Monday, November 15, 2021
3:55 a.m. Room S1, Orchid Hibiscus Guest House
Sukhothai, Thailand
It’s been two days again since my last journal entry. I’ve just had a lot going on, and I’ve been very tired after my hours out in the hot sun exploring Sukhothai. Last night, I was so tired that I could barely function. I don’t even know what time it was that I turned out the lights and went to bed, but it was early. And this morning, I found myself awake at three a.m. and feeling pretty good. So I got out of bed, showered and made some coffee, and I’m starting my day, as almost always, with my journal.
On Saturday, the plan was to visit the main Historical Park. At a cheaper guest house, I probably would have woken up early, had a quick cup of coffee, and then been at the park very early. But I decided to ease into the day once more and enjoy a good breakfast at the Orchid Hibiscus. It was just as good as on my first morning, and having such a meal was a good start for my day. I had made sure this time that all my camera gear was ready to go, so after breakfast, I was able to simply grab my knapsack and my GoPro and go. No wasted time.
At the park entrance, I tried to set the tone for the day by asking some questions at the information desk. I told the young woman there that I was making a video for YouTube. And I asked her if she would mind being on camera as I asked her my questions. She said that would be fine. And I tried to get us both on camera while I spoke to her, but the whole thing didn’t really work out. For one thing, she was seated at a table, and in order to get us both in frame, I had to crouch down uncomfortably at the front of the table. And then I discovered that she had a very quiet voice. I couldn’t really hear a single word she said, and I felt sure that the microphone wasn’t picking up anything either. The few words I did catch indicated to me that she didn’t have much to say anyway. I think her role was to answer simple questions about the opening hours of the park and things like that. She wasn’t there because she was a passionate historian and wanted to tell visitors all about the Sukhothai Kingdom. I think my first question was a simple one about where I should go in the park. Which sites were the most important ones to visit? I thought an open-ended question like that would allow her to expand on her answer and tell me interesting things. But she answered that I should visit Wat Mahathit. And that was the end of her answer. I asked some kind of follow-up question, but I don’t remember what it was. And I couldn’t really hear what she said in reply. So I wound up my little attempt at an interview, thanked her, and moved on.
I had some fun right at the entrance as I figured out the options for moving around the park. I had used Google Maps to calculate the distances between the major sights inside the park, and I decided that it was reasonable to walk the entire time. The norm seemed to be to rent bicycles or take an electric hop-on, hop-off tram, or rent your own electric car. I don’t think anyone really walked. I’m not sure that I saw a single other person walking from temple to temple inside the park. I was the only one. But it seemed like a fine way to get around to me. I could see that if I didn’t have a scooter, it would have made sense to rent a bicycle from the guest house. In that case, you could use the bicycle to ride from your guest house to the park itself and then ride around the park and then ride somewhere else in the city and eventually back to your guest house. But if you have a scooter to get you to the park and back again, then I think it is reasonable to explore the park itself on foot.
I was quite surprised to discover the existence of the hop-on, hop-off tram system. I was even more surprised to get the impression that it worked quite well. A ticket for the tram cost 60 baht for foreigners. I think it was free for Thai citizens. At least that is what Google Translate told me. For your 60 baht, you were allowed to use it all day long and get on and off as many times as you liked. There were also very clear and detailed maps of the route the tram followed. And the tram stops were clearly marked with numbers and had benches underneath sun shelters where you could sit and wait. I never did take the tram. I was perfectly content to walk. In fact, I preferred it. But I found the tram route maps, which were all over the park, to be very helpful in terms of finding my way. I suppose the one question for visitors that don’t want to walk under that hot sun would be how long you’d have to wait at each stop for the tram to show up and take you to the next temple. And I don’t know the answer. But the tram seemed to run frequently. I saw it constantly during my time in the park. And there was more than one running the route.
Another option was to rent your own electric car. I was delighted by this. The cars themselves looked great and lots of fun. You could rent a 2-seater for 250 baht per hour. A 4-seater cost 450 baht per hour, a 6-seater 650 baht per hour, and a 9-seater 950 baht per hour. I was tempted to rent a 2-seater car for one hour just for fun. However, there didn’t seem to be any available. All of their rented cars except one large one were currently being rented. One hour wouldn’t even begin to provide enough time to explore the park, but I thought maybe it would be useful to get a sense for how the park is laid out, and then I could go exploring on foot. But since none were available, I set off on foot.
