The ruins of Sukhothai

On our way back south, we had a stop over in Phitsanoluk to see the ruins of the old capital of the Thai empire (well, one of them...), Sukhothai.
Phitsanoluk is a typical Thai town, not very fancy, has a couple of temples and not many tourists. Most people who come here, visit the town on their way to Sukhothai, located about 50 km northeast of Phitsanulok. We stayed the night in Phitsanulok and took the local bus to Old Sukhothai and Sukhothai Historical Park the next morning. The bus ride took about an hour, cost us 39 Baht each and there was only one other tourist on the bus, Thomas from Germany. Once we arrived in (New) Sukhothai, we had to find transport to the Historical Park or Old Sukhothai. The tuk-tuk fare cost 200 Baht, quite a lot for 12 km. We decided to wait for the normal bus to take us, but gave up after 30 minutes wait since nobody at the bus station could tell us when the next bus was scheduled to depart. So we ended up taking the tuk-tuk anyway.

Sukhothai Historical Park is certainly impressive with heaps and heaps of temple ruins and Buddha statues everywhere. Amazing that the Sukhothai kings built such an extensive capital, since the kingdom only lasted for 140 years before it became annexed by the kings of Ayutthaya.

We hired bikes to go around the park together with Thomas from the bus. This proved to be a good idea since we could see the temples outside of the old city walls as well. Even though it was quite hot and very humid, the ride was not too hard since the area is mainly flat and bicycle-friendly.