Bibi and Poppy came for their second visit over the December break this year. We decided that, for our side excursion, we would drive up to Sukhothai and Chiang Mai in Thailand's north. Our first stop, after about 5 hours of driving, was Sukhothai (which we will feature here...Chiang Mai will be part 2). Despite the long trip ahead, everyone was in good spirits in our rented Toyota Wish.
After a morning of driving, we arrived at Sukhothai's main temple area. Sukhothai is known as Thailand's first great kingdom, from the 13th to the 15th centuries. It's ruins consist of its ancient cities and temples, strewn across an extensive area in Thailand's north.
After a long stint in the car, the kids used the ruins to get out their energy by exploring and climbing around their ancient surroundings.
After our afternoon of tomb raiding, we retired to our lovely hotel for sukhothai noodles, massages, and sleep.
One of the nice things about Sukhothai is that, despite it beauty, size and historical significance, it's relatively unvisited. Angkor Wat is the region's big attraction in terms of ruins and Ayutthaya gets more visitors to Thailand due to its proximity to Bangkok. This allowed us great access to the sites. However, if we felt alone in Sukhothai, we were even more remote in Srisatchanalai, which is another set of ruins from the ancient kingdom about 30 minutes away. On the day we visited, we maybe saw 6 other people there.
To get from ruin-to-ruin, we rented bikes.
The entire time we were there, there was a loud, eerie buzzing sound in the background. At first, we all thought it was a river surging in the distance. However, when we came to our last stop, which was a long stone staircase which led to a gold-robed Buddha statue on top, we found out what the sound was. The stairs were covered in bird poo and flying overhead were hundreds of heron-like birds. The trees surrounding the stairs were also filled with their nests. The sound we had heard was their collective call. It definitely added a surreal element to our visit.
(nests!)
