Sukhothai

At one time, Sukhothai was the capital of the Kingdom of Siam (I think it was back in the 13th century or thereabouts). Apparently there was a pretty ambitious king at the time, King Ramkhamhaeng, (no one seems to agree on the English spelling of the name so I picked one). This man is credited with ruling the country for a long time(at one time it was larger than Thailand is today), creating the Thai alphabet, opening relations with other cultures, particularly China, bringing Buddhism to the land and generally ruling a pretty happy country…a major accomplishment under the best of times. To support all of this wonderful work for his people, he also had a fabulous capital built.

The area is absolutely stunning. The old royal palace must have been an unbelievable place with extensive carvings and statues. It included the palace itself as well as a temple, all surrounded with a moat. There are literally hundreds of smaller temples and shrines also built within and outside the city walls (yes, walls…there were two of them with a moat in between. They were serious about keeping people out.) Archaeologists have found evidence that some of the temples in the area were actually originally built to honor Vishna and other Hindu gods and then were later changed to Buddhist temples.
The buildings themselves were built with laterite bricks (can you imagine the labor to create millions of bricks????) and then all of the bricks were completely covered with a mortar type substance that was finally intricately carved. Talk about a long term project!!!