Currently putting together the details for a long weekend visit to Sukhothai, the UNESCO World Heritage protected site – basically the Thai answer to Angkor Wat. The hotel is sorted, staying at the snazzy looking Ananda Hotel (which has some steep discounts if you book through Wired Destinations). Getting there is not quite so straightforward – Sukhothai has no train station of its own, so you need to get off at Phitsanulok and then do an hour long bus ride to Sukhothai itself.
Whilst hunting around online for info, I found the helpful English language Thai railway timetable site and also the excellent Seat 61, which gathers together information, history and personal anecdotes about train journeys from all over the world. The Thailand page is definitely worth consulting, not least for the paragraph on the Bridge Over The River Kwai:
“There is a small technical problem with the Bridge over the River Kwai: It doesn’t actually cross the River Kwai..! The 13:45 train from Bangkok crosses the Bridge over the River Kwai…Pierre Boulle, who wrote the original book, had never been there. He knew that the ‘death railway’ ran parallel to the River Kwae for many miles, and assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just North of Kanchanaburi. He was wrong – It actually crosses the Mae Khlung. When David Lean’s blockbuster came out, the Thais faced something of a problem. Thousands of tourists came flocking to see the bridge over the River Kwae, and they hadn’t actually got one… All they had was a bridge over the Mae Khlung. So, with admirable lateral thinking, they renamed the river. The Mae Khlung is now the Kwae Yai (‘Big Kwae’) for several miles north of the confluence with the Kwae Noi (‘Little Kwae’), including the bit under the bridge.”
More on Sukhothai:
Spike | Google | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Wikipedia
