More about our Thailand trip:

The hotel we stayed at in Bangkok, the Viengtai, was also the meeting point for the Intrepid tour that we had booked to start off our vacation. I also booked us time in the south, on Koh Mook and Koh Lanta. So, we'd have some nice, warm beach time with sun and swimming and such. For the tour, we decided to head to the Northern part of Thailand so we'd see a bit more of the country rather than just the islands.

We decided to take the tour called Treasures of the North. This took us around the north a bit, starting with a train taking us up towards Sukhothai. After the train, we switched to a songthaew for transportation to Sukhothai. The songthaew is basically a small pickup truck that's been converted to carry tourists in the back. They range from moderately comfortable to totally uncomfortable depending on the seat structure and how low the ceiling is. Anyway, this carried us to Sukhothai where we checked into our guest cottages.


The guest cottages were pretty decent. If memory serves, we then headed off for a Thai massage at a local place (which was great! Maybe the best massage I had on this trip.) and returned to the cottages where we had some tasty dinner and drank beer for a while to get acquainted with the group we were touring with. As it turned out, we had very good luck with our group. It was a mixed group from Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada and Luxembourg (and Croatia and America counting us). For the most part we all got along great on the whole trip and had a lot of fun together. And our tour leader, Toon, was really great. I'd recommend these guys to anyone after this experience.




The next morning, we headed off to see Sukhothai National Park, which was quite a sight to behold. We took a songthaew to get there, once again, then rented bikes for touring around. Our tour guide was fantastic, explaining a lot of the history of the place and really showing us around. And she made us some amazing lunch too that she brought with us for a picnic. Our tour leader was not really our *guide* per se. She did a great job of getting us around and helping us, but in each location we had local guides who really knew the area. That was the case here as well.

Our tour group.

Further reading about the Sukhothai Kingdom:

Sukhothai Kingdom.