After reluctantly checking out of the Christmas hotel we caught a local bus down to phitsanulok, about half way down to Bangkok. We arrived at the bus station quite late at night and our first challenge was to get a tuk tuk into the city which is generally pretty easy as the drivers tend to stalk any 'falang' or tourist until they get into their vehicle. However, this turned out to be a bit more difficult than usual as no one could speak english or read a map. When we finally thought we had got the message across we got in with a driver only for him to drive in the wrong direction! He eventually took us to a hotel which was a bit overpriced but seemed to be the only place open so we decided to stay. We were a bit shocked to find that there was 'titi massage' on our floor, we're not sure if it was legit or not and didn't really want to find out! We were also pretty shocked at the so called 'american breakfast' which turned out to be cold soggy hot dogs and illuminous pink ham.
The city is advertised as a good place to see the Sukhothai Unesco World Heritage sight from but this isn't really the case as it'sa 2 hour bus journey away and there are closer places to stay. We went for a day trip and hired bikes to see the 5skm of temples. We were really impressed as the place was fairly quiet except for a few monks and though the temples were a lot smaller than Angkor they were still definitely worth a visit.
That night we decided to eat at the night market which is about 1km of food stalls serving various bits and pieces. We tried lots of satay, curry, skewers, dim sum and chestnuts but drew the line at the stall selling the deep fried crickets and worms!