Thailand 4

Thailand 4 - Ayutthaya and Bangkok

After our time in Chiang Mai we drive down to the historic capital of Thailand, Ayutthaya, and then on to Bangkok, where La-orsri and Niwat left us and traveled back to Khon Kaen. At first, it was a bit scary to be "on our own" in the heavily populated Bangkok. However, we quickly found that the Thai people were very courteous and weren't "predacious" on us, so we became comfortable quite quickly!

On the trip down to Ayutthaya, we stopped by another cool Wat and saw the above.

Ayutthaya was the historic capital of the lower portion of Thailand until the Burmese ransacked it around the time of our revolutionary war. The above is a portion of the once great city was bombed and pilfered by the Burmese. Apparently, much of the above structures were covered with gold, which was melted down and hauled away by the Burmese army. The Burmese had a particular penchant for shooting the heads off the statues of Buddha with cannons. The Burmese are also Buddhist, so you MIGHT think that they would NOT want to shoot the head off of Buddha? Well, the Burmese Buddha is represented differently than the Thai Buddha, so I guess it was considered "OK"? The only reason ALL the structures in Ayutthaya weren't completely destroyed is that a cannon blew up and killed the head of the campaign, and the Burmese army thus retreated back home. After the pillaging, the capital of Thailand moved to Bangkok.

After Ayutthaya and before La-orsri and Niwat went back to Khon Kaen, we had a lovely meal on a floating restaurant with our WONDERFUL hosts!

Right outside of Ayutthaya was a place one could ride on an elephant. We told the kids we would get a picture of us on an elephant (because we had the camera with us and instead got shots from up above looking down!) and this seemed like one of the few spots we could find. It turns out that we never got a picture of us ON the elephant, and so this was as good as we got to a picture with an elephant! (PS - this is NOT the elephant we rode on!)

Here is another shot of the Grand Palace. Inside the complex was the Emerald Buddha, which although cool, was too hard to photograph due to the poor lighting inside its housing.

As you might expect, Bangkok has one of the most impressive Buddhist temple complexes in the country. This is a shot of one of the sections of the Grand Palace with its ornate architecture.

Here's another wonderful shot within the Grand Palace.

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Nearby the Grand Palace is Wat Pho, which has one of the most impressive reclining Buddhas in Thailand! It is difficult to get an idea of the sheer size of this Buddha from the picture, but it is quite huge! The bottom of the feet of the Buddha are inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which is even more impressive! Inside the structure containing the Buddha was a long series of bowls in which the Thais would put one small coin in each bowl (there were dozens), so you would constantly hear the clanking of coins from the various worshipers!

For our final meal in Thailand, we decided to go to a nice place along the river in Bangkok (the Chao Phraya river). We used the recommendations of the Lonely Planet guidebook, which suggested a place on the opposite side of the river from all the tourist sights (Grand Palace, Wat Pho, etc.). We took a boat over to the other side, and sure enough, we were the ONLY westerners there! It was quite the experience being the large white people in a sea of Thais! We couldn't find the restaurant, and then figured out that Lonely Planet had SWITCHED the dots on their map and thus were across the river from the place we needed to be! Instead, we found another nice spot to eat, but had to wait for it to open. In the meantime, we had some Singha beer and found the above VERY cool mask and marionette store to browse through. The meal turned out to be wonderful (as was most of the food in Thailand!) and then we went back to our hotel, got a Thai massage, and then packed up to go home! It was a GREAT overall experience, and one we will NOT soon forget!!!