Three days in Sukhothai: ruins most people give a morning to

Get out to the park for the last three hours of daylight, when the coaches have gone and the light comes in sideways across the water. Pick up a bicycle at the gate.

Wat Maha That is the centre of everything, the royal temple of the kingdom and the largest ruin in the park. A lotus bud chedi rises above the stumps of the columns that once held a roof over the assembly hall, subsidiary chedis stand at the corners, and a row of stucco monks walks around the base of the main one. Two standing Buddhas in brick mandapas flank it. Give it an hour and walk all the way round rather than photographing the front.

Wat Sa Si sits on an island in a man made lake a short ride north west, reached by a causeway. There is a bell shaped chedi in the Sri Lankan manner, a large white seated Buddha, and a walking Buddha in bronze on the bank. Of all the ruins in the park this is the one that photographs itself, particularly with the light behind it.

Wat Si Sawai is among the oldest things inside the walls and the odd one out. Its three tall prangs are Khmer, built as a Hindu shrine to Vishnu before Sukhothai was a Thai kingdom at all, and converted to Buddhist use afterwards. Standing in front of it is the clearest illustration in Thailand of what this place was built on top of.

Out at opening, because the two best things today face east and because by ten the cycling stops being fun.

Wat Si Chum is north west of the walls and holds Phra Achana, a seated Buddha nearly fifteen metres high wedged into a square brick mondop with no roof, so that the whole figure is visible only through a tall slot in the front wall. It is the single most photographed thing in Sukhothai and it earns it: the gilded hand resting on the knee, the gap of sky above, the sheer scale of it in a small space. A narrow stairway runs up inside the thickness of the wall, and the slate slabs lining it are engraved with scenes from the Buddha's former lives. It is usually closed, so do not count on it.

Wat Phra Phai Luang is ten minutes further north and almost nobody stops there, which is reason enough. It stands inside its own moat, six hundred metres to a side, and it is really several temples of different periods on one site: one Khmer prang still standing of an original three, a ruined mondop with the remains of enormous stucco Buddhas, and a chedi whose niches still hold seated figures. It predates the central zone and reads as the older, rougher version of everything you saw yesterday.

Save Wat Saphan Hin for the late afternoon. It is a few kilometres west of the walls on a hill of about two hundred metres, and the way up is the original stone slab path, which is what the name refers to and which is harder underfoot than it looks. At the top is Phra Attharot, a standing Buddha twelve and a half metres tall with a hand raised, facing back over the plain towards the city it was built to watch.

A short morning in the new town before the bus or the plane. The Phra Mae Ya shrine sits by the river and is the one thing in New Sukhothai that people come to rather than pass through: a stone figure with a long face and a tapered chin, dressed as an ancient queen, said to date from Ramkhamhaeng's reign and treated with real reverence by the town. It takes ten minutes and tells you more about living Thai religion than a week among ruins does.

The morning market a few streets away is the other reason to be up. Sukhothai has its own noodle dish, thin rice noodles in a clear pork broth with green beans, peanuts and a lot of dried chilli, and it is a breakfast rather than a lunch here.

Then out. The bus station is fifteen minutes away, the airport is further north, and both are easier than the guesthouse will suggest.