We are staying at the guesthouse 'Vitoon' in Old Sukhothai. I mentioned in the last blog that the facilities are a bit sparse. The bed is really hard and although we managed to change rooms after the first two nights, the new bed is not much softer. It's not that it's a particularly dirty place, just very basic. This has led us to dub it the guesthouse 'Spitoon'!

The 'Loy Krathong' festival was still running, a three day extravaganza, and we arrived with two nights remaining. It was so very busy with a multitude of stalls and food vendors selling everything you can imagine from fairground tat to salted fish on a stick! There were literally thousands of people milling around, the overwhelming majority were Thais. This is the best place to see the festival even though it is celebrated all over Thailand. Sukhothai was the first real capital of what became Thailand and as such the spectacle is at it's most brilliant and cultural here. Our guesthouse was located just outside the historical park gates and so the crowds and noise were at their most intense just outside. The historical park is a Unesco world heritage site and has many temple ruins in various states of restoration. People release paper candle lanterns into the night sky and launch bamboo candle floats onto the lakes to cleanse their sins and bring good luck and prosperity for the coming lunar year.

We strolled around the stalls along the street outside looking at the curios and then ventured into the park itself to see the ruins lit up with thousands of lights. It was all a bit of a melee on the first night, us stumbling along in the darkness a little bemused by the sheer scale of the festival.

The following day allowed us to get more of a bearing on proceedings and we managed to get highly sought after tickets to the final evenings sound and light presentation. It told the story of how the then King united the Thai people to oust the Khymers, the founding of the first capital and the introduction of Buddism to usher in a golden age of prosperity. We were interviewed by Thai TV to gain an insight on how foreign visitors percieved the festival and why we chose Sukhothai over some of the other festivals most prestigeous venues. We gave them a glowing report and even though we haven't seen any TV, they cannot have failed to use our interview on the box! We could be famous without even realising it!

There was a big parade the next afternoon in celebration of the Kings 80th Birthday. There were traditional dancers, drummers, elephants and floats. They really love their monarchy here. We became a little bored after an hour and a half in the baking heat, so went to the nearest bar for some refreshment and toasted the King in our own way.

The culmination of the festival was a fireworks display which made Roundhay Park look like a 20 quid box of Standard! They eminated from every corner of the park in turn, north, east, south and the finale showered everyone with green and red sparks from the central temple ruins. There were gasps of appreciation from everyone, ooo's and ahh's followed by applause. Gandalf himself couldn't have done better! The only sad thing was the amount of litter that the Thais left behind. It seemed disrespectful to us to have such an historic place and to treat it like a Bangkok backstreet. I've never seen so much litter. Even the litter that had been thrown into the bins was being tipped out and rifled through by people looking for recyclable plastics and cans. We were amazed the next day however, as when we woke up the whole place had packed up and left. The street and park were spotless. It was almost as if the entire festival had never happened. The city had returned to it's usual sleepy self and we wandered around with virtually the whole place to ourselves!

Our final day we hired bikes and cycled to some of the outlying ruins which turned out to be quite rewarding as we saw some of the most interesting and complete sites. Again though, it was really hot and we were forced, FORCED to seek a bar for some refreshment. You know how it can be.

We are heading to Chiang Mai tomorrow morning. An early start and five hours on a kamikaze karioke bus. Can't wait!