@hirondelle and I had been talking about doing a trip to Sukhothai for quite a few years, but we never actually sat down to plan it. Mostly, because my schedule is pretty busy. This year, I ended up having a five (5) day weekend, so we decided to go for it.
Now, before we get started, to give you an idea of how far this trip actually is, it was just shy of 851km (just shy of 529miles) round trip. That’s about 425.5km (264 miles) to Sukhothai from our home. We decided it would be best to break this up over two days, which is something we would normally do.
One more thing before I get started with this journey. Once we got started on this journey, for our first stop, we stopped at a PTT gas station and almost all PTT gas stations have an Amazon Café. Amazon Café has OK coffee and good iced lemon tea. But it’s one of those things that is just special for when you travel. It’s a nice little rest area. They have a covered area outside that you sit and relax while you have a break, and some locations have an inside air-conditioned area to relax in as well. This has become our favorite rest stop in all our journeys since this trip.
Just to put things into perspective, when we used to do our road trips around northern Thailand, we would go from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai to Chiang Saen to Thaton to Chiang Dao to Chiang Mai, about 565km (351 miles). The trip we did right after we bought the Honda Rebel was Bangkok to Kanchanaburi to Sangklaburi to Saiyok to Nakhon Pathom to Bangkok which is 699km (434 miles). So, this was our biggest journey on a bike to date.
When we were planning, we decided that would we stop in Nakhon Sawan, which is about four (4) hours out of Bangkok, 239km (149.5miles). One thing that happened early on, when we made one of our stops, we realized that @hirondelle had forgotten her phone. There was a bit of a panic at first, but we decided that we would just continue on without it. Also, during this portion of the trip, we were on a nice stretch of road where the traffic was flowing quite nicely. There was a section that I was doing about 130kph (81mph). While doing this, there were a group of bikes that passed us and not thinking, I just picked up the pace a bit. Before you know it, I was cruising along at 147 kph (91mph). It was at this point, I decided to let go of some of that throttle and we continued coasting at between 120kph (75mph) and 125kph (78mph). We stayed at a nice hotel there called The Paradiso JK Design Hotel. Once we stopped, we headed to the local mall to get some drinks and snacks and then back to the hotel. We had dinner at the hotel, which was some delicious Thai food. They also had a very good breakfast, which was nice. The staff were really friendly and helpful.
After breakfast, I packed up the bike and we headed out for our next stop. Sriwilai Sukhothai Resort and Spa. This portion of the trip was a little over 3 hours, 190km (118miles). There were some scenic bits of this road, which was nice. Nothing too fast again, just cruising between 100kph (62mph) and 120kph (75mph). We pulled in to Sriwilai Sukhothai Resort and Spa in the early afternoon. Sriwilai Sukhothai had this amazing lily pond, which was huge! They had four building that surrounded it, one of which was the building we were in. Once we got to our room, @hirondelle relaxed for a bit, and I went and had a massage. One of my favorite things while on holiday. Once that was done, we had dinner then headed out to Sukhothai Historical Park to see the ruins at night. It was supposed to be amazing, and it sure didn’t disappoint! It was beautiful and we got some amazing pictures. After we wondered around the lit-up parts of the park, we headed back to our resort. In the morning, we got up and went to have breakfast, and that turned in a big pain in the ass. We went to the restaurant, gave them our room number, found a table, and went to get our food from the buffet. They approached us and said we couldn’t eat there. There was some confusion about us having breakfast there. Long story short, there was some mess up in the booking and we didn’t book breakfast and ended up having to pay for it. Whatever. We then went back out to the historical park and had a look at it during the day and took a lot of pictures. It’s really cool. Some of the best ruins in Thailand, in my opinion. We then went to this lovely little restaurant the was kind of dead, and once we sat down, people started coming in and giving them business. After lunch, we headed back to the resort and got massages and finished off the day with a nice dinner.
We got up in the morning and headed back to Bangkok, with us deciding to stop in Sing Buri, which was almost five (5) hours, 281 km (175miles) from Sukhothai. We booked a room at Zen Garden Resort. Oh was, was this place bad! The room they gave us smelt like feet, didn’t look very clean, had no food or restaurant or anything. We were almost tempted to stay there, but in the end, we just couldn’t do it. We left and found this amazing little resort called Je t’aime café & villa. They had four (4) rooms. Of course. Room L, Room O, Room V, Room E. We had Room E. They had a nice little restaurant there, and we had dinner and ordered our breakfast. The only bad thing was that the beds were so small, but we did sleep together in the same bed.
We had a lovely little breakfast in the morning and then packed the bike to head to Bangkok, which was just shy of three (3) hours, 141km (88miles). The last stretch is always the worst. You want to stop, and have breaks, but you don’t want to stop, because you’re almost home. It’s so hard. We took breaks, but I think we just didn’t rest enough, and the very last bit was agony.
Outside of the last little bit, the trip was actually really good. I really enjoyed making that trip on the bike. Makes me want to do more long trips on the bike.
Always Remember: If you really want to go someplace, set time aside to go.
