Travelling South

We caught a minivan back down to Chiang Mai and headed south immediately, landing in Lampang 2 hours later. The guide book described this place as a 'mini Chiang Mai with lumbering elephants and elegant mansions'. Now I don't know if we were in the wrong part of town but we saw nothing that even hinted of these things. We walked to the town's clock tower and had a stroll around the public gardens and concluded that the whole place was deserted and made a hasty retreat back to our shabby hotel.

Not impressed with what Lampang had to offer we set off the following day to Sukhothai. We shared our relatively comfortable bus (AC this time) with monks and several army recruits and 3 and a half hours later pulled into this ancient city. Well, we actually arrived in new Sukhothai which was another nondescript town but we knew that the old town, which was recognised as the first Thai Kingdom, was a mere tuk-tuk ride away.

The next day we jumped aboard the towns' tuk tuk 'bus' and soon found ourselves at the gates of the ancient city. We hired 2 beaten up old bikes and cycled around in the drizzle admiring the crumbling wats and monasteries of this old kingdom.


Some stunning remains, but after a few hours we were damp and soggy and ready for some food. After so much culture in the past 10 months you might have thought that our sense of humour would have progressed from that of an 8 year old but you'd be wrong and we chose our restaurant just because it made us laugh!

One day of looking around crumbling kingdoms proved enough and the next day saw us taking 2 more buses to reach the town of Lopburi. Checked into one of the very uninspiring hotels, the best of a bad bunch and then set out to look at some more ruins. This time a Royal palace and Khmer-esque temple, Prang Sam Yot was on the agenda; coming at the end of rather a long list of South East Asian sights I'm afraid to say we were feeling rather jaded and the most interesting thing about the town were the marauding monkeys who inhabit the place.

They are particularly prevalent around the temple and because they are fed by locals and tourist alike they now think that anything you're holding is fair game. This cheeky sod grabbed my bottle of water from me and proceeded to guzzle the whole lot!


We spent just one night in Lopburi and waved the monkeys farewell first thing the next morning.