Sleepless in Sukhothai

Sukhothai: Concrete jungle where dreams are made up

For fear of feeling the Post-Too-Much-Fun-Letdown after our Chiang Rai trip (and because we had another 3-day vacation), Emily, Kelsey, Christian and I planned another adventure last weekend. Our destination: Sukhothai, the ancient kingdom capital of Thailand, and a UNESCO World Heritage park filled with centuries old ruins. We set out early Saturday morning, and a hop, skip, and a rather empty southbound bus ride later, Emily and I arrived in Sukhothai, and were met by Kelsey and Christian. The DJ crew was reunited, and it felt so good.

Our first task was accommodations - always, it seems, a hit-or-miss endeavor in Asia. I picked a place out of our guide book, primarily because it was cheap and they offered a free songthaew ride to and fro the bus station: the Sabaidee Guesthouse, a strange but quaint bungalow style hotel situated way off the main highway. It was so far off the main road in fact, that they probably offer the free songthaew ride because otherwise no travelers would ever find them. We checked in, signed a form for our keys, gave our passport number and paid for the night.

After all this, the purse-wearing man at the front desk said, "I would like to tell you, tonight and tomorrow early morning there will be loud music playing outside." He explained that it was a Buddhist funeral celebration - 100 days after a person dies, his family and friends throw a huge celebration of final prayers in his honor, and send off his ashes into the sky. "This okay?" he asked, smiling. Uhhh well seeing as how we're settled in, paid, and the songthaew just left.... Sure man, it's fine. We would later realize, as we often later realize, just how not fine it actually was.

Seeking: pineapple burger and good times

We put our stuff down and set off for a lunch and to see some ruins. While walking around "town" searching for a Sukhothai pineapple-hamburger Kelsey had heard rave reviews about, we discovered what a bizarre city modern-day Sukhothai is. It's divided into the "Old City," with the ancient historical park, and the "New City," pretty empty of people but built up with a highway running through it, tacky tourist shops, backpacker hotels, backwards-facing tuk-tuks, loads of 7-11s, and restaurants that boast on their signs "We Are In The Guide Books." We stopped in a few places asking about the infamous pineapple-hamburger, and after first being directed towards a 7-11 ("Hamburger! Hamburger there!"), we gave up and ended up at a joint called Poo Restaurant. (Toilet humor inevitably ensued the rest of the trip). At Poo, we encountered 39 baht beers and an older Belgian guy who offered to rent us overpriced motorbikes. We went for it, not seeing many other rental shops around and deciding motorbikes were the best way to explore this strange city.

After lunch, Emily and I climbed behind Christian and Kelsey on the two motorbikes (Em and I still have yet to try driving one in Asia), and the four of us rode out to the Old City and arrived at the park ruins just before sunset. The sights were incredible. From the 1200s - 1400s, Sukhothai was the kingdom that ruled most of modern day Thailand; as the ancient kingdom's capital, Sukhothai Old City's structures were preserved and still stand - some more in ruin than others. There were crumbling brick temples, vine-covered stone walls, bell-shaped chedis, enormous 30-foot tall stone Buddhas, and a huge algae-covered moat lining the park perimeter. On motorbike, whizzing past ancient ruins, climbing over 800-year-old rock... It felt a little like Lara Croft Tomb Rider. (But I guess I'll hold off on that comparison til I get to Angkor Wat).

When it got dark, we headed back to the New City in a fruitless search for nightlife. Our best option turned out to be store bought whiskey from 7-11 and green apple Slurpees (don't knock it til' you've tried it). We ended up back at the same 7-11 for refills of both substances, about three times in three hours. For dinner, we ate amazing Masaman curry (which is delicious, but since it's a southern curry, it's hard to find in Nan), and after making a brief appearance at the Chopper Bar, which featured weird Thai country music and an American flag pinned down by a buffalo skull on the wall, we decided we'd rather just enjoy each other's company and hang out back at Sabaidee. Around 1am, after sitting downstairs talking for hours, we hit the sack (so to speak): 3 various-sized mattress pads lined up on the floor of a bare wooden room, and a fan to keep the bugs away.

What the fans could NOT keep away was the 5 am funeral music. At 4:49am sharp, the shrill sound of keyboard and a man whining into a microphone poured in through the darkened windows. Disoriented, I couldn't tell whether the obnoxious loud sounds were coming from outside, downstairs, or right next to me: it was as if someone found a CD of the worst keyboard-organ music in the world, popped it into a stereo, set it right next to my pillow, turned up the volume and hit play. We all lay there groaning for 10 minutes, but the music was incessant. One song stopped, and the next one got louder. We closed the windows, but they were so old and disjointed that it didn't do much.

Fed up, Kelsey got up to look for a quiet space somewhere in the near vicinity. She came back with a solution: the large bathroom down the hall, which hypothetically was shared by everyone staying on the second floor of the Sabaidee Guesthouse. A minute later, we could hear Kelsey dragging one of the twin mattresses down the hall and cramming it into the bathroom, where it just barely fit on the concrete floor. She sold me on the idea too, and once we maneuvered the mattress so that we could shut the door, I had to admit it was pretty quiet in there. We fit a fan in there as well, and along with the antique non-functional television set that was planted beside the bathtub, it felt just like your average one room house; we curled up and soon fell back asleep. If any other guests tried to use the bathroom that morning, we didn't notice, (and frankly, at that point, didn't care).

Cruisin' together

When the music had finally stopped around 10am, we got up to change. On my way back out, I ran into the guesthouse cleaner and her daughter, who had already dragged the mattress out of the bathroom. Embarrassed, I apologized, explaining that the music was too noisy for me. "Mai bpen rai (no worries)! Sorry!" she said back, as if guests bringing mattresses into the bathroom to sleep happened all the time. Who knows: maybe morning funeral parties are more common at Sabaidee than the front desk man had let on.

Sunday morning, we went back to the Old City to finish seeing the ruins. Our success story of the day was finding Kelsey's pineapple-hamburger restaurant, which also turned out to have the largest and most delicious food menu I've ever come across in Asia. Literally, it was Bible-sized. After breakfast indulgences, we headed to the park, where we mostly motorbiked aimlessly through the outskirts of the main temple walls. While taking a break for water, two Australian guys on bicycles stopped and asked us what sounded like, "Hey, you look like you know your way around. Do you know what's happening?" Emily legitimately thought they were asking us for drugs and felt awkward. Kelsey almost opened her mouth to say, "Well, Poo Restaurant had decent food, and the Chopper Bar was cool I guess...". I just stared blankly, confused.

"Hey! What's happenin?!"

We eventually sorted out that they were asking if we knew Wat Saphan Hin - among the most famous temples in Sukhothai. (Yeahhh, I guess I tend to learn most of my important facts after visiting a historical place). We were totally unhelpful to the Australians as far as directions go, but a little while later, we made it ourselves to the amazing Wat SH, which was located 300 meters up a mountainside. We parked ourselves on the stone wall in front of the giant Buddha statue, and sat staring out over incredible views of the park, the ruins, and the lush green rice paddies just beyond, lamenting that our marathon 3-day-weekends together were to come to an end this week.

But for the moment, we just took it all in. It was, after all, Wat Saphan Hin.