Suki Yaki in Sukhothai

The day after Songkran was over, Chiang Mai was a completely different city. All of the temporary stages had been removed, the permanent traffic jam round the moat was gone, and so were all the people intent on soaking everyone. I had been sure there would be a few stragglers who kept a little fighting going, after all they had started at least a week early, so why wouldn't they finish late? However it really did seem to be the end, although I kept my water gun with me just in case we were ambushed. Joanne just left hers behind in the hotel room when we went for the bus to Sukhothai. On the bus we discussed the relative merits of staying in Old versus New Sukhothai: the old town was very small with very little choice of accommodation or food, but it was where the ruins were to be found, which was the only reason we were going there. The new town didn't sound like it had much to offer tourists, except that the bus was going to drop us there and then leave from there to Bangkok, which would have required more effort that evening on our part, and then again two mornings later if we were going to stay in Old Sukhothai. Just as I was thinking that we must be approaching town, the bus stopped and some people got off. In an completely unexpected stroke of luck, the driver had decided to stop in the old town, removing any need at all to go to the new town, and we managed to work out what was happening just in time to pile off with the others. Accidentally on purpose I left my water gun in the boot of the bus. It didn't seem like I would have much more use for it, although I was a bit sad to see it go.

There were only two choices of accommodation, so we opted for the Old City Guesthouse as it was recommended by the Rough Guide and, having blown our budget since arrival in Thailand by indulging in a little too much revelry, we decided to save a bit of money and go for the “shared” bathroom option. In practice I think we were the only people staying in that part, so we actually had two bathrooms to ourselves. Next door was a cafe-restaurant called the Coffee Cup, selling excellent coffee, which we had been missing since arriving in Thailand. We ordered food there and I opted for the beef red curry, which should be loaded with chilli anyway, but to make sure I requested it “phet phet” (very hot) which I had learned hoping to counter the expectation that I like flavourless food because I am a farang. My new Thai had no effect and the food arrived extremely insipid although tasty, with sticky rice on a plate which just seemed wrong after a few weeks in Laos, where the sticky rice is always served in a beautiful woven basket. I was beginning to believe that Thai food really had changed dramatically in little over five years, and I would have to wait for Mexico to get hot food, after all three towns in, and one papaya salad was the only really fiery food I'd had. After dinner, we took a short walk up the road to find out if we could hire bikes for our cycle around the ruins the next day, but the bike hire shop (in the other guesthouse) had already shut up. When we returned to our room, I discovered to my horror that the pocket in my rucksack, where I store valuable things was unzipped, and my wallet was missing. I was fairly convinced that I had not left it open, so was almost certain that someone had dipped my bag in the restaurant, where Joanne had paid for the food. I was imagining what a horrible next few days at least, I was going to have, cancelling cards and living without money. We returned to the restaurant, but I hadn't left it and nobody had handed it in. Gutted, we decided our only remaining hope was to retrace our steps to the bike hire shop. Incredibly my wallet was still lying there on the pavement, half open, but untouched. “Very Lucky!” said the waitress when I returned to the restaurant. Too right! How many places could I have left my wallet on the pavement for twenty minutes and returned to find it still there?

That night we had a terrible night's sleep. The room was very hot and it was so dusty that the wind kept sprinkling a covering of dust over us, blown from the mosquito mesh over the windows. This made us itchy and sneeze. We cursed the Rough Guide which described the place as “spotlessly clean”. Ha! Clearly the researchers did not opt for the budget rooms. Just when I didn't think the night could get any worse, the dull aching in my right ear, possibly present since an onslaught of moat water in Chiang Mai, started to intensify until it was unbearable. I had forgotten how painful having an ear infection used to be as a child, but now I was reliving it. In the morning we found a chemist, but weren't completely sure the drops we got were the correct thing, as the chemist had no English and I'm not sure the Thai I produced by flicking through the phrase book was up to much. The pain had subsided back to bearable levels anyway, since the intense burst which kept my awake for hours. I couldn't really be bothered with sight-seeing as my mood was so terrible because of the night I'd had.

Our bikes

We briefly discussed staying an extra day, and just trying to get some sleep for now, but ruled it out, deciding it would be better if I just bucked up my ideas and mustered some enthusiasm. So we hired bicycles and set off. I'm not certain how much of what I felt was still because of a persisting huff, but Sukhothai was a huge disappointment after the temples at Angkor. I would certainly recommended going to Sukhothai before Angkor to anyone who was planning to visit both. It seemed like they had done too much restoration work, so some of the sites had almost completely lost their ancient feel, and all of their romance.

