December 10 was Constitution Day, another Thai holiday, and Marilee had the day off. Thanks to Thomas the Travel Agent (not his real name, but many Thais choose English names or words as nicknames; the owner of the first hotel where I stayed called himself Catman) we had round-trip air tickets to Sukhothai, home of one of Thailand’s ancient civilizations. Bangkok Air developed some boutique airports at short-haul destinations – the Sukhothai airport was a nice gateway!
We took a van past rice fields into a village – Marilee said this was similar to what the volunteers experience. The houses in the villages are spread out, not clustered, so a PCV has a lot of territory to cover, usually by bike.
Sukhothai is a UNESCO World Heritage site and was the capital of an empire from the 13th to 15th centuries. It represented an architectural leap (later in the trip I made it to Ayutthuya, which is older), showing Sri Lankan and Khmer influence, including an innovative walking Buddha (and it made me think that as long as I was “in the neighborhood” I should go to Angkor, though saying that always reminds me of a famous family story – once when I was learning to drive, I realized the street signs had changed and we were in Brooklyn. I said, “as long as we’re in Brooklyn, we should go to Junior’s and get cheesecake.” My father replied, “that’s like saying, “as long as we’re in Kansas, we should go to Nebraska.” Hm – now that I reflect on it all these years and one Drive Across America later, that might be exactly what I would say!). Anyway, Sukhothai is made up of about forty complexes of wats and temples in various states of ruin and preservation, with brick paths, moats and trees. An excellent way to see it would be by bicycle, and even then you can’t take everything in in one day, but anyway, we walked and we saw several compounds in the main complex and a couple in the north section.
At the main temple, Wat Manathat, swarms of teenagers descended upon us. They had the day off from school and had been given a project – find tourists and practice English with them. They had a list of questions to ask and recorded my answers. Where was I from? What did I like about Thailand? How old was I (I told them this was not necessarily a good question to ask tourists, especially women!)? Most of them had the questions down but I could tell that they might not be comprehending my answers; when I said something they recognized or complimented their country they were so appreciative! By the third or fourth group, though, we wanted to get going and see more temples, though it was hard to say no to these eager and earnest students.
The highlight of the north section was Wat Sri Chum, which houses Sukhothai’s largest surviving Buddha image, 11 m from knee to knee and 15 m high.
Under this civilization, Thai script was developed and Buddhism was established as the common faith, though Hindu influences are also seen in the architecture.
We saw a variety of structures and had more street food for lunch; had a snack at the airport (delicious banana chips!) and flew back to Bangkok. There have been other times when I flew somewhere just for the day and flew back – somehow those are special treats, more so than taking a bus or train or driving somewhere for a day. Marilee had been to Ayutthaya but not to Sukhothai and didn’t think she was going to get there – I am glad I enabled her seeing it. When Linda wrote her scribbled itinerary she had suggested both (I wasn’t sure at that point that I would get to both – Marilee said she was glad to have seen both but didn’t think it was a must; on the other hand, I was in the neighborhood…).
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