Ayutthaya

Sunday we went to Ayutthaya, it's a stones throw away from Bangkok (Actually the city surrounding Aytthaya has merged with BKK and Bang Pa In). We stopped at a place called Bang Pa In first and saw some royal city-type-memorial, weird-cool-stuff that I don't really know what I was looking at. But it was cool, and there was something about a queen who drowned because it was illegal to touch royalty back in the day and no one helped her. Here are some pictures we took at Bang Pa In.


A royal temple in the middle of the lake.


This was a dog hanging around a deck that people used to feed fish and turtles in the lake. There was a vendor selling bread for the fish, I later saw this dog march off with two pieces of bread in it's mouth. Later when we came back it was sitting right back where it was to begin with. It wasn't eating the bread it had in it's mouth which makes me wonder where it went.


Danielle, Me, and ChaiPoom at the sculpted bushes in the garden.


The observatory where the King of Thailand discovered a new star. It has a great view but in order to keep this blog short I'll just leave those photos on my Flickr account.

After that we stopped at some temple along the way and got a free vegetarian meal. I guess it's vegetarian week or something. Kind of like Buddhist Lent, no meat, no sex, no alcohol, etc.

The food was good, then we ate Lotus seeds in the ChaiPoom's truck, and we finally got to our main destination of Ayutthaya. For some reason I love old ruins and ancient cityscape. This was the old capitol city of Siam until the Burmese came in and torched and destroyed everything. I guess a lot of the rumors of gold buried beneath the temples proved to be true as the Burmese seemed intent on looting what they could. A few restorations have come and gone but otherwise the old city remains in it's destroyed state, however still living as some of these photos will show.


Welcome to Ayutthaya.


These trees are awesome, this one seemed to guard a Buddhas head. Not surprising this is one of the few heads we actually saw. Many heads from Ayutthaya have been stolen, and the originals of some have been repaired or replaced.


An example of the torched Buddhas. Notice how the neck of the large complete Buddha is not scorched as it is new concrete holding the head in place.


I really liked this wall for some reason.


Rows of Buddhas.


An example of most of the walls around here.


Gravestones?


As you can see some parts are still in use. This is in the middle chedi.


The outside of the chedi.


Courtyard view from the main stage of the chedi.


An odd kitten hanging around this place alone.


At first I turned my head thinking someone had dropped their cellphone nearby. I kept looking and all of the sudden this bird moves and makes the noise again! This thing has some strange calls, and more than one. ChaiPoom told us that if you keep one as a pet you can teach it to talk like a parrot.

Ayutthaya has to be one of my favorite places that we have visited so far. I could spend days wandering around and looking at all the little intricacies of the place. But it was overcast and about to rain so we headed back home. On the way back all of us fell asleep except for ChaiPoom who was driving.

More photos from this trip and all of Thailand are here.