1 February 2013

Faces of the past

A shaky wooden bridge separated me from the main road to the little visited 13th-century cities – today in ruins – of Si Satchanalai and Chaliang, 50 kilometres north of Sukhothai, in northern Thailand. Valiantly sitting on my just-rented bike, I looked straight ahead of me, darting off as fast as I could towards the other side, half pretending to be Indiana Jones, but in truth being half scared that the wooden planks would start falling off the bridge as I passed on them.

The scare was of course worth it, the site was peaceful and a very good opportunity for me to try different photographic angles, such as framing those miniature statues of elephants and other deities most probably left as donations by worshippers.

Checking the time once I was pretty much done visiting the site, I noticed I could catch a bus back to Sukhothai without having to wait too long (I tend to "optimise" everything when I travel – it includes transportation options and timetables, negotiating everything, etc. – yes, I'm a freak). But I would be just in time, assuming the bus actually passed on the road exactly on time... which it did! So I flung my bike into the hands of the man who had rented it out to me, muttered a thank-you, and ran off towards the bus, waving like a madman in the middle of the road, trying to catch the bus which had just whizzed by, barely decelerating a few hundred metres away.