Ayutthaya

We travelled to the Royal City of Ayutthaya by mini-bus – a short (two hour ish) journey from Kanchanaburi. We only had one night in the city as feeling old, tired and need of a proper rest we had extended our stay in Chiang Mai. We were also at this point becoming a little less enthused about the side effects of frequent travelling (mainly the pain incurred in attempting to stuff two rucksacks worth of clothes into one rucksack).

Ayutthaya’s historical roots (it was a former capital city of Siam) appear 2 or 3 miles out with ruined temples and dilapidated buildings intermittently appearing either side of the mini-bus. We crossed the moat that surrounds the city and were soon dropped off in an unfamiliar area expecting the inevitable baiting by tuk-tuk driver. Luckily or unfortunately (depending on whether you favour hassle or the benefits of the free market) there was only one old guy. His minimal discount was overlooked as a result of the heat of the sun and weight of the bags!

I was a little hesitant about that evening’s accommodation, the Prom Tong Mansion – although it doesn’t always ring true, I am a firm believer of you get what you pay for and therefore, at 700 baht (£15) a night this place had the potential to be hovel. We were pleasantly surprised – it was not luxury by any means, but our room was clean, large and had adequate bathroom facilities (scoring perhaps 2.5/5 on the Barkataki scale)! The lady that owns the place even let us convert our recently purchased ‘Somalian’ albums (pirated) on her computer – we are a little concerned that the Australian customs might object to the import of such items!! (per our extensive research glued to ‘Nothing to Declare on the Discovery channel)

We had dinner at ‘Nut’s Place’ a nice local restaurant around the corner owned by ‘Nut’ herself. She didn’t have our favourite staple (Papaya Salad) on the menu, but was quite willing for us to bring it in from the street stall she recommended across the square – her Canadian ‘husband’ even fetched it for us. The salad looked very appetising, however on closer inspection  the crab contained within seemed to be completely raw – keen to avoid sewage induced food poisoning and not wishing our host to lose face we employed the tactics of a five year old and moved everything around a bit on the plate.

The Buddha recommends Marlboro Lights

The next morning we hired our tuk-tuk driver from the day before to make a whirlwind tour of Ayutthaya’s temples and historical buildings. We started off at a Chinese temple about twenty minutes away – the place was huge with coach loads of devotees turning up at 8am! We soon toured the obligatory huge Buddha statues, incense sticks and jade dragons and jumped back into the tuk-tuk to go do it again somewhere else. On route we noticed a plethora of small roadside stalls selling small fish in plastic bags (similar to those offered as prizes on fairground coconut stalls – luckily I have gotten over my childhood need to demand one of these as pets) – apparently these fish were for people to purchase and then release into temple waters as some form of pact with God – it brings you merit, which I assume is accumulated rather like a pre-paid credit card and then spent when you pass the pearly gates?

Big Stupas

The second temple we visited was much more interesting – huge rows of Buddha statues and large stupas (big tower type things).  One particularly large stupa had steps running up to the top and only once you reached the pinnacle could you see the small dark, Buddha filled room contained within. The room was occupied by a sole, mystical looking white robed monk (might have been a lady monk) chanting the verses to some ancient prayer – it all felt a bit like one of those confusing scenes (that I don’t understand) from the Matrix.  

This temple complex also contained a small lake – on closer inspection the water was filled to the brim with huge catfish. These things looked like small sharks – slightly longer than (they can grow to 3m), but much bulkier than a reef shark. They surfaced regularly (presumably looking for food) with a menacing disposition. The turtles that swam around them looked rightly nervous.

Jaws

From here we moved onto the ruined palace of Ayutthaya – which looked like an ancient building site only with the buildings being half destroyed rather than half built. I’m sure had we given our selves the time (and interest) to read and research, then the place would have been of great interest, however our time was short and so was our patience, so we toured quickly so that we had enough time to see the next place which was also quite famous.

We later realised that this might have been a touch disrespectful.....ugh

The next place in question and our final stop was a temple famous for a tree containing the head of Buddha. The literature says that nobody knows how it got there (man + chisel?) and to be fair it was quite a cool looking icon. However, the rest of the temple was fairly similar to the ruins we had seen (and not had the patience to understand) elsewhere so we quickly took photos and headed back to hotel.

We were booked on the 11:30 bus – so we headed to the small shop like bus station in the deserted back streets of Ayutthaya that feed the main highway. We thanked our tuk-tuk driver and sat down to wait for our coach to arrive for the slow six hour journey to Sukhothai. Entertainment was provided not by thee colour television showing the awfully acted ever-present Thai soap operas (one even has a vampire theme), but by the crazy looking dirty old woman sitting in front of Monali. Imagine crazy dirty old woman speaking in Thai and pointing at our bottle of water and imagine us smiling and trying to be nice tourists, but also being staunchly opposed to some random old lady depositing her germs around and in our bottle of H20. Actually, I was more concerned about whether having slaked her thirst that she might take interest in the BBQ chicken I’d just bought from the street corner - accompanied by homemade chilli paste / sauce it was perhaps one of the tastiest things we’d eaten on our trip so far.

Maybe the best BBQ chicken in the world?