Hello, friends!
This week was quite exciting! After only two days of classes (not much else because we had to pack and do laundry), we headed down south to visit Sukothai and Ayutthaya. There have been three dynasties in the Siamese/Thai history; and for each dynasty there is a capitol. For the first dynasty, before the Lanna Kingdom of the north (where I am) was conjoined, the capitol was Sukothai. After Sukothai came Ayutthaya, and then after Ayutthaya, if my history is correct, the Burmese invaded and things were topsy turvy for a while, until the Chakri Dynasty, which still exists today, came into power under Thaksin "the Great" and the chose Bangkok in the south for their headquarters. **Note: the northern Lanna Kingdom was aquired by the Siamese in the early 1900s when King Rama V, King Chulalongkorn, married the princess of Lanna. The capitol of the Lanna Kingdom was Chiang Mai, where I currently dwell.
Tuesday, 28/9/53
After our midterm test on Tuesday, Maggie, Pete, and I went to the travel agent and train station to look into transportation to and from Koh Tao. After getting back, I had a little time to shower and change before heading out to dinner with Champ and a group for his birthday dinner. We went to this really quaint litte restaurant up on one of the mountains, so we had a GREAT view of the city! Dinner for me was German sausages (mmm! Although their sauerkraut was nothing to boast of...) and hot chocolate, much needed! The sausages weren't too German, and the mashed potatoes were cold, but the thought counted, and a bowl of sticky rice filled m
Wednesday, 29/9/53
Wednesday we were off at 8:30am, for our 4-ish hour drive down to Sukothai. We had a big coach bus, and luckily I had my two seats to myself...for most of it. Pete moved up while we were watching Robin Hood, thus ruining my nap, but I survived, because Robin Hood is a fantastic movie that isn't even available in the U.S. yet (ha!)! We watched that and a few episodes of Dexter (season 1) before we made it, and by that time, we were all completely HOOKED on Dexter! Our guesthouses were really nice! They were small little cabins, two people in each, with a 4-poster tester bed (including pulled back fabric that could be let down to envelop the bed!), A/C, a desk, wardrobe, towel rack, and bathroom. I took a cool shower and then napped before we went on our first outing, to the Sukothai Historical Museum. It was air conditioned in there as well, which was great because Sukothai is in the south and it was HOT HOT HOT and super humid! After we looked around and learned some more, we rented bikes and rode to the Sukothai Historical Park to look around. It was so much fun, I hadn't ridden a bike in so long, so to be able to feel the wind whipping through my hair and cooling me down as we rode along the not-too-busy streets was invigorating, to say the least! After we took some pictures and biked around, we biked through the town, stopping at 7-11 for some ice cream (which I didn't drip on myself!) to eat on our way back. When we all had parked our bikes at the guesthouse it looked quite comical, like a biker gang had taken over! It's the low season for tourism, so we were fortunate that everywhere we went there were few people to disturb and the vendors were more willing to negotiate, especially since we were students. You can probably guess what came next - a flying leap into the pool! I need not explain the insanity that was twenty 20-somethings on vacation, so I'll skip that part and go to the nap after, before a group dinner. The dinner was delicious, they piled plate upon plate of food upon us, until we could eat no more! And then, of course, they brought us fruit for dessert! After dinner we had some drinks around the pool, but it was hot, there were many bugs, and I had a princess bed waiting for me, so after putting down the enclosing fabric, I turned in early.
Thursday, 30/9/53
Today, we had a guided tour around the Sukothai Historical Park, the selfsame one that we had visited the day before. This time we saw a whole nother part of the park, and learned much about Sukothai, and their art. For instance, the Sukothai style of Buddha statue have hands different than that of Ayutthaya. The Sukothai Buddha hands have curved fingers, and they are uneven, like natural hands. The Buddha also has a little swirly part on his abdomen, although at the moment I cannot recall what it symbolizes. It very well might represent his Buddhahood. One of the monuments we went to see was called the standing Buddha. It is seated, of course, high on a steep hill with a stone path. We climbed. And climbed. And climbed...and then we were there! Panting, sweaty, and camera-laden we made it to the top, and were quite wowed by magnificence before us! We took a lot of pictures, prayed, and lit incense for our ancestors before starting the climb down. It was hard to say which was harder- this with the humidity, or the higher up pyramid in Egypt, when it was just as hot (without humidity), but we also had to climb down, then up, then up more...and then come the opposite back out. Either way, I got my workout! After this we saw one more monument, where a king had once snuck up a back passage and pretended to be the voice of the Buddha in order to keep his troops heartened enought to fight off the invading Burmese. After our tours, we left for Ayutthaya. We arrived at our next "backpacker's" guesthouse (this was more of an actual hotel) around 7, and set out for dinner in small groups. I showered before going out, because that bus ride (full of more Dexter!) hadn't made me smell nice after all the morning's sweat! :( We found a little place with western and Thai food, but we ended up waiting over an hour for our food, which wasn't even that great! We were really unhappy, and after I just went back to my nice cool room, out of the heat, and watched a movie with my roommates before bed.
Friday, 1/10/53
Saturday, 2/10/53
Sunday, 3/10/53
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