Ancient Ruins and Noodle Soup

The following day in Sukhothai was one of the best days of the trip. It was also one of the hottest. After a breakfast of pineapple pancakes and fruit salad, I walked to the post office to mail Sam’s birthday present to Vermont and a post-surgery feel-good letter to Scott. Even though it was still early—before eleven—the sun was beating down on me and I could not stop sweating. On the way to the post office, I passed a parade of sorts, with Chinese dragons, people in costume, a marching band, and a small float that looked very tacky compared to the floats at the Flower Festival in Chiang Mai.

After I walked the hot sidewalk back to the hostel, Malone and I gathered our things and walked down the block to catch a bus to the Sukhothai Historical Park. The bus was more like a giant pick-up truck, with two bleacher-like wooden benches lining the two sides and one running down the middle. The vehicle was open, to let the hot air blow through.

At the park, we rented bicycles for 30 baht each (about one US dollar). Somehow, but unintentionally, we entered the park without paying and began to bike around. We first reached the largest ruin: Wat Mahathat. We took our first pictures of the ancient stupas of crumbling brick and the giant Buddha statues that sat so nobly and serenely in front of them. We could see Wat Sa Si and Wat Tra Phang Ngoen across the water, in the distance. The latter looked particularly beautiful, with a pure white Buddha sitting regally in front of a muted mountainscape.

We left the main part of the park on our bikes to go to Wat Si Chum. We rode past trees with bright orange blossoms that fell to the ground and spread there like a monk’s robes; brilliant green rice paddies; a mote-like creek that encircled part of the park; barking dogs; dried grasses in the heat; views of mountains. We paid 110 baht to go into this part of the park and stopped at an elaborately carved ebony stupa near ruins that must have been consumed by fire at one point: Wat Phra Phai Luang. At the entrance to Wat Si Chum, Thai school children were excited to practice their English on us, each one of them yelling “Hello!” with big smiles on their faces, then running away to giggle with each other. I bought a bottle of ice cold water before heading inside Wat Si Chum, where the biggest Buddha we’d seen sat with one gold hand cupping its right knee, staring fixedly out into space. It was nearly impossible to capture the whole statue in my camera lens.

After paying a second entrance fee of 110 baht at the third part of the park, we rode our bikes to Wat Saphan Hin, which sat high on a hill overlooking fields and the other ruins of the park. We climbed a path made of stone to the top, where one Buddha stood with its hand raised to the light and a smaller Buddha sat before it, both gazing out at the view. We lit incense and gazed outward with the Buddhas.

After climbing back down, we continued riding our bikes around the park, finding ourselves in an odd situation where we bought a Coke out of an old woman’s bedroom, and then riding past more ruins, the wats all reduced to crumbled brick walls and stupas. When we reached the road that surrounds the main part of the park, we stopped for the best lunch that we had the entire trip, and it wasn’t just because we were so hot, hungry, and tired from biking. Malone ordered pad Thai; I had an ice cold mango shake and a vegetable and noodle soup.  I still crave the combination of crushed peanuts, cilantro, and scallions when I think about that bowl of soup. We ate in the shade while a puppy nibbled at our toes.

We rode our bikes back to the main part of the park, this time paying the 110 baht entrance fee, and headed along a path shaded by trees in the late afternoon light. We visited Wat Si Sawai, where small Buddhas were tucked into the roots of a tree and a flock of pigeons swooped over the tallest stupa and perched there. We relaxed in the shade along an old brick wall, next to the creek where a small turtle came up to breathe and a heron perched in a tree that shone with golden green afternoon light.

 

 

All in all, it was a perfect day. We returned our bikes and took the bus back to our hostel, where we showered and relaxed for the night and enjoyed a small dinner at a coffee shop a few buildings down. The beauty of the day in Sukhothai would carry us through the next three somewhat-miserable days.