Hello all,

Sukhothai was very pretty, and is split into an old, and a new town.. and the new town was quite nice with a couple of market stall covered streets and some brilliant restaurants. The old town was lovely, but we'll talk about that in a bit.... =)

On our first day, we got there pretty late in the afternoon, and as soon as we stepped off the bus we had a guy promoting his guesthouse to us... usually we just walk away from these people as they can be a bit of a pain in the bum, but it actually looked quite nice. After haggling down the price of a 4km trip by Sawngthaew (pick-up truck) into town down to a third of what they wanted to charge us, we went on our way. When we got there, the guesthouse was great, with wooden chalets and jungle themed garden.... there was even a few dogs (one attacked Neen lol)! That night we went out and ate in a 'bikers cafe' (more a restaurant with a few pics of harleys) and ate some amazing food. While we were sitting waiting for our meal, I looked out of the windown and saw a baby elephant being walked along the road... I told Neen and when she looked it had gone, and thought I was going mad!! It did come back up the road though, being led along by two boys, and they were begging for money! It was so heartbreaking to see the elephant being used like that. It's not right that it should be walking up and down the main road, trumpeting away, just so some kids can make a few Baht from it. Was very very saddening.

The next day we just chilled out in our chalet, as Ben wasn't feeling great, had some breakfast round the corner in a really nice cafe (toasted sandwiches with real bread and real pork ham!!!!) and then we went down to the day market and bought a WHOLE water melon for 20p hehe. The little market was brilliant, I have never seen so many chillies or different varieties of garlic, it smelt amazing! Other than that we just read and hung around eating melon, was very relaxing. The following day we caught a bus to the old town, which is now a historic park. It was basically a massive park with lakes, and wooded bits, with ruins of the city of Sukhothai dotted around. The city dates back to the 12th centuary, and preceeded Ayuthaya as being the capital of what was then Siam. It turned out to be mega expensive but was worth it to see the ancient ruins. We hired 2 bicycles which was brilliant fun. Couldn't remember the last time we had ridden a bike. Was like being a kid again lol. The park itself was really nice, we rode around stopping to look at old ruins of temples and big stone buddha's. Even sat on a little island on the lake playing cards under a tree!

On our last day we had a good wholesome breakfast, and then headed off to catch a bus to Mae Sot, on the thai side of the border to Burma. It was quite an ordeal getting there as had to get 2 buses and wait around for quite a while. When we got there we realised we had no map of the town and no idea where the guesthouses were. Luckily we bumped into a european guy who showed us to a hotel. Fairly pricey but we had a proper hotel room with TV and hot shower! That night we cheated and got an easy dinner......KFC!!!! We were so shocked to see one up there in the middle of nowhere that we couldn't resist lol. England definately does the best KFC and fast food, but it was still good.

The next day we got up MEGA early... well 7am lol, as we had to sort out our visa's before checkout at 12 noon! This meant getting to the border to Myanmar (Burma), and crossing for a short time before coming back to Thailand and being issues another 14 day visa! We thought that we need US dollars to pay to enter Myanmar, so we spent a fair amount of time wondering from bank to bank trying to find one that had some we could swap. Not sure what currency exchange means out here... but apparantly US dollars doesn't come into it lol! After eventually finding some cash, we caught a Tuk-Tuk to take us on the 6km journey to the border... it was very slow, literally just managing to overtake bicycles. We got there in the end, and walked over the 'friendship' bridge for a kilometer before reaching the Myanmar side. On the way, we got chatting to a bloke who lived in the Burmese town of Myawaddy on the other side. He was a very interesting insight into Myanmar... turns out that he had a degree in Physics, but lived in a tiny room of a shanty house as he couldn't find any work. His village was wiped out by the Tsunami back in 2004, and had been there since... currently volunterring as a teacher. On the walk over the bridge he told us that the border had been closed the day before, didn't want to ask why as Burmese are forbidden to talk to foreigners about politics by law... but it sounded like a pretty common occurance! He also told us it is very dangerous at the border at night, as there is alot of smuggling... and pointed out the huts of smugglers in the no-mans-land between the two countries!!

It turned out you could pay in Thai Baht after a mission trying to exchange money lol. We had to hand over our passports at the Burmese side which was a bit strange. All we had was a bit of scrap paper with our passport numbers on them stating, for some reason, that we were Irish! As soon as we got the other side of the border, you could sense the difference between the conditions in the two countries. There were armed troops parked, who were friendly and smiley with us... but were still armed, even the immigration and customs officers were army. Living standards were much much worse... even the atmosphere was different. You could see how much poorer they were and we even had kids holding out their hands to us expecting money! It was quite surreal and really sad.... like stepping back in time 50 years. We bought a bottle of drink at a local shop and walked around for 10 minutes before going back over the border to get our passports and new visa's. We then rushed back to our hotel and grabbed our bags to move on. What an experience lol!

Anyway, will write again soon, and much love to all.......

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