Phitsanulok and Sukhothai

From monkey-infested Lopburi I took another train to Phitsanulok. This time I tried the more expensive express train, which stopped only at major towns and was air-conditioned, with padded, reclining seats. It was undeniably more comfortable, but not nearly as fun or romantic.


Phitsanulok was much more metropolitan than Lopburi, with more hotel choices and a busy city center. I took a bare but very clean hotel room and went to bed, planning to get up early and take the bus to the ruins at Sukhothai, the remains of the capital of a 13th century kingdom.


When I woke up to my alarm at 6 a.m. I felt...not good. I have a very strong stomach and made it seven months in Southeast Asia without getting properly sick, but something I ate the night before didn't treat me very well. I sank back into bed and slept until noon, and then went out and explored the town a bit, resolving to go to Sukhothai the next day.


There isn't a whole lot to see in Phitsanulok. It was founded over 600 years ago, making it one of the oldest cities in Thailand, but unfortunately most of the old section was destroyed by a massive fire in 1955.  The Nan River runs through it, which is sort of nice:

I wandered up the river to Wat Phra Sri Rattana Mahatat Woramahawihan (more conveniently referred to as Wat Yai, "Big Wat", by the locals) to see what is considered by some to be the most beautiful portrait of Buddha in Thailand. The sort of halo around the Buddha's head cascading into naga (water serpents) at his elbows is apparently unique to this statue.

It was very beautiful, but the hall was very crowded, and I'm somewhat maxed out on gilded Buddhas.


The next morning I got on a bus to the ruins at Sukhothai. Unfortunately, the bus forgot to let me off at the entrance to the park, so they let me off a mile or so down the road with their apologies. I started hiking, but soon came upon a 17-year-old sitting on a motorbike and asked him to give me a lift, which he very kindly did.  I rented a bicycle and paid the entrance fee and headed into the Historical Park, an UNESCO world heritage site.


And boy, does it deserve to be one.


Photos cannot possibly do this place justice. Words are even less effective. Suffice it to say that it was really, really beautiful, and that the scope, detail, and sheer number of the monuments speak volumes about the passion and dedication of the people who built them.

Whenever I go to a historical site, I try to imagine what the place looked like in its heyday (like everyone, I suppose), so I loved that the park had put up signs showing the temples and monuments as they once were:  

With the mountains looming in the background and the sky and stone reflected in the carefully-placed ponds and moats around the monuments, the overall effect is stunning. 

After cycling around the arresting core area, I headed one kilometer away to the northern area.  Here's a map that is not even remotely to scale and probably won't be very readable once I blow it up here. 

Do your own research.

On the way was this little stupa, which I liked for its patient load-bearing elephants. 

Don't mind us, we'll just stand here for centuries.

And then I got a bit lost, which will be no surprise to anyone who knows me well. I biked probably a kilometer farther than I needed to (as an American I have no working concept of how far a kilometer is) and found this ruin off the beaten path. 

It was totally unremarkable except that it's clearly from the same era as the main monuments but isn't on any of the maps. It's just been left to decay in the countryside. 


Anyway, I backtracked to the northern site, which is in much worse shape than the core area.

But it's still beautiful. 

The detail on this tower was gorgeous. 

Then I headed a little way away to Wat Si Chum, which used to look like this: 

But now looks like this: 

Wat Si Chum is famous for its massive seated Buddha. 

This Buddha is just made of stone and stucco, but for some reason I found it immeasurably more effecting than the ornate golden one in Phitsanulok's Wat Yai. Maybe it's the open doors, or the patient, welcoming expression carved onto the Buddha's face, or how relaxed his hand is, lying in his lap. There's no longer a roof, so he's open to the elements.

It doesn't seem to bother him. 

I give them the same, I receive them the same.

The designers and carvers spent a lot of time on his often photographed hands and fingers, which are graceful and tapered and gilded by thousands of visitors, who have plastered them with thin, fragile gold leaf. 

I stayed there much longer than I meant to, and when I made it back to the core area it had started to rain. I was waiting that out under the trees on an island in the middle of a pond:

when I suddenly felt very drained, and decided that I had probably seen the best of Sukhothai. So I caught a bus back to Phitsanulok. 


next: the train to Chiang Mai, a monk who may be a hitman, and Songkran, the biggest water fight of all time.