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Here are the photos from the last day of the trip. We visited the National Museum in the morning and Chinatown in the afternoon, before heading to the airport for our flight back home.
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Photo time!!! But not so many this time since I’m really quite tired and most of the photos that I took today were of wats and ruins that look quite the same. So I’ll just show you some of the more interesting ones.

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As Chun Wee has said, a fairly uneventful day it was.

Today’s pictures:

We had dinner at a roadside restaurant called Roti Mataba. It offers assorted roti prata and the like. We each had roti prata with a different type of curry, and murtabak. The curry wasn’t spicy at all and was instead rather sweet. The roti wasn’t crispy. It was quite soft, but waws thankfully warm. Still, it was all palatable and fairly tasty. 35/5 on the whole.

 Just some random old fort that we passed by and that I decided to snap.

Guess who that is. Anyway, the payment mechanism is quite interesting. You put coins into the device adjacent to the computer and you get time to spend online.

 As Chun Wee has said, a fairly uneventful day.

Its day 2 of our adventure and its been quite eventful so far. As the administrator of the blog, IT savviest person of the group and the only member of the group who possesses the means to upload the photos we took onto this blog, the heavy responsibility of presenting our adventures in a multimedia format thus falls upon my shoulders. i believe Chun Wee and Elgin will tell our story through prose so I’ll leave it to them to describe our story in detail. I’ll present it through photos.

 DAY 1 - GETTING THERE

Our flight was at 1100h. Nothing much to report here. Zihao came to send us off. Other than that, a really uneventful start to our holiday/trip/history lesson/shopping spree. We touched down at about 1330h (Singapore Time). Note: From now onwards, all times will be GMT +7 (Bangkok time).

We touched down at the new airport near Bangkok, the Suvar—–(can’tremember its name). It bloody far from the main part of Bangkok city. If memory serves me, its supposed to be part of the former Thai PM, Thaksin’s, centrepiece for his “Aeropolis”. The idea was to create a thriving city built around and to support a MEGA airport. We did see evidence of contruction while cabbing away from the airport but nothing spectacular. Mostly vast expanses of undeveloped land. I wonder whats gonna happen to the place now that Thaksin’s been deposed.

 To cut a long story short, we took a cab to Mo Chit Bus Terminal. With the help of helpful people, we got tickets for an 8 hour long bus ride to the northern province of Sukhothai - also the first capital of Thailand. We set off at 1600h (Thai time now) and arrived at 2300h. The shuttle bus that took me to camp was probably more comfortable than the bus. We had seats near the toilet so it reeked for a while.

You can’t really see it in this photo, but this was a self-taken shot of the three of us riding in the back of a pickup. You’re probably wondering: Why are those three clowns in the back of a pickup and smiling so happily in the wee hours of the night, when we should have been totally tired, confused and lost after an interminable 7 hour long bus ride that left us somewhere in the middle of a foreign town, far off from the bus terminal where we expected to have alighted at.

This is because, we met 2 extremely kind and helpful and benefactors. May they lead long lives and be blessed forever. If I in charge of issuing karma points, I would most certainly without a doubt issue them with enough points to ensure they live well for the next ten thousand years. Basically, they saw us poor lost souls, offered us a lift to the guest house at which we planned to stay and when we found out that it was full, fetched us around to various other guesthouses, all at 11pm+, a time when all deserve to be at home resting and enjoying the company of their family. I think Elgin and Chun Wee will say a bit more about them so I’ll just leave it to them to spread the word of their kind deeds.

DAY 2 - EXPLORING THE OLD CITY

We woke at 0800h. While we were preparing our stuff for the day and walking in and out of our little room, Elgin unknowingly let a cat into the room. It had sneaked into the main corridor when I opened the door to our little house and lurked around waiting for an opportunity to get into the room and enjoy the comforts of our bed. Anyway, Elgin picked it up with the blanket and we chased it out. We have not seen it since.

This is us posing for a group photo in front of one of the ruins of the ancient Thai capital of Sukhothai. Exploring the ruins was our first activity of the day. This involved MUCH walking. Some of the ruins were rather plain and uninteresting, while other more awe-inspiring figures and towering edifices commanded and demanded our attention, which we lavished upon them with our photographs. We walked several kilometres under a scorching sun to see most of the historical sites. Thanks to Elgin’s advice to be attired appropriately when viewing religious sites, we were all wearing trousers. Never again. Other than being dressed in something comfortable and appropriate for the prevailing weather, I would also advise would-be explorers of the Sukhothai old city to know how to ride a bicycle so that you can rent one and bike around. (only 20 baht for the day and you get to avoid our hours of untold suffering trekking in the sun) Fortunately, the entire area wasn’t too large. I estimate that we covered an area of about 4 square kilometres in all. But the weather, landscape and general sense of desolation reminded me Tekong.

Herds of cattle roam the area, leaving trails of excreta behind to mark their path.

The name of the wat(temple) where I took this photo eludes me. Indeed, the names of all the wats that we visited elude me. Anyway, this was really impressive. This particular figure was 15m tall and enclosed in an imposing looking shrine structure. Apparently, this shrine was where Sukhothai incription No. 1 was found. This stone tablet contained some of the earliest recorded histories of the Sukhothai civilisation and Thai culture.

More ruins… Impressive, you’d agree.

This is a close-up of a ruin. Most of the ruins are made of this particular material. Its known as “stucco” and is apparently made from limestone. Secondary school geography teaches us that deterioration of rock structures in situ is known as weathering. (Erosion is when the deterioration involves movement of the rock eg. in avalanches). The uneven distribution of the weathering is evidence that the material is actually a mixture of various types of sediments and minerals. They weather at different rates because of their different hardness/density/resistance, hence the uneven weathering. Heng Tang Tang be proud of me! I have not forgotten your teachings!

More pictures…

And more…

These were just a selection of the photos that we took. Very, very grand and magnificent. A very productive and enriching morning indeed. After lunch, we went to the nearby musuem to learn more about the history of Sukhothai and to look at more historical relics and artefacts.

This is Chun Wee and myself riding on a rickety open air bus. Elgin took the photo. A good number of buses ply the route between the bus terminal near the Sukhothai new town and the old city. I estimate that one leaves/comes by every 10 minutes. The fee per passenger is 20 baht, regardless of where one drops off. These buses do not only serve tourists wishing to travel from the bus terminal to the old city but also pick locals up. Anywhere along the route, anyone can flag down the bus, hop on and signal to the driver when they wish to be dropped off, paying 20 baht to the driver upon alighting. Bus stops do not exist. Its a remarkably efficient system.

We got off at the bus terminal, which was amazingly near our guesthouse (1 min walk) and went back to the room for a well-deserved rest before venturing out in the evening for dinner. This is our room(air-conditioned). As you can see, there are 2 beds side by side. The three of us sleep across the beds.

Ah, I forgot to format this photograph. This is our “house”. inside it are 2 rooms and 1 toilet. The three of us share 1 room, the other is unoccupied. So we effectively have the whole structure to ourselves for 2 days (400 baht per day). A very good deal. As you can see, when the curtains are drawn back, there is totally no privacy. Anyone can look in. And the guesthouse happens to be in the middle of a village. Opposite us are locals’ homes. Its a very open concept. The place is laid back and quite idyllic. Nice stuff.

 Thats all for my post. I understand that its a bit choppy and broken up. I hope Elgin and Chun Wee have filled in the blanks. Its been pretty fun so far, and Thailand has been kind to us. May it stay this way.