I Travel, I Whine

The night train to Pitsanulok was crammed. Everybody's going on a holiday, some of the passengers had to sit on the aisle, making the ride in a non-A/C coach almost unbearably uncomfortable. Sleepless, we arrived in Pitsanulok and boarded a bus to Sukhothai. We found a guest house and soon enough Heidi and I were exploring the old Sukhothai town on bicycles.

It was an exhausting ride of course as, one, we were sleepless and, two, the heat was stiffling. Fortunately, the ruins were scattered in a relatively small plot of land, and we pretty much covered the more important sites in less than four hours, including the far-away ruins. Sukhothai is awesome. The majestic temples that are within the main site stand on islands surrounded by man-made lakes. Humongous Buddha statues were ubiquitous of course. At any point, we could not have been away from their gaze.

Now, the second part of this trip was totally spontaneous. Realizing that we were done with Sukhothai, Heidi and I rode a bus to Mae Sot, which sits close to the Burmese border. Honestly, I did not have any idea who were Burmese (there are many migrants in that area, according to the guidebook) and who were Thai in the messy town that was Mae Sot. We did not have enough time to figure that out though as we had to take songthaew (akin to a small jeepney) to Umphang. The largest waterfalls in Thailand is supposedly found here. The ride on the overloaded songthaew took four hours, and I do not want to go into the details of the discomfort. Ugh.

We arrived in Umphang early this evening. The guest house we stopped by had no rooms available and we were offered a tiny tent along the river instead (all other guesthouses were supposedly fully booked because of the holiday). Gawdness! I've never been in a tent years now, so let's see how I fare tonight, although, honestly I'm not the least looking forward to it. Tomorrow we see some waterfalls and a hill tribe village.

I may sound like I'm complaining a lot in this trip, but I do that every time I travel anyway. That's the best that I can do, can't I? Seriously, I'm immensely enjoying all this so far, especially coz Heidi has been more adventurous than I am. We will see how tomorrow goes, and how much more I could whine.