Day 9 & 10 - Tue/Wed Nov 11/12 - Sukhothai

The next stop on our trip up north is Sukhothai (SOOK-uh-TIE), a small little place about 5 hours up the road from Ayutthaya.

Just before the bus pulls into town, we notice in our guidebook that there's a 4 day festival usually held in Sukhothai in the first few weeks of November, depending on when the full moon appears. The fully booked guesthouses in town confirm that, yes, it's true, and we've arrived in time for the final two days of the festival without a prior reservation. We eventually find a place to stay at the rundown but safe and clean Traveller's House (now owned by the Green House guesthouse just up the road but hasn't yet been renamed) which has rooms for about 8.50 CAN$ a night with a private bathroom. Not super swanky, but it grows on us by the next night.

The first night is uneventful - dinner, a visit to a small local night market (mostly t-shirts, plastic sandals, food and knicknacks for sale) and then we go to sleep.

The second day we get up late and then catch a bus to the Sukhothai Historical site, about 7km outside of New Sukhothai (as the city center is known) where we find the final day of the festival is gearing up. The bus that takes us there is a truck with a roofed but open air sitting area in the back, with two benches funning along the sides and one down the middle. On the way there, they cram in 29 people, which includes the 4 standing passengers off the back (not us).

At the Historical Park, we walk around the buildings and the moats:

...the huge buddhas...



...and there are lots of people are making offerings to the Buddhas, leis of flowers and gifts of food, and so on:

A huge parade starts at around 2:30 and goes on for several hours and includes performances from dancing troupes:

...floats of beautiful women...

...and floats imitating ancient royalty:



We rent bikes to escape the crowds for a few hours before nightfall (which is always at 6:00 pm here). By the time we drop off the bikes and finish our dinner, it's dark and people are releasing floating candles into the pool near the East entrance. We buy a few and send them off - you can the pool full of candles behind me in this picture:

There is a fireworks show scheduled for that evening around 10:00 pm, but we decide to head off a bit early to beat the crowds home. (Canada Day fireworks in Ottawa are so good that they've ruined me for fireworks displays forever...)

Back in Sukhothai, we end the night with the most amazing dessert (at this point we haven't had dessert in about a week and a half): pan fried pancakes and carnation condensed milk rolled up in a tube and wrapped in paper. We buy one each, and then manage to hold off only a short while before buying two more before the kiosk lady closes up for hte night. After the second one, Pierre realizes what they taste like: Beavertails (a big Ottawa winter treat) but with carnation milk instead of cinnamon and sugar, and these ones cost only 8 cent CAn each (way cheaper than Beavertails, except for the plane ticket here...)