January 9, 2010 - Bike Tour around Sukothai

Jenga has become a game we've been playing a fair bit. It's a pretty universal game, too - you don't need to be able to communicate with words in order to play it, but we haven't been able to rope other groups into playing it with us here in Sukothai. That might be because our games can get pretty intense, or because there's already 5 of us playing, so it gets pretty impressive when it goes for a few rounds. We started into this with the little travel jenga game that Tammera had in Tonsai, where we would sit on the porch, trying to get the little tiny blocks out and stacked higher. Here at Garden House, they've got a full sized version, and we've had some high intensity games, including one where the final bottom block actually managed to get removed, although the tower took on an extreme lean after that.

Before the game, though, we went bike touring through the country with a local bicycle touring company. We decided we needed a bit of a break before hitting up some ruins again, so got the guest house to make arrangements for us, and headed out at 8am to the base of Cycling Sukothai, run by Ronnie and Mam. It was "Children's Day", so Ronnie stayed behind with their son, while Mam showed us around. The bikes were in much better condition than the ones we rented to ride around the old city, so it was actually a nice little 20-30km ride past rice, tobacco, and chili fields. We started off, though, by touring the local day market.

The tour was nicely enviro-political, talking about the process of rice and tobacco production, the economics behind it, the loss of the next generation of farmers to cities and the changing weather patterns as well. It reall got me thinking, which was a good thing. We also got to meet some really interesting people who were on the tour with us - the psychiatrist from Amsterdam, the young German-Italian and French couple working for a bio-med company in Berlin, the epidemiologist living with his partner and children in Bangkok, and more. We talked about politics, soccer/football, how we had come to be where we currently are, and what we were seeing. We also got a chance to drink some snake whiskey - whiskey with snakes and scorpions and whatnot in the bottle. It didn't taste that much different, so I don't think it'll be something I'll be doing again.

Afterwards, we went to a ceramics museum, to learn more about the history of the Sukothai era. This was a really good museum, and I would recommend it to anyone in the area, although it is pretty out of the way, and so not really visited. When we were there, we were the only ones in the museum.

We then continued the tradition of a Pre-Dinner (thanks Ryan!) at the Dream Cafe, where I had a tempura fried banana flower, and one of their Stamina formulas - an herbal infusion called "Tiger Strength", which promises to give me additional strength and better sleep. I'm not so sure if it works, but I did sleep pretty good later that night.

We're probably heading for Chiang Mai in a couple of days, taking one more day to tour the ruins here in Sukothai before checking out and catching the bus. At this point we'll probably also be separating from Kevin and Karina, as they head down to Ayuthaya, as Karina has to leave in less than a week.