I was hoping for a kind of visitor center where I could get an orientation and some information, but there was nothing like that. In fact, the next day, during my visit to Wat Si Chum and Wat Phra Phai Luang, I stumbled across a very good visitor information center. I had been hoping for something like that at the museum, but there wasn’t one. I then hoped for one at the Historical Park itself. But there wasn’t one. But it turns out that Sukhothai does have a very good visitor information center. And it provides an exceptional introduction and orientation to the Historical Park. But it is located far away from the Historical Park outside the old city walls beyond the northern gate. I was so surprised when I saw it. I almost didn’t even bother going in because like so many places, it looked closed and maybe abandoned. But I took a chance, and it was open. Not only was it open, it was wonderful. There were all kinds of helpful and well-organized displays. There was even a series of videos on large, crisp and bright screens that gave detailed breakdowns of every temple ruin in Sukhothai one by one with its history and architecture, and then provided aerial views. The videos even showed how the temples would have looked as originally built and then contrasted that with how they looked today. And there were English subtitles. I was amazed, and I loved that visitor center. Yet, it was empty and seemed to be relatively unknown. Maybe no one knew it was there. I couldn’t help but think how much more popular and helpful it would have been if it were located inside the historical park itself. I found it completely by accident. They should definitely move it inside the park itself or right at the main entrance. At the very least, they should build a second visitor center inside the park. They already have the videos and the displays. They just need to duplicate them and put them inside a separate building at the historical park. What a missed opportunity for Sukhothai.
I was also pleased that the Historical Park itself was not overwhelming. According to Wikipedia, there are 193 ruins in Sukhothai spread out over seventy square kilometers of land. And inside the old city walls, there are the remains of the royal palace plus 26 temple ruins. But inside the main Historical Park itself, there are just a handful of places to visit. Perhaps five main ones. And that is a manageable number. And each one has special characteristics and features. Wat Mahathit is the largest temple ruin by far, and most visitors concentrate their time there. And the rest of their time is spread out over the other temple ruins. My favorite by far was Wat Si Sawai, which is one of the three main Khmer sites. These Khmer temples have a completely different architecture, and consist of three blocky towers that they call prangs. They have a completely different look to them compared to the standard chedi or stupa of a Buddhist temple. They were originally Hindu temples and then were converted to Buddhist temples with the addition of a vihara and other Buddhist elements.
The Khmer towers were hollow on the inside, which made them a lot of fun to visit. At the first tower, I discovered it was possible to go inside the tower and look up at the hollow interior. These were filled with pigeons and bats, and the pigeons in particular would frighten visitors as they exploded outside with flapping wings when they took flight. They took me by surprise as well, and my heart started beating fast.
A big disappointment, though not unexpected, was that the sole coffee shop indicated on the map of the Historical Park was empty and abandoned. I would have enjoyed a stop there for an iced coffee. But it was not to be.
According to my Relive map, I spent nearly four hours in the park. And I definitely felt it afterwards. Four hours is a long time to be walking around under that hot Thailand sun. When I got back to the guest house, I went straight to the pool to cool off. I shot a ton of video at the park, but I have no idea when I will find the time to edit it. It takes every hour of the day for me to just have my small adventures, record the video, and then copy the video files and photos. That takes up the entire day. There is no time leftover to then edit the video. And the editing is actually the most time-consuming thing to do. It’s clearly not possible to treat YouTube videos like a complete video journal of each day. There just isn’t enough time in a normal human lifetime.
I originally thought I could visit the main historical park in the morning and then go to Wat Si Chum in the afternoon. But my time at the park had wiped me out. I had no energy or brain power left to go to Wat Si Chum. I decided to put that off until the next day and combine it with a visit to the kilns and to Wat Phra Phai Luang. There were many, many more temple ruins around
Sukhothai that I could visit beyond those, but I thought that would be a reasonable end to my experience of Sukhothai. You could visit all 193 temple ruins, but what would be the point? Even I am not such a completist.
