Sukhothai

Before saying so long to Thailand we stopped for an overnight in Sukhothai to visit the Historical Park. With another straining, long and hot bus ride we arrived on the 23rd of April and just had time for an evening stroll in the so called New Sukhothai, where we took a room. The highlight of the evening was a questionnaire we were asked to answer on the street by a local English teacher about tourists opinion of Thailand. As usual Poland was understood as Holland and as Eastern Europeans - probably a statistically underrepresented proportion of tourists - we shocked the interviewer by describing Thailand as modern and developed... The other highlight was two very promising herbal licquores we tasted in a lovely restaurant with the power to enhance respective manly and womenly qualities, but it was so strong and bitter that it made us forget to follow up if the effect worked or not.

The Sukhothai Historical Park is a good half an hour drive from the new city, which we covered with a local bus, more precisely a half motorbike which has been transformed into a pickup in the rear with seats on benches for the passengers. Some less advanced forms have the driver behind the passengers, but something had to be done with the rear parts of the motorbikes I guess :)
Anyway, it serves the purpose and we made it to the park, where we rented two bicycles and rode around the park. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, covering a wast land scattered with over 40 ruins from the 13th to the 15th century, when it was the capital of the Sukhothai kingdom, part of the Khmer empire. We were riding so much that I mastered my long desired dream to be able to let the steering go with both hands - which is a hilarious feeling and I am very happy for myself - but it did not serve us as much to cover roughly half the ruins. Though we saw all sorts of Buddha representations from calling the rain, meditating to laying, my favorite was the one on the photo with a hand bigger than twice my height, golden fingernails and sealed in a tiny temple with an opening to the sky.

We killed time till our night bus finally arrived at 1 o'clock at night and darted to Laos.