Still in Northern Thailand

We stayed another 4 days in Chinag Mai in the end. Monday found us queuing at the immigration office for our visa extensions as planned. In the end we were on ly allowed a 7 day extension -as the rules for that had also changed - so we are probably stuck with having to be on the move over the New Year so that we can come back into Thailand with less than 15 days to go before we leave in January.

We are not the only people affected by the change and the general feeling is that it is a bit of a nonsense really, particularly when the Thais are at risk of being in dire straights with the reduction in tourists this year because of the various recessions and the Bangkok airport fiasco. How wise is it of them to deny genuine tourists the opportunity to spend our money here? The change to the visa extension rules has affected a lot of travellers arriving at land borders (as many of them do) and many are just choosing to change their itineraries to spend more time in other countries. If we didn’t already have a flight booked out of Bangkok we wouldn’t return but choose somewhere else to finish our trip. Thailand is very nice but I suspect the neighboring countries have just as much to offer.

Tuesday was a day for visiting a couple of out of town Wats and the Elephant conservation facility about 90km outside of Chiang Mai. It was interesting to see one of the oldest Wats in Thailand - predominantly made of wood and very, very beautiful.

Coincidentally, it is a sacred site for anyone born in the year of the Ox - so Brett inadvertently gained a bit of good Buddhist karma to boot.

Just around the corner we find the newest addition to the Wat compound. This one is very ornate in red and gold.

Food at the market... Not sure what the black stuff is as no-one can translate it for us. But they eat a lot of it as a dessert.

Other than eating, shopping and shipping said purchases, the rest of our time was spent trying to organise car hire so that we could take a leisurely drive down through to the South. Not to be - nary a car to be had in the whole of the North of Thailand. So it was back onto the bus for us and a 5 hour jaunt to Sukothai about 300kms south. I’d like to say that rolling through the Thai countryside was a moving and illuminating experience. Unfortunately, I slept most of the way having managed to catch another bug. I do wonder if stopping and relaxing for more than a couple of days gives the bugs time to really take hold! Still, what I did see was lovely. A lot more of the traditional wooden houses - some more dilapidated than others. The roads here are generally well organized and maintained. They don’t have many motorways as such - only 1 or 2 main highways with other good dual carriageways elsewhere. However, the number of Thais travelling long distances by car seems limited. Once you are outside the main towns then traffic is really quite light. Most families have at least a moped or two - but not all of them have cars and there is a very extensive bus transport network that a lot of Thais seem to use instead. Although people in the bigger town/cities are doing well enough there is ample evidence that you are never too far away from a village where many families share their front porches or back gardens with chickens or the odd cow.
We eventually arrived at Sukothai, which was once the capital of Thailand and has some interesting ruins set in the most wonderful parkland. We spent a very pleasant couple of hours cycling round the park here.

Keeping the grounds tidy.

I notice a group of workers carefully (!) climbing one of the ruins following the latest Thai 'safety at work' directives of course. It turns out that it is time to tidy up the Buddha.

The weather it must be said is just perfect for us. It is officially ‘winter’ which means the temperatures have tumbled to at least 27/8 degrees during the day with probably 14 - 19 degrees late at night. The locals are all walking around in coats, scarves etc, and even the dogs have been given their winter coats to wear! But for us it is the first time that it has been pleasant to just wander around and we have managed without the air con. It won’t last much longer as we move further south but, for now, it is a great change from wading through the heat of the day.

Sukothai doesn’t have much to offer apart from the ruins. The ‘old town’ is a street of shops and amenities that have emerged to service the visitors to the ruins and the ‘new town’, 12 km away, is a regular Thai town of about 40,000. Great food market and some lovely food stall food - but very little in the way of true ambience.
We eventually dragged ourselves to the one bar in town called “Chopper”. Whether it was ever a hard core biker bar or only aspired to this we were never sure. There was a very surreal moment when two of the male staff started dancing together (with slightly more lady boy swaying than strictly necessary) and then crawling around on the floor teasing the resident pooch. Not quite the Friday night biker bar behaviour that we had anticipated. The following day it was back on the bus for us to transfer to Bangkok for a couple of nights before we head to the beach for Christmas. The political situation is quiet for now and will probably keep like this until the new Government comes closer to being a reality.