In fact, there is another complete historical park to the north called Si Satchanalai. And I had plans to go there today. I’m doubting that plan a little bit because I’ve now seen so many temple ruins that I don’t know that I can truly appreciate any more. Plus, the park is sixty kilometers away. That’s probably a two-hour drive for me on the scooter. That’s four hours of driving in total in the hot sun combined with two or three hours in the park itself. That could be an exhausting day, especially since I still have to ride my scooter all the way back to Mae Sot before the 17th in order to go to immigration.
Now that I am awake on this, my final day in Sukhothai, I think I would enjoy a more relaxing day here in the city instead of going on such a big trip. I have spent no time at all inside the town of Sukhothai – the normal town. I think I will focus on that instead. I can ride my scooter into town and park it and then go for a walk around the town. Perhaps I can track down the famous Sukhothai noodles. There is even one more famous temple ruin right there on the main drag that I haven’t visited yet. I was thinking that since I am already here and relatively close to Si Satchanalai, it would be a shame not to visit the place and shoot some video there. But even if I shot video of Si Satchanalai, when would I ever be able to edit it? I don’t think I would ever find the time. And I doubt I could make such a video feel special and distinct compared to all the video I’ve already shot of Kamphaeng Phet and Sukhothai.
But to go back for a minute, yesterday was my day to visit Wat Si Chum, the kilns, and, finally, Wat Phra Phai Luang. And I had the very pleasant discovery of the visitor center. It was a good day.
It started with another breakfast here at the Orchid Hibiscus. This was not the most pleasant breakfast experience I’ve had here because it was the weekend, and there were other guests. I no longer had the place all to myself. And the other guests consisted of a large family group. And it was one of those families that behaves as if no one else in the world exists but them. And that means screaming, yelling children that no one bothered to control. It also means teenagers staring at tablets and phones blasting out loud music and annoying YouTube videos at high volume. And it meant adults shouting and laughing with such high voices that a poor quiet Canadian such as myself couldn’t even think straight. Rather than enjoy my breakfast this time, I wolfed it down as fast as I could and then got out of there. People like the members of this family have always puzzled me. I have no idea how anyone can behave that badly out in public and not even be aware of how awful they are and how much they are bothering everyone around them. But they go through their entire lives behaving this way, and they never seem to suffer any consequences because of it. I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, based on the evidence, this family of tourists was from China. They were doing their part to maintain the poor reputation that tourists from China now have all over the world.
It was easy to get to Wat Si Chum, since I had already been there on my first day in Sukhothai. I remembered how to get there, and I rode my scooter there in no time. I was still curious about how the ticketing system worked. I hadn’t been able to get a clear answer to this question. Yet, I understood that Wat Si Chum was now considered to be separate from the main Historical Park. It’s kind of hard to tell, because the ticket cost 100 baht, which is the same price as the ticket for the main Historical Park. And it was the exact same ticket. They’re identical. But, upon looking closely, I saw that my Historical Park ticket from the first day had been stamped by the ticket checkers with a stamp that read “Inlet Gate Inside the City” and they stamped this new Historical Park ticket with the word “Wat Si Chum The North”. So that is how they distinguish between them. It is the exact same ticket at the same price, and you could present this same ticket at any entrance, but then they stamp it with a special stamp from that site to cancel it. And in the morning, I’d read that the Wat Si Chum ticket was also valid for Wat Phra Phai Luang. And that made logical sense because in terms of local ticketing prices, 100 baht was a lot to pay for just one temple. So it made sense that this ticket would at least be valid for two places. After my visit to Wat Si Chum, I went to Wat Phra Phai Luang, and they did accept this ticket there as well. They looked at it pretty closely to make sure that it was stamped Wat Si Chum, but once they saw that and checked the date, they accepted it. To be honest, I felt kind of bad for the ticket checkers at Wat Phra Phai Luang. There were two of them in that booth, and I don’t think they had much to do all day long. This temple ruin would get very very few visitors in a normal day, and they must go out of their minds sitting in that booth all day long with next to no visitors and no work to do.
I was quite impressed with Wat Si Chum. From a distance, you could already see it was a special place with the square mandapa building. And the front of the mandapa had a tall triangular opening cut into it, and through this opening, you could just make out the features of the Buddha statue inside. There was a calculated artistic design to this that you didn’t see anywhere else. And the seated Buddha statue itself became more and more impressive and dramatic the closer that you got to it. It is the largest Buddha statue in all of Sukhothai at 15 meters high by 11.3 meters wide. And being situated essentially inside a room, inside the mandapa, made it feel even larger and more imposing.
