chips 3. The airport in Sukhothai was like 2 rooms, the smallest airport I have ever seen 4. The guy from our guest house picked us up from the airport…and he had a sign
The guy who owned our guesthouse was English. He was born and raised in England, met a Thai girl online, came to Thailand fell in love with the girl and the country, and has lived here ever since.  They own the guesthouse as well as a restaurant along the main strip in town - his wife runs the restaurant.  They are extremely nice and helpful.  On the first night there we met a couple of Chinese-Americans from San Fancisco.  They were a mother and daughter who were travelling around asia together.  They were both very sweet and very nice and the time we spent at the guesthouse was largely with them, including dinner every night at the guesthouse’s restaurant.
Some Photos
1.The plane, 2.The airport, 3.moooo welcome the rural Thailand!

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So our adventure in Sukhothai really began the next day when, after breakfast in the guesthouse - where we were served piles of fruit (which Justin thought were disgusting and should not be served at breakfast) and toast - we were taken into the town to rent bikes.  You see the ruins are REALLY spread out and walking is not a viable option, plus bikes are awesome, even if you have a cast and a broken foot.  Plus the bikes were really cheap.  The problem was that Justin was spoiled, unreasonably cautious, sheltered as a child and has not been on a bike since he was 7…so he had a few problems. But, because it really is “just like riding a bike,” he eventually figured it out, even if it was after much anger, usually focused at me for “forcing” him to partake in such activity.  Anyway, here is Justin trying to ride the bike at the beginning, what is missing are the small boughts of laughter from both me and the Thai woman renting us the bikes:

So off we went.  On the first day we went around the inner city, checking out a lot of the highlights including Wat Malithat (a massive temple in the centre of the city, seems to be the most important in the complex), Wat Si Sami (contains three decorated pillars in similar style to Ankor Wat), and Wat Sa Si as well as many smaller temples and buildings.  Around 1pm (the hottest part of the day) we decided to check out the national museum located near the inner city to learn about Sukhothai (history and current geography) and about buddhism, both of which are extremely important when viewing the site.  We then had lunch, checked out a few more ruins, and then biked back to the guest house, where Justin again got mad because he claimed that “physical activity did not belong on vacation.” At the guesthouse I went for a swim before dinner, it was great.
On the second day we decided to check out some of the arterial ruins to the west and north of the city.  Some of the highlights included the 90′ standing Buddha at Wat Saphaan Hin on the top of a hill, the massive seated Buddha in the Wat Si Chum, Wat Phra Pai Luang (a large temple complex surrounded by a moat) and the elephant temple Wat Chang Lom.  I personally liked this day more than the first.  It felt much more exploative.  The temples were, for the most part, hidden from the road.  They are also less frequently visited by tourists so you were generally alone.  They were also less restored, and were a part of the communtiy, often you would see cattle grazing in between pillars.  We returned the bikes in the afternoon and went back to the guesthouse where I again had a swim before dinner.

Photos of Sukhothai
1.Wat Malithat 2.Buddha in Wat Malithat 3.Wat Si Sami 4.Another seated Buddha, unknown location 5.Buddha and Wat Sa Si 6.One of the unkept arterial temples 7.View from the hill where Wat Saphaan Hin sits 8.90′ standing Buddha of Wat Saphaan Hin 9.Seated Buddha of Wat Si Chum 10.Elephant temple, Wat Chang Lom 11.Elephant
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The next day we had to wake up rediculously early (6:15am) to catch our flight back to Bangkok.  This was a mistake.  Instead of buying a round-trip ticket to Bangkok we should have continued out journey to Chang-mai and flown from Chang-mai to Kuala Lumpur.  But, Justin doesn’t travel by bus he exclaimed several times that it was “for poor people,” so in the end we returned to Bangkok.
The flight was delayed until slightly after 10, so we didn’t get into Bangkok until noon-ish.  This time we booked the hotel ibis for our stay, a much cheaper option, and to be honest I liked it better than the Shangri-La.  I am not even going to bother breaking this stay up into days as we really didn’t do all that much in these next 3 days.  A large part of our day was spent inside malls.  Like westernised malls, with stores you get back home or in England, not that it mattered as we never went inside any stores (except bookstores) we just walked around….I felt like a mall walker, it was so boring, but I think this is what Justin thought was fun, because for the first time he didn’t really argue about anything.
But what else did we do?
Well we went to the Vimanmek Teak Mansion, the largest teak building in the world. The mansion is actually part of a park complex called Amphon Park.  The mansion was built by King Rama V in a very westernized style.  It was the former residence of the royal family, and they still entertain dignitaries there.  We had a guided tour of the building which was really interesting, and was what was lacking in a lot of other places we saw.  It was nice to really learn about a place, rather than just read the small descriptions.  I did learn that my lucky colour is green because I was born on a Wednesday.  We saw some other buildings in the complex as well including, the Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall, which displayed arts, crafts and jewlery, and the Elephant National Museum which described the royal white elephants and the influence of Hinduism (Ganesha) on Thai Buddhism.  
We also checked out Chinatown and the Theives market, which was more crowded than anything.
We went to check out the palace, which re-opened on our last day in the city.  It was a huge waste of time and money! For $9 (or 250 thaibhat) we were given entrance to the temple of the emerald Buddha (we saw earlier in our trip for free), the teak mansion (we saw a couple of days earlier) and some of the exterior of the palace.  The palace was somehow disapointing.  It was smaller than I thought it would be and we were only allowed to see a small fraction of the property, as parts were still closed for mourning.
We went one night to see some Muay Thai (Thai boxing) but unfortunately the stadium was closed until later in the month :(. 
Overall I was pretty bored on our 2nd visit to Bangkok and was pretty happy to leave for Kuala Lumpur.

Some pictures of Bangkok
1.Slums by the water 2.Vimanmek Mansion 3.Massive lizard in Amphon Park 4.One of many malls in Siam Square 5.”I am Siam” for some reason I think of beer 6.Lumphini Boxing Stadium - note the sign 7.Entrance to Palace 8. Main building of the palace 9.Victory monument - I’m not exactly sure what they won (they sided with the Japanese in WWII)10.Coke in Thai - also note that the volume is measured in cubic centimeters

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Some comments about Thailand:
1. There is a lack of crazyness in the capital, with the exception of the traffic.  It was like Amsterdam, whose reputation preceeds it but in reality it never really livse up to the madness.
2. Wealth.  There are so many places in Bangkok that are full of high end shops (many more than are in Toronto), skyscrapers, and fancy condos.  I really did not expect that.
3. English. It is everywhere, and everyone speaks it, even in the rural areas where it is spoken less, it is still incredibly easy to get around.  In fact, in Bangkok a lot of signage is ONLY in English, Thai isn’t even present.