Sawankhalok

As I was walking down the road that morning, I didn’t know I was about to stumble upon 240 years of Thai history sitting at one table.

Sawankhalok has a street with mural paintings. It’s about the only thing tourists come to see in the town. It was a starting point for us as it was the closest train stop to the places we wanted to visit in Sukhothai. Zine wanted to take a look around before we left, so I accompanied her. And good thing I did.

As we approached the end of the mural street, there they sat. An old shop house. Traditional Thai coffee making paraphernalia — the kind where they put the coffee grinds in a sock to steep. If memory serves, they spoke first. Something about the murals, I think. However it happened, we soon found ourselves at their table.

Two of them had white hair. And why wouldn’t they, they were 80 years old. One of them had dark hair and we assumed he dyed it. The one with the dark hair started saying something about their advanced age and Zine said “You’re not old, you still have dark hair.” He then started musing aloud about why some people’s hair turn gray and others do not. So we probed. Turns out his hair is not dyed.

One of the hardest things about travel planning is trying to guess beforehand where the interesting things will be. Sometimes you pick hotels that aren’t good. Sometimes you book a lot of time in a place where the people aren’t friendly. Sometimes you assume a place won’t have anything interesting and find out too late that it does.

I hope the next time I visit, these guys will still be at their shop. Still telling stories. Still smiling.