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NEW SUKHOTHAI
Clinic
Police Station
Phitsanulok
found among the ruins, it contains a
copy of Ramkhamhaeng's famous stele
- essentially an advertisement for a
utopian land of plenty, aimed at
prospective traders and settlers. Turn left
inside the gate to the central zone for
Sukhothai's most important site, the
enormous
Wat Mahathat
compound,
packed with the remains of scores of
monuments and surrounded, like a city
within a city, by a moat. It was the
spiritual epicentre of the city, the king's
temple and symbol of his power.
A few hundred metres southwest,
the triple corn-cob-shaped prangs of
Wat Sri Sawai
indicate that this was a
pre-Sukhothai Hindu shrine for the
Khmers, which was later pressed into
Buddhist service; the square base inside
the central prang originally supported the
Shiva lingam (phallus). Just west, the
ordination hall of
Wat Trapang Ngoen
rises gracefully from an island in the
middle of the eponymous “silver pond”.
On the pond's west bank, north of the
graceful lotus-bud chedi, notice the fluid
lines of the walking Buddha mounted
onto a brick wall - a classic example of
Sukhothai sculpture. Taking the water
feature one step further,
Wat Sra Sri
commands a fine position on two
connecting islands north of Wat Trapang
Ngoen; its bell-shaped chedi with a
tapering spire and square base shows a
strong Sri Lankan influence.
The outer zones
here are also interesting outlying
temples in the north, west and east zones,
but there's little worth seeing in the south
zone. Continuing north of Wat Sra Sri,
cross the city walls into the north zone
and you'll find
Wat Sri Chum
, which
boasts Sukhothai's largest surviving
Buddha image. he enormous brick-and-
stucco seated Buddha, measuring over
11m from knee to knee and almost 15m
high, peers through the slit in its tightly
fitting, custom-made building.
Around 5km west of the city walls,
lonely
Wat Saphan Hin
sits atop a hill,
affording decent views of the surrounding
countryside and the distant ruins. About
1km east of the city walls, the best temple
in the east zone is
Wat Chang Lom
, by a
canal just off the road to New Sukhothai.
Chang Lom translates as “surrounded by
elephants”: the main feature here is a
large, Sri Lankan-style, bell-shaped chedi
encircled by a frieze of pachyderms.
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