We met up in the lobby at 6:30am to await Ratt, the private guide I had hired after reading praises of her services on various forum sites. After waiting about 20 minutes and seeing no sign of her I went to the front desk and asked to call her. Slight mixup, she hadn't received my confimation email but she would come and would get there around 7:30am. When she came we decided to reverse the order of things and visit Ayuthaya, the ancient capitol of Thaisland that was destroyed by the Burmese in the late 1700s. What is left are the ruins of the city. On the way we were stopped at Bang Pa In, a royal palace.
In the complex are lakes, canals, buildings and towers. Rama V, the king in the 1800s who brought Westernism to the Thais lifestyle, had a fascination for things European so there is an odd mixture of oriental and west.The Thais royal family no longer uses the palace but it is sometimes used for foreign dignitaries.
Onward to Ayuthaya. The first Wat we visited is one located on the outskirts of the city, Wat Yai Chai Mongkol containing a temple and a large chedi surrounded by 135 Buddhas and a reclining Buddha in a side garden. We had told Ratt of our plans to take the train to Hua Hin on Saturday so she said we will stop at a train station to pick of tickets. As we pulled into the town she asked if we wanted lunch at a hotel buffet but we said we prefered local food so after arranging for our train tickets we drove to a small roadside restaurant. Ratt ordered various dishes and soup. I had a plate of green curry chicken with rice and noodles and it came to 40baht (about 1.20)!. It was spicy but really good. Fraser had a soup that was quite hot while Bev had a chicken soup. Both were great. When we finished with that we went of to check out another ruin, Wat Chai Watternaram modeled after after teh Khmer monument at Angkor Wat. The main cheddi is surrounded by four smaller ones. This also contains Buddhas with the heads cut off by the invading Burmese.
Back into town and to the main central temple complex. Although not one of the ruins, the first placed visited in this area was a traditional Thais teak house that had been constructed in the 1800s and served for a while as city hall. After that we crossed a moat passing a temple we would visit later. We entered Wat Pra Sri Samphet, a trio od Sri Lankan style chedis built in the 15c and is the most important temple comlex within the former royal palcae compound. These chedis held the ramains of Thais royalty rather than just being memorials to Buddha. We wandered around the grounds of this and the royal palace. The place is huge and must have been magnificent in it's day. A larger Buddha is housed in a temple next door, Viharn Pra Mongkol Bopit. As we left the complex I had my fortune read y a Thais fortune teller sitting under a tree. Things are looking good but it's probably unwise to retell my fortune ;-)
By now we are exhausted but there is still more to see! At Wat Mahathat the chedi is nice but the main draw is the Buddha face that is firmly grasped in the clutches of a banyan tree. From there we went to the Elephant Kraal, one of the few surviving ones in Thailand. Wild elephants were once herded and battle trained under the watchful eye of royalty. One last stop was to (yet) another Wat Suwan Daram. This still serves as an active monastary. There are several smaller temples on the grounds with several ancient Buddhas and some small cheddis, one completely engulphed in the branches of a banyan tree.
Finally we headed back to the city. We had talked about massages so Ratt dropped us off at a spa in the Silom district where Fraser and Bev had a 2 hour Thai traditional massage and I had and hour and a half of aromas massage. Pure luxury. Suitably relaxed after a long day of playing tourist we made our way back by skytrain to the BBQ place on the side street near the hotel. This time it was open and it was packed. No wonder, for 129baht (about 4.50) it was all you can eat BBQ! On each table they placed a charcoal BBQ with a cooking dome surrounded by a trough that you put water in. You grilled your meats on the dome and put veggies and such in the trough. Inside was a whole table full of meats and fish plus veggies, sauces, rice, etc and even a dessert table with fresh pineapple and other delights. Again, we were the only farangs in the place and proceeded to pig out. From there it was to bed as we had an early meetup time (6:30am) with Ratt the next morning.
Posted by chezbasson at January 9, 2007 09:38 PM