Sukhothai

[Above photo: Ruins at Sukhothai]

21 February 2020

I awoke yesterday morning at about 6AM to an acrid, plastic odor in the air. Thinking the air quality, which has been bad for a week, was seriously deteriorating, I got up and looked out the window to see a massive plume of dark smoke two blocks away. Then sirens from every direction. The lower levels of a 15 story apartment block were burning and there were people trapped in the elevator, as well as on the upper floors. As I prepared my lessons and ate breakfast I kept glancing out the window but the steady stream of dark smoke never turned white, my indicator that the fire crew were getting on top of it. When I walked past it on my way to work, there were blocked streets, dozens of fire trucks, hoses, and water squirting all over.  The large pedestrian overpass at the intersection of Bogyoke and Lamnidaw streets was packed with people watching the spectacle.  Everyone is drawn to tragedy, it seems. I suppose it is our fascination with violence and the relief that it doesn’t impact us directly. As I walked up Lamnidaw yet another truck with a large extension ladder came barreling down the street. I later heard that no one had died and all were rescued from the elevator and upper floors.

Walking home after class, all the windows in the burned and several adjacent apartment buildings were broken out, from street level to the penthouses. It seems these fires are generally from overloaded electrical circuits, so with the hot season approaching and air con use going up we may see more.  It made me realize that none of the apartment buildings have fire escapes. I’d noted it in my previous apartment and thought with some sheets tied together I could get to the adjacent roof. Here it isn’t so easy and I may buy a rope and a pair of gloves to use in an emergency. I can rappel down the side of my building.

The 5 hour bus trip from Chiang Mai to Sukhothai was a bit sad. It is the dry season so there was little green. There were hills but everything had been clear-cut, probably 20 years ago, and there were no old trees. Everything looked about 25’ high and 6-8” in diameter. It looked like lanugo hair on the scalp of someone—me, even—after chemotherapy.  Love those teak decks on yachts and mahogany dining tables in the US, Europe, and China. Malawi is clear-cut, as well, excepting a very few areas which have been preserved as game parks and refuges. I recalled in 1972 when we were in Abidjan that 70% of Ivory Coast’s hardwoods had been “harvested”. Between Chiang Mai and Sukhothai there were the usual roadside stands selling fruit, vegetables, and tourist knick knacks but also larger establishments falling into disrepair, starting with hope and not having lived up to their promise. The scene seemed weary and despairing, clearly my projections.

When I arrived in Mueang Kao [Old Town] Sukhothai, it was hot, crowded and noisy. It didn’t feel like a 13^th century capitol. There were a few dazed tourists, like me, wandering about in the mid-afternoon heat but mainly it was busy with the Thai going about their day.  I had no idea where Sukhothai Indie Resort was, nor did anyone else. None of us could find a tuk-tuk or taxi, which would be incredible elsewhere in Thailand or Myanmar—there’s a job opportunity for an enterprising young business person. However, there were diesel flatbed trucks with canopies and benches, people carriers, plying Route 12 between Old and New Sukhothai. I asked directions of a driver, showing him the address of the resort and the reservation on my phone. He looked puzzled but told me to get on. I did, paid my 30 baht, and watched as he drove to New Town, several kilometers away. The police station was closed so after he hit the end of his line, he looked the “resort” up on the internet and called them for directions. It turned out to be seven kilometers outside of Old Town in the opposite direction. He headed back toward Old Town.  Midway he pulled into his driveway, parked the bus, and we got in his pickup truck. He told me he’d take me to my hotel, which he did.

The “resort” was in the country on the road to Chiang Mai. It sat 100 yards off the highway down a rutted dirt road. 8 tiny cabins next to each other facing a dirt field. “Resort” here meant a place to sleep. No pool, no restaurant, no lawn bowling or croquet, no manicured grounds. It was $14/night so perhaps I was expecting too much.  Nyi, the proprietress, was very nice, however. I was the only person there so was put in cabin #1. It was more basic, albeit clean, than even I expected. There was soap but no shampoo. The shower water, which just sprayed onto the bathroom floor as all do here, wouldn’t exit the drain hole where the floor met the wall, at least not perceptibly, so I was standing in several inches of soapy water by the end of each shower. There wasn’t a window or a fan in the bathroom.

I reminded myself, “Don’t be so hasty booking your hotel next time.  Look up your venue on an area map.” etc. There was a very basic restaurant 150 yards down the highway but as I entered the grounds, three large dogs started barking protectively. A woman came out and shooed them away. I sat under a thatched roof at a picnic table and ordered sautéed chicken with spring vegetables from a picture on the menu. Out came dried fish with spring vegetables. You must roll with it when travelling like this and, I’ll note, I didn’t get ill, which is a minor triumph. And the dried fish were ok. I went to bed early, planning to leave at first light to see the ruins. I would have rented a bicycle from Nyi except the journey is 7 km on a busy 4 lane highway and it gets very hot as the sun advances.

