Tourists Roaming World Heritage Site

Sukhothai Historical Park is situated only three hours from where I am here in Mae Sot. I thought it would be to bad if I not got my butt over there to have a look before I went home. It is a World Heritage Site, which is like the three-star Michelin ranking of cultural heritage sites. Carmen, who have volunteered for another organization, was also planning to take the trip so we decided to go Monday and Tuesday last week. (I was working the two last weekends so I have no bad consciousness for taking two days off.)

The tourist factor the last weeks has been quite low, so we had a lot of "tourist energy" to spend and so we indeed did! We spent the whole day in the park with sun hats, sunglasses, cameras and audio guides.

After having satisfied our hunger for red brick ruins, we took our bikes and went looking for a swimming pool. The hats, glasses and long sleeved sweater was not a joke for the camera: it was a necessity against the sun! You can imagine we were good and sweaty and longed for a cool bath. We found a beautiful guest house w/swimming pool and it made me understand why Thailand is such a popular tourist destination! And they had the best strawberry-pineapple frosty/milkshake. Mmmm! So when I open a restaurant or café I am going to serve Thai soups (delicious!) and milkshakes like they make them here:-D Someone who can teach me?

On our way back to our own (and cheaper) guest house we stopped by a massage place and got foot massage while the rain suddenly was pouring down outside.

The historic park of Sukhothai (3.38 km2) are the ruins of the capital of the first Thai state. Beginning in the 12th century, a people from Yunnan in China settled here and got known as the Thai (free men). A Thai prince married a Khmer woman, then rebelled against the central power and created the first Siamese state.

Its architecture, built from brick with decorations in stucco and wood, has its origin from a mixture of elements inspired by the Buddhist Singhalese or Hindi Khmers. But the architecture of Sukhothai developed into its own style and have subsequently influenced all Thai art.

The site has been excavated and studied since the mid-20th century. In 1988 a 70 km2 area was declared a historic park and in 1991 it became a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was impressive to see, but maybe not stunning. A paved road was built through the whole site for lazy tourists and cars was driving through the park. It was very neatly tended and that made it look more like a leisure park than a historical site. But the result was that is was not grand enough to be a leisure park and not historical enough to be a historical site. Do misunderstand me right, it was well worth to go there and very well arranged for tourists. But imagine how exciting it would have been to go there if the jungle was still been covering the ruins and you could explore from a network of small paths, getting lost among lush green forest and ancient ruins!

I recommend a look at the historical park's website (even though it is a bit slow -be patient). It is quite nice. Unfortunately is it not all up and running; several links brings you only to "Error page: the page cannot be found".

Or you can have a look at UNESCO's world herritage list where you also can find a video from
Sukhothai.

And at end, a picture from "home":

It was raining the other day...