Sukhothai & Songkran

I have mentioned already the Songkran festival that was the old Thai new year. Today I got to experience a small taste of it. Each province seems to have its own things but the one constant is the water fight. We drove into Sukhothai and were greeted this most surreal view. Firstly there was a parade, lots of traditional Thai dancing, rock bands, concert bands, beauty pageant contestants riding old rickshaws and school kids all done up to the nines. That was the closed right hand side of the road, the open left hand of side was handling traffic in both directions, even with the help of the local police it really wasn’t coping. This is where it was really interesting. The water fight was in full swing on the main road and when I say on the road I mean on the road. 

Kids, some no more than six, were weaving in and out of the slow moving traffic upending buckets of water on all and sundry. Some were supervised, some were sort of supervised, others were clearly in charge of their own destiny. It was very good fun but I would hate to work in the casualty department of the local hospital. Some of the adults were clearly alcohol affected and the driving, which can be erratic at the best of times, gets demonstrably worse. Utes loaded with people sitting in the tray (sometimes more than 8) along with barrels of water (and any paraphernalia suitable for drenching) are driving up and down dowsing all and sundry. If you drive near a river, creek or other source of water the more enterprising will have set up pumps for sprinklers, hoses and refuelling stations for the utes. One bridge we crossed had us totally soaked in water as the hoses were set up for the Queen Mary was arriving and we drove through the water arches that ran for a good 200 meters. If you are on a motorbike you are a shot duck. It was clearly duck season. 

So that was Songkran. From the madness of new year to the amazing history to see. We headed to a UNESCO listed World Heritage Site containing the ancient ruins of the Sukhothai Kingdom, dating from the 13th &14th century. It has the remains of 26 temples and the royal palace. It is going green and no carbon using vehicles are allowed entry. There are 193 different sites spread over 70km2. The main ruins however are held in a 2 by 1.6 kilometre walled enclosure.

To get around it you can either walk (not an option in this oppressive climate), hire a bike and just enjoy the same problem as walking while moving at a slightly faster pace, hire a tuk tuk to drive you around, get on a hop on / hop off shuttle with a guide explaining things (in Thai) or hire an electric buggy and drive yourself, using Google and reading the signage. We went with the last option so Oui can say she has her own Tuk Tuk driver. We spent a very pleasant an extremely pleasant two hours tooling around, went back to the hotel for a dip and then enjoyed a Thai meal that was out of this world.