So I arranged to rent a scooter for the next day and Nyi, who lives elsewhere, assured me she’d fill the gas tank in the morning. She did and at daybreak she lent me a helmet and I drove into town. I got comfortable with the scooter quickly, although it seemed much more wobbly than my 750cc BMW, as I rode along the smooth shoulder. I was constantly thinking about the chief of Child Psychiatry at [now] Benioff Children’s Hospital of the East Bay who was riding a scooter around Thailand a number of years ago. He was found lying in a field in coma, the scooter wrecked. After a month in an ICU in Bangkok, he was stable enough to be transferred to a neurorehabilitation unit in the US where he spent the next year trying to learn to walk. I had no close calls and ended up enjoying the scooter. I used it to go between the archeological zones, which were scattered over a 45 square kilometer area.

Late in the day I left a pottery and was heading for supper when the scooter felt strange. I stopped and looked at the rear tire which was flat. Fortunately, hand gestures for pumping up a tire are pretty effective non-verbals and I was directed to a bike shop nearby. After the mechanic filled the tire and it was flat again in 2 blocks. So I pushed it back and he replaced the tube in 10 minutes for $4, including the ride wherever on his scooter to get the new tube. It was impressive. I felt lucky to have found a repair shop so proximate, not thinking about how unlucky I’d been to get a flat in the first place.

Walking all day through the ruins in the various zones I realized how strange it is that we celebrate kings who slaughtered others to grab their land and then enslaved many to build monuments to their magnificence. From the pyramids at Giza and Saqqara to Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom to Bagan to Sukhothai—and, of course, the great castles and cathedrals of Europe—we lionize those who were more successful in their power, terror, and mayhem than their opponents. We are a strange and violent bunch, truly The Planet of the Apes. King Ramakhamhaeng, the most famous of the Sukhothai rulers, is said to have developed Thai script. Likely he had a clever scholar from whom he appropriated the credit for it, since he must have been busy lopping off heads and collecting levies.

It was, however, as Kate had mentioned to me, moving to see the beautiful remains of civilization past in early and late light. Yet as I look out my window over Yangon, this concrete megalopolis, it doesn’t look as lovely as a tree or a lake or a bird. I suppose some of our admiration is for the ingenuity and artistry that is expressed in the monuments.

Many of the ruins had moats, often filled with water. In the moats of the Central Zone I saw the Thai equivalents of snowy egrets, great blue herons, and black-necked stilts. Fish surfaced frequently at dawn and dusk, and there were many large shade trees, so Nature conspired with Man to beautify the area.  Near one of the monuments in the dry Western Zone I watched a hoopoo—I thought they were just in Africa—hopping about on the ground, his or her magnificent crest erect.

I always meet people, young couples or single travelers, when I travel alone. I kept bumping into Sonja Kuhl at different monuments. She is a 30ish German from Frankfurt who is travelling for a year. She started in Canada, where she visited a friend. Because it was so expensive there, she WWOOFed (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) her way across that large country before flying to Central America. She travelled overland through Central and South America before coming to Asia. She now would be in Thailand for 3 weeks before heading to Rishikesh in India to learn to be a yoga instructor. She’s running low on funds but wants to go to Nepal and Tibet before heading home in June. I am always amazed at young women who do this alone. She said she hasn’t had a bad experience and thinks that having short hair may contribute to her lack of harassment. Anyway, it is somewhat reassuring that despite all the drama on TV and in newspapers, an attractive young woman can travel the world alone without incident.  I worry about India, however.

I saw a couple of signs on my trip that were amusing, along the lines of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: the description of a panda or that of a dissatisfied diner? The first sign I saw was “HELP FOR DOG”, meaning “My dog needs some help.”, or “Work for me and I’ll give you a dog.”  or “I’ll work for you if you will give me a dog.” Then on a tee shirt in the Chiang Mai airport, “LIFE IS BETTER”. Was this a zombie, the walking dead? Or has life now gotten better than it used to be? There is so much room for confusion in words, as is repeatedly evident using social media, whereas making the gestures of pumping up your flat tire is difficult to misinterpret.  “Ugh, Zog wants meat.” There is a good museum in Sukhothai, filled with pottery, jewelry, swords and spears excavated from the ruin sites. I saw a head-shaped stone which the villagers where it was found called “The Head of a Tax Collector”. Like the huge polished black stone sculpture at the base of the Bank of America building in San Francisco commonly known as “Banker’s Heart”.

Which brings us to the end of this installment.  The corruption of DT and cronies is poisoning all our streams. Pardons for his crooked buddies. He must have his masses hypnotized, they care so little about honesty or decency or the rule of law. They are stupid, I’m sorry to say. If only they really knew how bad it could get with an authoritarian leader without a (relatively) equitable legal system. But they seem immune to reason and filled with blind, cringing anger that makes them susceptible to a demagogue. We can, in part, blame ourselves for not seeing to their education and welfare better. But they also have to take responsibility for their well-being because he won’t. As to the ‘pub’s, they are spineless, hopeless. Susan Collins is such a despicable human being. I need this little venomous outlet, even though it shows me in an infantile light.