Ayutthaya
Guesthouse: The Old Place (2 nights)
Highlights:
- Renting a motorbike and touring around all the temples
- Trying new foods at the local market- great coffee!
- Night Market- trying bugs
View of Ayutthaya ruins - Chaiwatthanaram temple |
The train deposited us just outside of Ayuthaya. We ask around for direction, avoiding the touts at the train station who try to squeeze every baht they can out of you, and find out that our guest house is an easy 10 minute walk plus a ferry ride into the city of Ayutthaya. We find our guest house but at this point we are drenched in sweat, and suffocating in our air-condition-less room. For whatever reason we decided to roam around the city during the hottest hours of the day making our way to the less than exciting visitor center. It was over 100 degrees. It goes unsaid that we were both thinking to ourselves the beach would have been a better option.
Ferry to the island |
After a few hours of wandering we hit up the night market, try an assortment of foods (and I mean an assortment!) and take some things back to our guesthouse to relax.
The next day we start off early to avoid the heat. We rent a motorbike and hit all the highlights of the city. As we wandered, we noticed, with very few exceptions, that every Buddha statue that was still standing was headless. We were told that they had been destroyed or broken off by looters and sold to private collectors.
Headless Buddhas |
Exploring ruins |
It was a bit eerie walking among the ruins with every buddha meditating in a decapitated silence.
One Buddha head did survive though, and no one knows for certain how it got there. Over hundreds of years roots from a banyan tree have miraculously grown around the statue leaving it in pristine condition.
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