We decided to stay in Sukhothai for two days as it's roughtly half way between Bangkok and our next destination (Chiang Mai), and we had read that there was a big set of ruins that were worth seeing in the area.

We arrived in town on thursday 9th April quite late in the evening after a 6 hour bus journey. We had planned to leave Bangkok late afternoon, and were told that buses went regularly, but when we turned up at the station we had just missed one, with 2 hours until the next. Our wait wasn't as bad as it could have been though, as there was a bizarre live lady-boy music show going on in the station that we watched. The bus cost us about 5 pounds for first class, so we got to watch a couple of films on the way. One was English with Thai dubbing, so we had no idea what was going on, but the second film was a Thai martial arts film that was awesome even without understanding it. We even had a stop half way through the journey where everyone got a free curry.

When the bus arrived in Sukhothai we took a tuk tuk to the hostel. The town was much smaller and quieter than Bangkok, and was not what we expected from a town that was the ancient capital of Thailand. The guesthouse was nice, with some gardens and a pond, and a cute puppy. Our room was also quite nice, but it had no windows, and we needed to use our mosquito nets during the night. Once we had settled in we went out to eat in a bar that had some crappy Thai soap on similar to neighbours. It was rubbish, but entertaining at the same time. Afterwards we went to bed ready for a long day tomorrow.

We woke up after a rubbish nights sleep in our room, which was roasting hot and got the free breakfast downstairs. It was really good, with bacon, eggs and pineapple. Once we had showered and woken up a little, we headed to the bus stop, where we got a local bus (Pick up truck) to the ancient city. We hired bicycles for the day at a cost of 60p each, then spent the rest of the day riding around the ruins. The park was pretty big, and probably took 2 hours to bike around, but there was also a suggested route outside the walls of the park that took you past countless ruins out in the countryside. Some of the ruins were really spectacular, especially the standing Buddhas that must be 100ft tall. The loop outside the walls was also really good, but the heat was searing, and we had to get off our bikes and walk up steep hills to see a few of the sights.

After biking around pretty much everything we stopped for an ice cream and some much needed water (having already drank 3 litres each), before dropping off the bikes and getting the bus back to the new town.

In the evening we went out for a meal in a nice bar with a terrace looking over part of the town, but we both felt a little ill after catching the sun earlier in the day. On the way back Amy bought a dress from the street vendors for about 4 quid, then we went to catch up on our interneting. Once we had done. we got an early night ready to catch the bus to Chiang Mai the next day.