Phitsanulok

Our transfer from Ayuthaya to Phitsanulok was a bus journey that took 5 hours but all in all wasn't bad. We were sad to say goodbye to our lovely hostel in Ayuthaya too...but we were even sadder when we arrived at our "hotel" in Phitsanulok. To say it was out of shape was an understatment; the room was minging and the smell of musty old biscuits wasn't welcoming. It is fair to say that it is likely that someone died in there. The first night was very strange. It was made even more eerie by the fact that there was only 4 guests in this quite large hotel and therefore you never saw anybody, except a few cockroaches!

Phitsanulok is a city which is reasonably large in terms of population but it doesn't see many tourists. Hence the staring at all tourists in the street and the lack of international phones etc.

We made the most of our few days there and on 2 nights made friends with some other people in a restaurant we were in; the first night a very drunken Thai man took quite a shine to Jo and spent the rest of the evening talking at her in Thai very animatedly, and shaking her hand a lot and trying to get her to drink Whisky! His family/friends he was with were very nice and made sure that he didn't overstep the mark or annoy us too much which made for a very entertaining night for me!

Whilst we were there we spent one day at Sukothai Historical Park. It is a lovely site and one of several national parks in Sukothai. There we hired bicycles to ride around the site on which was lots of fun - especially when the storm came! See the pics.

Jo was poorly (too much excitement) so we also spent some time just chilling out and recouperating. A strange place but interesting nonetheless!