Sukhothai: Day 2

On our only full day in Sukhothai, we started out with a tour through a local village. We rode on motorized tuk-tuks, starting from our hotel. This meant that we did some driving on the main roads, sometimes down the shoulder of the wrong side. We ended up in a village where the main occupation is farming. We had to pull over a few times to let herds of cattle pass.

The people seemed excited about our presence. They loved waving and yelling "hi!" from their homes or their cars. We stopped and chatted with a few little boys who were practicing their English. All they knew was "What is your name?" and "How old are you?" Our first stop on our village tour was at the oldest house which, despite the fact that it had a thatched roof and was on soggy stilts, was over 100 years old. The woman inside of it was almost the same age.

Even though the woman couldn't see or hear very well, we all got out and traipsed through her home. I felt bad until I saw our guide hand her a pretty lofty wad of Baht (Thai currency) and realized she was probably more than happy to have us there. We also stopped at a home that raised roosters for cock fighting. I was really disturbed by this stop, but cock fighting is a popular sport in Thailand and raising roosters for it can be a profitable business. I saw the champions in their cages and a few that looked like they lost one too many fights.

Following our emotionally upsetting cock fighting excursion (luckily we didn't actually see any fights), we went to a local trappers house to see how they would trap local vermin for food. We saw traps for eels, rats, fish, frogs, and snakes. All of which can be found in rice fields and are considered food to the local people. A few of my tour mates were put off from eating meat for a few days upon discovering that these were potential meat options in Thailand. The local guide gave us a hilarious display demonstrating how the traps worked. He didn't know very much English so he would flamboyantly act out how the animal would become caught in the trap involving a lot of flailing and screaming and then yell, "No Come Back!". He was hysterical and got a generous tip.

After our visit to the local village we tuk-tuked back to our hotel and prepared for the second half of our day on bikes through Sukhothai Historical Park.