An hour and a half north of Bangkok is the ancient capital of Ayutthaya (pronounced aye-u-taya), a small city dotted with the crumbling ruins of a once powerful empire.
Ayutthaya is a river island at the confluence of the Chao Phraya, Lopburi and Pa Sak rivers. It was from here that the Siamese ruled their kingdom from 1351 to 1767 and it was once one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Today it is a UNESCO World Hertitage Site and popular day trip destination for tourists from Bangkok.
We arrived in a crowded third class train carriage where Ric competed with an elderly Thai women for space on the narrow bench; she apparently did not want to share her seat with a sweating Englishman. To reach the ancient city we crossed the river on a small ferry and set off to find a guest house. As we were travelling north to Chiang Mai anyway, we thought Ayutthaya would make the perfect stop-off en route.
To our surprise and joy our 300Baht (£6/$10) room came with a swimming pool and we were instantly grateful that we'd decided to spend the night. Despite the fact that we're supposedly entering the "cool season", the temperate hasn't dropped below 30 degrees and the humidity in Bangkok sits at a steady 70%. We happily spent the remainder of the day sitting in the cool swimming pool chatting to a Canadian who was five days into his first ever trip away from North America. His bubbling excitement and astounding ignorance made me feel old and wise - in a good way. The poor boy was surprised to find that there are no beaches in northern Thailand, perhaps he thought he'd arrived on an island?
The next day we hired bicycles and set off to explore the temple ruins. There are dozens of sites to see, both working temples and ruined temples, but we chose only to visit the main ones: Wat Phra Si Sanphet (Three Chedis), Viharn Phra Mongkol Bopit (Restored Temple Next To Three Chedis), Wat Phra Mahathat (Buddha In Tree), Wat Ratchaburana (Empty Hall), Wat Phra Ram (Overlooking Pond). I've appointed the names in brackets as the actual names are impossible for me to remember. The sites mentioned could be explored on foot but we chose bikes for speed and breeze.
Voila les photos:
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| Wat Phra Mahathat |
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| Wat Phra Mahathat |
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| Wat Phra Mahathat |
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| Wat Ratchaburana |
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| Wat Ratchaburana |
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| Wat Ratchaburana |
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| Wat Phra Si Sanphet |
The temples we saw we really nice and we had a pleasant time riding around them. We've already seen more temples in Asia than most people see in a lifetime but these ones were unique enough to impress us for half a day. We had the sites to ourselves until about 11am when the tour buses from Bangkok arrived and we found ourselves surrounded by Indians in matching lime green caps.
As well as boasting the lovely temple ruins, Ayutthaya also has an impressive night market selling all manner of tasty treats. It sets up by Wat Phra Mahathat at about 5pm and gets very busy very quickly with locals and tourists alike. We ate: sushi in the form of Angry Birds cartoons (Ric, not me); a unusually good combination of sweetcorn, coconut flesh and salt; fried chicken, including some neck that we bought by accident and did not enjoy; an incredibly spicy vegetable green curry that made us both cry; a Thai sausage; and sour bamboo and rice. Every day in Thailand we discover some new tasty delight, it's food heaven.
How To Get To...
The temples: maps are available from all guest houses. It took us about three hours to cycle to and explore the sites we visited, which was enough for us. To visit all the sites including those outside of the ancient city would take a full day.
We Stayed At...
Tony's Place: Great value rooms, nicely decorated, busy restaurant, swimming pool. 300Baht (£6/$10).
