Last night I did my final load of laundry of this adventure, and I managed to get it all finished right before they closed for the evening at midnight. This isn’t that exciting (well, it is for me, since I don’t have to do any more laundry), except that when I went back to reclaim my undies, I discovered a strange woman examining all my clothes. I think she was just the laundry lady wondering who on earth would be washing clothes at this time of night, but it was still a little interesting nonetheless. No harm though, I still have all my underwear (I counted). Anyway, back to the saga.
The next morning we got up early (again), and headed off to the Sukhothai Historical Park, which is the fancy name they give to the little gatehouse along the road that leads to all the cool ruins so they have an excuse to charge a foreigner entry fee. However, since last night was a Buddhist holiday, the entry fee was waved for today. Looks like my laps around the temple paid off, score a point for karma!
Like I said before, compared to the ruins at Ayutthaya, the remains of Sukhothai’s old city are in great shape. As Aeng described it, they’ve been “ruined” only by time. Since they’re so intact, and were so lavish to begin with, it’s easy to see why they’re still so impressive 800 years later. The first temple we stopped at housed a gargantuan plaster Buddha, one of the largest we’ve seen yet, which vaguely reminded me of the stature of the four depictions of the seated Ramesses II at Abu Simbel. Apparently, there used to be a passage with stairs leading up to a little window next to the Buddha’s ear where one could go up to talk with him, but after someone climbed out the window onto the statue itself, an extremely sacrilegious maneuver, the pathway was permanently closed. Even though we couldn’t get up that close, the statue was still impressive as it serenely towered over us.
Next we stopped at the main temple complex at Sukhothai, again, I don’t remember the name and even if I did I probably couldn’t pronounce it. This place was more like Karnak in Luxor than the temple at Abu Simbel, and had the same sort of never-ending feel to it. Got some great pictures, though I did get yelled at by Aeng for wandering off to take them. I guess it just proves the validity of genetics, especially the patrilineal ones.
After some serious wandering and photography, we piled back in the van to drive another 3 hours or so to Lampang, where we stopped to see, that’s right, another temple. This was built in the Lanna style of Northern Thailand, which after a solid 6 hours of Extended Edition Lord of the Rings, looked a little like Rohan.
My favorite aspect of this temple was not the gold-leaf chedi (spire-like reliquary at the center of every Therevada Buddhist temple) or the cool statues or anything like that. It was in a tiny building off to the side with apparently nothing extraordinary about it. Aeng tried to explain something about how the light from the chedi came through the hole and blah blah blah and women weren’t allowed to go inside. So, while the rest of the group headed off to see something else, Joey and I peeled off our shoes and up we went. The room was very tiny, with a traditional Buddha footprint in the middle and a white bedsheet hanging from the ceiling. We had no idea what we were supposed to see, and we didn’t want to touch and inadvertently desecrate anything. As we were about to give up trying to figure it out and leave, two well-dressed Thai men came up to join us. After walking in, they shut the door (this idea had never occurred to us). Through the dark shone a perfect image of the chedi projected onto the sheet. Viva la camera obscura! Goes to prove that the technology discussed on Beakman’s World is universally important.
As Joey and I descended the stairs discussing how cool all this was, we ran into a pleasant Thai girl who asked if she could interview us for her English project. We obligingly discussed the standard round of topics (Where are you from? Do you like Thailand?), until Aeng called me, again somewhat upset that we (I) was again delaying the party’s progress. She didn’t seem too impressed that we were helping with a local English project; I think she was worried the girl was going to scam us somehow. She rushed back over and proceeded to interrogate the girl about what school she went to and what her project was. Once she was convinced we weren’t going to get robbed/mugged/kidnapped/blunt force traumaed, she let us finish our thrilling conversation before boarding the van, queuing up the DVD player, and hitting the last of the road to Chiang Mai.
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