Wat Mahathat

After all if I wanted to look at reinforced concrete, I could just have stayed at home in Glasgow! And that's what they seem to have done in many of the sites: completely removed piles of ancient rubble to a museum, I assume, then replaced them with reinforced concrete replicas of what they imagine it used to look like when it was new. I fell out with my bicycle as well, which I decided was a complete waste of time for the centrally located sites, which were all within easy walking distance. I cursed the Rough Guide again for more poor advice. It was a very hot day, and the one silver lining was that the huge crowds of tourists arriving from the new town did not appear as expected around 10am.

Concrete Buddha at Wat Mahathat

Maybe everyone was staying away because of the ongoing trouble with the red-shirts in Bangkok. After a lacklustre morning, we stopped for lunch in a restaurant called Kacha, where I had my least spicy papaya salad yet, but the coffee and beer I had with it seemed to lift my spirits a little, and I managed to continue with the sight-seeing with hardly a single moan. That evening we got chatting to a woman running a restaurant which had no English sign, and no farang customers. I complained that I'd been disappointed with the lack of chillies in Thai food so far, especially next door, although it had tasted very nice. She assured me that next door is too used to serving farangs, and she would make me some food the way it was meant to be.

Wat Sa Si's walking Buddha

Result! She brought me a pork red curry, which was delicious and it hurt, just like Thai food is supposed to. The place is apparently called Noodle Sukhothai, although it's not written anywhere in English. After we had eaten she took us inside and showed us grateful letters from and photographs of other farangs, who had also been in search of the chilli. So now I had the explanation: nearly six years of continued tourism had caused Thai food to become blander and blander in order to cater for some imagined western palette. I blame the French, Dutch, and Germans! There's a lot of them in the region and they always seem to be complaining that food is too spicy, or looking for food like they get back home. Scots and the English have enough of a taste for Indian food and kebabs to handle the heat, and Americans have Mexico on their doorstep, so they appreciate a good chilli pepper.

Excellent hot red pork curry

Sukhothai Noodles

The next morning we made sure we sampled the local specialities, Sukhothai Noodles and Suki Yaki for breakfast, before catching a local bus to the New City bus station. At the bus station they told us that there was only one bus, a “VIP” bus, leaving at 5pm and costing 380 Baht, which was a lot more than we expected to pay and a lot later than we wanted to leave. It was fairly obvious we were being hustled, but the problem was where to get independent information. Bus stations in Thailand seem to contain dozens of competing companies running the same routes, who each have their own people trying to herd tourists to their own desk. In the Old city, we had been told there was a bus every hour, but these touts all told us the buses were full. Other farangs were having the same trouble. We walked outside to look at the buses, many of which said “Bangkok” on the front, some apparently leaving soon, and none full. We spotted a kiosk marked “Information” and thought we'd cracked it, but the woman in the kiosk just told us to ask inside, where there are only the self-interested touts. Finally we located an information computer, which gave us prices, departure times, and bus numbers. We were still looking through the cheaper and earlier buses when a bus driver came up and told us he was leaving for Bangkok now and ushered us to a counter we had not yet tried. At first I thought it was more hustling, but the ticket was only 255 Baht for 2nd class aircon. While we were buying the ticket, the farangs opposite told us they had discovered there's an earlier bus and Joanne replied “we're leaving now!”.

Suki Yaki dry

I don't know how much they paid, but I bet it wasn't as good a deal as ours. The bus was quite nice, confirming once again my general theory that the more you pay the worse things tend to be: VIP buses have incredibly uncomfortable seats, arctic aircon, and smelly toilets. The lunch break was also a real pleasure: when the buses made a service stop in Cambodia or Vietnam, the prices were several times what you would normally pay, whether for hot food, cold drinks, crisps or whatever, and they usually had rows of statues, bags, paintings, and other tourist trappings. Here, our lunch stop was in a roadside canteen: basic, but the food was delicious and as cheap as food from a street vendor. Not a statue, vase, or silk dress in sight. During the journey Joanne decided that she had an eye infection from the the dirty Songkran moat water, to keep my ear infection company. We arrived in Bangkok that afternoon. It was raining.

Suki Yaki in Sukhothai

Sukhothai, Thailand