To Thailand, Stop Number One

The boxes were shipped... (5 boxes coming in at almost exactly 20 kilos each, keep your fingers crossed they make it across the ocean...)The goodbyes and the "See you in Bali in April!" were said and we were off (with about 10 of our friends all flying Air Asia to Bangkok for the frisbee tourney. An excellent ease into leaving.)Howie had a good, if not sweltering hot, tournament. He was camo, perhaps only a slightly less ugly colored shirt to carry with you for a long journey than neon green, and while his team did not do stellar, they had fun and won the most spirited team award. Howie played a lot, and well, and has some nice looking scrapes on his knees from some good laying out for the disc. I spent my days split between mornings out and about with our friends Dana and Gilles who were in Bangkok hanging out for the weekend and afternoons on the fields, cheering the many Jakarta players on. I, of course, ate well and had a lot of fun on the side lines.After the tournament, we headed out to Sukothai, a stop on the way to Chiang Mai that has some ancient temple ruins. Sukothai is HOT. I mean really sweaty, hot. But that did not stop us. We arrived in the late afternoon and did some wandering, checking out the little local markets and enjoying local culture. While Sukothai has its tourists, it is still a small, quaint little town, with only a few backpacker hangouts. It is still weird for us to see so many foreigners around, and hear so many languages spoken.
Today we took some local transport into the Old City, rented some bikes and checked the ruins out. Good lord was it hot, but we persevered. The ruins are quite spread out, although no Angkor Wat in size, and there are nice roads leading you around from chedi to chedi and Buddha to Buddha. What is nice is that, despite the bus loads of people we saw entering the park, it was really peaceful, there were very few vendors (none of whom were pushy at all) and at times it felt like we had the place to ourselves. We were there from about 10 AM to 3 PM when we finally withered and were ruined-out (so to speak). Despite the heat, it was a really nice day. For anyone who plans this in the future, pack a lunch. It would have been a great place to cycle around and then plo down somewhere and have a nice bite to eat.

Tomorrow we are off to Chiang Mai, about 5 1/2 hours from here. We are hoping to take a cooking class and maybe a Thai massage, but not sure about that yet... We will keep you posted!