The Long Dawn of Happiness

Sukhothai was nowhere as impressive as Angkor or Baalbek. (Why the latter example came to mind in particular, I don't quite know.)

The Buddha images were elegant, the lotus-bud chedi tips graceful, the generous reservoirs of water surrounding the wats serene paragons of purity, but the whole place felt ... somewhat small. The standing Buddha at Wat Chetuphon may have towered high above the surrounding countryside, and Wat Mahathat did indeed occupy a suitably large compound for its importance, but still the ruins of Sukhothai, as a whole, seem less grand than befitting the proud capital of the first Siamese kingdom. The structures (or, at least, their restorations) were built out of normal-sized bricks, not the huge monumental blocks of stone that make up the temples of Angkor or Baalbek. The scale of the structures, while large, is human rather than monumental. And while the place has been designated a "Historical Park" and these are undoubtedly ruins, they somehow don't feel quite abandoned enough to be bona fide ruins. The place feels too close-to-earth to be impressive in the same way as Angkor or Baalbek.
But maybe that was the point. Sukhothai's achievements and strengths were human rather than monumental, and its legacy lives on not in the form of awe-inspiring but abandoned ruins, but rather as a transmuted but living influence.