Day 10 - 7th December

Today we hit the road and head North... Destination Sukhothai

Now this place we definitely haven't been to before.....

I'm feeling rough..... Proper saw throat so 6 hrs in a coach that you can't turn the air con off is the last thing I need... and considering what I ate yesterday I'm as relieved as I am surprised to announce that my stomach is fine...

We board the coach after a 10 min TukTuk ride with our bags strapped to the roof... The design of these TukTuk differs from those in Bangkok. The Bangkok TukTuks look brilliant and you sit under a Kansas roof behind a centrally seated, handle bar wielding driver facing forward.... Here in Ayutthaya you sit under a metal roof on two bench seats running front to back over the rear wheels with a partition between you and two front seats with the steering wheel to the right. They can carry more people, but the redesign has included a new front end which looks awful.. Very much like a upturned boat with non of the charm of the Bangkok models...

Now on the coach we sit back to enjoy the ride, endlessly watching the scenery pass for mile after mile...

We make a few stops along the way and you can't help but appreciate the beauty and size of the place...

Field after field of deferring shades of green wiz by along with countless Banana trees, palm trees and endless water lilies in deep ponds that have been cut into the ground outside almost every house and they almost act as a barrier between the roads and fields...

With a population in Thailand of over 70 million comes 70 million mouths to feed.. This is mainly done with rice, and rice plantations are everywhere... Whole fields completely under water... There using massive quantities of water producing even bigger quantities of rice... Some have become massive saturated mud pits and others have become green, with line after line of produce growing out of the field of water, as soon as you travel for more than 20 mins out of the big towns you start passing them... You pass some unusual things by the side of the road.. On our trip today we passed two farmers taking there livestock for a walk along the unprotected sides of the three lane highway... The first being cows, the second being goats... They had both obviously chosen these animals because of the renowned outstanding behavioural tendencies..... There are more hammocks for sale by the side of the roads than in all of Bangkok... You can even buy a suit by the roadside...

You pass some pretty strange looking motorised farming equipment along your way too, but the oddest sight today where the convertible flat bed lorries... There painted as brightly as you could imagine with reds, blues and greens are we're mostly in very good condition... But then.. With no roof, and only the fabric back of your own seat for protection know bodies going to want to carry anything to heavy on it for to far just incase something goes wrong..

We arrive late afternoon in Sukhothai, and after checking in to our room and sorting stuff out we grab a quick bite to eat in a local cafe and go off to bed...