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Wat Mahathat, Sukhothai Historical Park, Old Sukhothai

You need to walk within the ruins so you can feel the scale of it. How small we are when confronted by mankind’s history. How small we are in front of ancient wisdom, craftsmanship and, more importantly, faith.
Noone builds such great monuments to faith any more. These days, we build 'monuments' to commerce, for governments or personalities. When was the last great church/temple built? And yet megapolis', smart towers, superskyscrapers and 6-star hotels are on their way up every hour.

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Why do we love ghosts anyway?
Sukhothai is a ghost town after all. 700-years dead, but we build a gate around it and rent out bikes so people can see the farther corners of it. Here lies another late, great human civilization! Come see your own fate.

Only doves now stand proudly like sentinels on top of the weathered laterite posts, or look out from little niches carved out by time. A lone dog bounded past me to settle behind the Wat Mahathat Buddha’s back, looking out into the setting sun.
We marvel at Old Sukhothai, forgetting that these are just skeletons of what it was. Of course, then, it couldn’t have been as quiet as it is now.

On that note however, I have just noticed how many doves and other kinds of birds are all around Sukhothatai. There are so many of them, that really, sometimes their calls escalate into chaotic, scary, shrieking. And at every site I go to, even if I am the only human there – there are always birds about.
And so I therefore conclude that the old inhabitants of Sukhothai, they were all turned into birds. They weren’t invaded, they were transformed! So they could protect all these monuments.
Or maybe, like homesick ghosts, just keep hanging around.