Thai Village Hotel Sukhothai

The tour started with a river boat tour around bangkok very different to how we travel at home there were even houses build in the rivers and shops selling us fruit etc,,.. then we got on to sukhothai which use to be the old capital of Thailand. This is a very religious area with loads of temples and statues to ...

... in a lovely guesthouse! It's Simon's birthday today so we're all going out to a restaurant to celebrate it.<br><br>Weather's still hot with an occasional rain storm which comes as a nice refreshment! <br><br>From Summer - Congratulations to Sarah's mum! :D Hope that the weather isn't too bad at home! I'm slowly getting a tan which is nice as usually burn and then go back to white! hehe Just been told there at people outside going thaichi ...

... earn much less than us westerners so quit yr *****in!! !The french girl says "well I'll just pay for the main park and take pictures of the other ruins from outside." She giggles. I smirk back.<br><br>I myself only wanted to see the main area which held many ruins on it's own. I biked there and walked around. It was so lovely. Some of the Buddahs were massive and all were really impressive. Most people just clicked a photo and walked away. The Thai's ...

... lit up. He takes around to the different wats and patiently waits as we take pictures and look around. Its pitch black except for the lights on the wats. A dog shows up out of nowhere and escorts us around the temple grounds. It was very peaceful and quiet. We revisited several of the temples and took pictures. At our last temple Jessie decided to run down the road to a bridge to take a picture, this didn't sit well with our driver who told me ...

... we would return back to our guest house for papaya shakes and Pad Thai. The mood at this guest house was particularly enjoyable. The General Manager's wife had just given birth to a new son (their first) and the family which owns the guest house was canoodling over the baby. There were also two Dachshund puppies that would get into all sorts of mischief with the other guests. Finally we ...

... up our water bottles and headed to Sukhothia's Historical Park for our first of two days of exploration. Sukhothai did not dissapoint. Unlike the ruins of Ayuthaya which are randomly scattered admidst a bustling metropolis, the ruins of Sukhothai are asthetically located approximatley 15km away from the city center among a serene park filled with flowers, trees, and ponds. Moreover, while the Buddhas of Ayuthaya faired poorly ...

... little temple to meditate. Twas a joyous experience. We took a songtaew back into the new city then went for dinner and explored around, checking out the night market (not much of a market in my opinion), and a few temples. Some locals were playing a game similar to bocce ball and invited me to play but by this time i was almost falling asleep so we went back to the room. The next morning we explored around the town a bit more then caught a bus back to Bangkok. 8 hours later and we were home.

... this trip I decided to let go of worries, open my heart and hang around. <br><br>During the next two hours he told me about Buddhism as he knows it. It resembled nothing of the Buddhism that I've studied through Jack Kornfield's books or at my Blooming Lilac Sangha in Rochester or even Dharma Punx in Los Angeles. His Buddhism sounded like a mix of Christianity and Medieval Judaism, with heaven and hell, angels, good luck charms and lots of superstitious ...

So my wife and I hop on the bus and head for Sukhothai, where my wife has never been, even though she's Thai, and neither have I for ages. Since we&#8217;re in no particular hurry to get to Penang, we might as well see some scenery, particularly Mae Sot, where I stayed before I met my wife and liked a lot at the time, simply because it was so different, more like Burma than Thailand. I&#8217;ve got an ulterior motive for the land travel, too ...

... br><br><br><br> The ruins were amazing. Nearly all of them contained towering Buddha statues and, interestingly, were surrounded by moats. It is hypothesized that the moats represent an element of their ancient cosmology, a world view in which their universe (or perhaps the afterlife) was perceived to be surrounded by water. With a site this incredible, you would expect to find it crawling with visitors, but it was surprisingly empty. To my delight, we saw only a ...