Thailand: A road trip to nowhere quickly Uttaradict - Sukhothai
The GG and my newfound friend, ready for a day’s ride into central Thailand Destination Sukhothai
Waking up today, I have to confess I felt a little sore. Must have been a combination of walking up that mountain to the cave yesterday in my riding boots and the days riding. Bags packed I walked outside to load the GG up and was greeted with dark heavy rain clouds looming and oppressing humidity so thick you could cut the air with a knife. Instantly I was drenched in sweat, and it hadn’t even started to rain yet. This was definitely the build-up to the wet season, and I felt like I was back at home in Australia and hanging out in Darwin. Plonking down my gear outside on a table I sought out the free continental breakfast. Today was going to be a day of coffee and Pocarri Sweat (electrolyte drink). One never really does get motivated and on the road when adverse weather is looming, but hey if it was all rainbows and sunshine then I guess everybody would be doing it, besides nothing good ever came easy. Just ask all those motivational Facebook memes, they’ll tell you.
Sukhothai ruins, well worth the efforts to get there, the ruins stand strong and proud defying the test of times.
Ta Pha Daeng Shrine, guarding the ancient city of Sukhothai, 800 odd years later is a testament of a time long past.
Juggling a coffee, bottle of water in the pocket and carrying two pieces of toast topped with Condensed milk – don’t knock it until you try it. I think it’s the Thai substitute for honey. I headed outside for my Breaky. There I was ushered over by a Local, in broken English he explained to me that he too was a traveller, and he liked the Grey Ghost. Over my travels here I’ve found a lot of locals do seem to be fellow meanderthals. They pack up their scooters or classic bikes and just roam from town to town, picking up work as they go and generally enjoying life as it should be.
This guy showed me countless pictures of his family, adventures and experiences. It is true a picture paints a thousand words and transgresses language barriers. Posing for the obligatory selfie we had a laugh when after I offered for him to climb into the saddle of the GG, he nearly dropped it when posing for a picture because it was a little tall for him.
replacing the GG for a Push bike with a more subtle pace.
Humbling and majestic pretty much sum up this place
Todays destination was Sukhothai and maybe Nakhon Sakwan. I really wanted to see the world heritage listed ancient ruins of Sukothai, heralded as the birthplace of Thailand and originally constructed in the 14th centurary. It stands tall as a testament to time and Thai cultuure, but first I had to get there.
Hitting the road I felt like I was weaving through the low heavy clouds and threatening rain that never seemed to evenuate, they always seemed to be off to one side of the road or the road curved to take me out of the path of them and keep me on a dry road. The mountains gave way to low lying lands of central Thailand and miles upon miles of rice fields. It would have been a magical little ride if the crops were bigger and the fields were all green. But It seems my timing was a little out and they’d only just been replanted. Still I couldn’t complain, the flat, tree lined roads made for a soothing ride and the Tom Petty blasting away in my bluetooth headset seemed to make eveything just that little bit more chilled
You can’t but help to feel the history here. Time is irrelevant to us mere mortals in the shadow of this place.
Kilometres passed, the rain clouds stayed in the rear vision mirror and by about lunchtime my GPS told me I had arrived. Finding the ruins with ease I was instantly surprised how dispersed they were. Some of the lesser outlying ruins were easily accessible and I was able to ride the GG up to them. This kind of felt a little weird to be riding around them on my noisy steed where centuries ago only people and maybe horses trod, so I was kind of stand offish about it posing only for a picture from a friendly Thai on holidays.
The main complex of the ruins is a totally different kettle of fish, it offers countless majestic ruins, and you can literally get lost in them. You can’t take a car or a motorcycle in here. One can only hire a guide to take you around in a golf cart or hire a pushbike to get around. Trust me you want to do this, the place when I was there was baking hot, very little shade and you just cook like a crab in your own sweat juices.
You can spend hours here exploring and not see the same thing, be sure to get there early.
It’s got kilometres of roads to explore and from memory the bike was only a couple of dollars to hire. Just be sure to get there early to maximise your time and beat some of the heat, load up on cool drinks before and take ample water because there is nothing inside the complex. Ooh and do yourself a favour too go buy an iced coffee and use the amenities at the coffee shop before entering as well, if you know what I mean, cause they are few and far between inside the ruins.
When I did that, it all just sort of fell into place. Sleep eventually came, the next day I found myself packing my life into my brand spanking new Mosko Moto reckless 80 soft luggage system and running around getting last minute things.
Waking up on the morning of departure I was treated to an overcast and showery day, with the ‘what if’ demon firmly locked away in the condo I wasn’t going to let this be deter me and so I roared out of the condo complex with a tinkle in my eye and a cheerful wave to my favourite security guard , the hardest part of any journey is always the first step and or in this case the first twist of the throttle.
Theres something enthralling about hitting the road without a plan, you just sort of go with the flow and find yourself in places you never even imagined. I barely left Chaing Mai when I was delayed by some heavy rain, but siting in a coffee shop on the side of the highway watching the rain bucket down was soothing in itself. I didn’t mind the rain I knew it was a shower, I had coffee and not a care in the world. Eventually the rain eased off, so I pushed on and was rewarded by with sunshine and rainbows in between rainstorms for the remainder of the day.
Cooking off imputies and melting down gold plated leaf for hours to obtain gold for sale was my hosts family business.
Swapping my motorised steed for a foot falcon power steed was a laugh. I hadn’t ridden a push bike in over 30 years so to say I was a little rusty and rickity was an understatement. Riding around in Enduro motorcycle boots on a pushie must have looked funny. I’m sure I got more than one strange, muttered look at this crazy Farang dude.
I befriended a local Thai family showing around their extended European family, and they invited me back to their place for a family feed. This sort of blew me away, but it really does typify Thai hospitality. See a lonely farang walking around and throw open your doors to help. I really enjoyed that night, made some great friends and experienced the intergenerational family unit where they all live together harmoniously.
This family bought gold plated leaf offcuts from temples and melted them down in a homemade furnace to its raw form to gather the gold for sale. The work was hot, time consuming and laborious, they were proud of the work the family unit did together and showed me the small amount of gold left over after hours of refining the raw materials. They did this for 12 plus hours every day and saved up the small amounts of gold to go off to a neighbouring town and sell it every week.
Drinking Thai whiskey with my host Thai family for the evening was never going to end well for my liver and head
The rain finally found me that night as I sat there with my newfound friends, looking out as it was bucketing down, sharing a moment in silence as the rain drummed on the tin roof of the porch so loudly it drowned out conversation. That night I learnt a lot about Thai culture, how hard they work, how welcoming and kind they can be and how hard they can drink and laugh at the simplest of things. As the Thai whiskey flowed, I knew tomorrow was going to be a long day, it’s a good thing that I was on a road to nowhere fast.