It was a Sunday, and I had to time my visit so as to avoid some of the more boisterous groups. This was the one place in Sukhothai that felt a bit crowded. And this was with very few visitors. I can only imagine what it would be like in normal times. I’m definitely lucky to be visiting it now when there are so few visitors in Sukhothai. And I could feel that there was a certain tension between the people who wanted to bow before the Buddha statue and perform a ritual and the people that were there to simply take their selfies and leave. I tried to be as respectful as possible. I wanted to enter the mandapa with my GoPro running, so I made sure to wait until there was almost no one else inside. And I stood respectfully to the side and kept quiet while I was inside. I noted with amusement that every single Thai and Chinese visitor took a selfie with the Buddha statue. In fact, there were full-on photo shoots underway as family members individually took their turn to pose with the statue, and a dozen pictures would be taken of each to get just the right look. Children were forced to sit on the ledge around the Buddha and pose for pictures again and again. And I couldn’t help but remember all the signs I had seen expressly asking visitors NOT to take selfies with the Buddha images and NOT to sit on the ledges and the base of the statues.
Just as interesting to me were the kilns. At first, I thought there was just one kiln there. And I was left somewhat confused. The kiln I saw was simply a sealed mound of bricks. And that was it. There were no openings of any kind. And I had no idea how it would operate. But, as usual, I was being a dummy. This wasn’t the only kiln at this location. In fact, there were dozens of them. I just hadn’t seen them yet. But I eventually noticed a structure nearby this one kiln. I walked over to this structure and found a real kiln. It was a full kiln with all the sections clearly on display. And then beyond it there were dozens more.
I walked around the kilns with my GoPro running so as to fully capture my ignorance. I tried to guess how the kiln operated, and I couldn’t figure it out. Later on, when I visited the information center, I watched a video and there was a short glimpse of a kiln in operation, and from that short glimpse, I got a much better idea. Like a dummy, I thought the fire would be built up at the top near the chimney or flue. And I was wondering how the kiln was designed so as to transfer enough heat down into the sections where I thought the clay items would be placed. But I had it completely backward. The base, where I thought the clay would be, was actually a massive fire pit. That’s where they built the fire, at the very bottom, and then the smoke and heat would travel up through the kiln and go out the chimney at the top. That made perfect logical sense, but I wasn’t able to figure that out on my own. I had to see it in the video before I understood how it operated.
It was quite funny that I stumbled across this visitor information center at the very end of my visit to Sukhothai. All the information I got there would have been very helpful during my visit. In fact, I thought I would get all that information at the museum, but I didn’t. Had I known about this visitor center, I would have gone there first. But at least I found it eventually.
After the visitor center, I went to Wat Phra Phai Luang. It was right across the road, in fact. I was the only visitor there, and I got the impression that very few people ever came to see it. But I liked it very much. I found out at the visitor center that this temple was special in that it contained all the various architectural styles at once. It illustrated the full history of Sukhothai. Most of the temple was in ruins, but I actually found that to be the most interesting aspect. At the very front, there used to be a large reclining Buddha and a standing Buddha and a mandapa. But almost all of that was gone. I found it fascinating that against the wall where the large standing Buddha would have been, all you saw was the outline of the body, legs, and arms in the underlying brick. All of the outer structure was gone. And it gave the impression of an invisibility cloak. It was like a person was hiding in the bricks by wearing clothing with the design of bricks on them.
Beyond the mandapa there was a large vihara and a series of stupas. And at the very back there were the collapsed remains of two prang and one prang still standing. I found the whole place very atmospheric.
And with that experience, I ended the day and came back to the guest house for a swim in the pool. At that time, I was assuming that the next day, today, I would be riding my scooter to the other historical park to the north. In fact, it was because of that that I decided to stay in Sukhothai for one more night. But, as I already noted, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think I would get very much enjoyment or new experiences out of visiting that park. Instead, I’m going to spend the day here in Sukhothai. A friend of mine reminded me last night that Sukhothai is famous for a certain type of noodles. And I hope to track down a restaurant where they serve these noodles. That might be the highlight of today.