Thaied Up

Sukhothai, Thailand

Another week, another country.  I arrived in Bangkok for the first time since last year last Thursday, I think (easy to lose track of time), and within a few minutes on arrival, (well, actually a few hours as BKK Don Muang Int'l airport is a madhouse this time of year) I was accosted by several thousand fake taxi drivers (ignored them), screamed "meter, meter, meter" 1000x when my regular driver tried to re-negotiate, and then had to scream at him again for him to take me to the hotel I wanted rather than the fleabag guesthouse that would pay him a commission - and of course this is all sandwiched around the worst most heinous traffic existing this side of the world, in my experience.  So really, there were no surprises - that's just the way BKK is.

 

Yesterday I made my first journey outside of BKK and flew north to Sukhothai, which is the ancient capital of Thailand during the golden years in the 14th c before it moved to  Bangkok much later, though apparently it bears no relation to the Jewish festival of Sukkot, much to my shack-grin.   The historical parts (wats, wats, and more wats, and a stupendous amount of stupas - and boy, I really need to see more of those after 5 months in Asia....) are pretty interesting though it is still hot as holy hell up here even though I am theoretically in Northern thailand.   Sukhothai town isn't much to look at (one of the benefits of colonialism, from my selfish POV, is that cities and towns in colonial spots like Vietnam and Cambodia sport much more interesting architecture, both of the colonizers and the local fusions/variations), but that isn't it's biggest problem. 

 

The biggest problem here is the nightlife.  There's a lot of it, in fact, more than I've seen anywhere yet, it's quite problematic as it's rather distracting.  By this I mean the millions and millions of gnats that come out at night and flock towards anywhere with light (and therefore people).  And it's not just a few gnats, I'm talking huge clouds that gather in front of lights, in doorways - it makes it look like it's raining outside, it's even hard to breathe at times.  As far as pests go, I guess gnats aren't that bad, since they don't really bite, sting, spread disease, or anything like that.  They just fly around, get in yoru face, and then die in the morning - it's still really annoying though.

 

Tomorrow I'm headed west a bit to the mountains that border on Burma and the town of Mae Sot.  Generally, as I've traveled, not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I find that the border/fringe areas of a country tend to be the most interesting for various reasons because you sort of get the best of both worlds - Xinjiang, Tibet, Kunming in China, Ladakh, Tamil Nadu India, Borneo in Malaysia, NW Vietnam etc.