Thailand forum

Hi Sabrina,

Welcome to Travelfish!

That's a toughie -- Sukhothai is THE place to be in all of Thailand for Loi Krathong, so I'm not all that surprised you're having trouble finding a place that will accept a reservation.

Is your itinerary flexible? The best solution I'd say would be to get there a few days early and find somewhere that has availabiity -- there are a lot of cheaper places there which do not take reservations and so they'd be your best bet. You could spend the extra days doing say trips to some of the surounding centres - Kamphaeng Phet, Si Satchanalai, etc

If your itinerary is not flexible and you can't find a room anywhere your only real option is to show up and hope!

Another option is to base yourself in Phitsanulok and travel across for the festival.

Bus from Phitsanulok to Sukhothai at 01:00 -- I don't think so! You'll be staying in Phitsanulok that night!

Thank you Admin and Thailandfish for your suggestions.

Flexibility and a smile and a little legwork or phone calls from guest house to guest house will hopefully be the solution.

And thank you for the wake up call about bus transportation out of Phitsanulok in the wee morning hours.

I was relying on Lonely Planets information found on page 394 "Buses to/from Phitsanulok (ordinary/air-con 24/33B, one hour), leave every half hour or so."

Are there any other options for transportation at that hour?

Is it possible that other travelers to Sukhothai are also exiting my same train at that late hour?

Do all those travelers spend the night in Phitsanulok? Or join bahts and charter a vehicle?

Alternate plan B: I noticed that Lotus Village offers transportation from Phitsanulok bus station, for a chunk of change. I will email them to see if they would be willing to arrange that, regardless of no room availability.

Please excuse the air of desperation!

Thailandfish, I did use a web site to check availability at Pailyn which reflected zero availability for all 3 nights. But I will try again for just November 3. Thanks for your encouragement. May you have a stressfree journey!

Sabrina

That is another great idea.

I did receive emails from the following: Thai Village (thaivillagehotel.com) has a room, $600 baht, November 3; Ruean Thai (ruean_thai_hotel@yahoo.com) has a room November 3 & 4.

I also found a room for 2 nights and once I am there I am confident some previous reservation will be cancelled and that I will be able to arrange a room for the third night .

And to solve the transportation need from Phitsanulok to Sukhothai, I arranged with the hotel for a taxi pickup (1,000 Baht...ouch, but at 2:00 a.m. I think I will consider that a $25 well spent).

And if another traveler is in the same predicament, maybe they would consider sharing the taxi ride and fare.

This is all assuming I can purchase a train ticket. I attempted to advance book the ticket from Passanger Traffic Section (passenger-ser@railway.co.th) but received an email that reservations from abroad must be made a minimum of 20 days in advance and I did not qualify for advance booking.

Hope this helps. Have a great trip.

I've just added in an accommodation feed to the Sukhothai and Phitsanulok sections that lists the hotels that can be booked through our partner Sawasdee -- it is important to note these are not the be all and end all as most guesthouses don't do reservations this way, but if you're getting desperate it may be worth trying some of them -- they're mostly over 1,000B a night.

You can see the listings via the links below: (you'll need to scroll down to find the listings for Phitsanulok and Sukhothai)

Sukhothai

Phitsanulok

Good luck!

I've cross-posted this to the other Sukhothai thread)