Photos: Ayutthaya

Various Temples around the old capital, Ayutthaya

Elaborate murals inside crypt of one of the temples. We had to climb down a couple of steep staircases and endure the awful stench of bat pee, to see these!

A bronze statue dating back to about 1000 yrs ago! It was one of our favorites! 

Monks on tour!

So many beheaded statues! A result of the war with the Burmese.

Buddha head in banyan tree! How did it get there? There are several theories...

Ayutthaya, Thailand

January 22 (day trip)

On the day before our last day in Bangkok, we made the trip to Ayutthaya.  The local bus station of Bangkok was close to Julie's apartment and a quick 20 min taxi ride got us there.  The bus ride was quite convenient, but what surprised us the most was the urbanization of Ayutthaya.  We were expecting to be dropped off in a quaint town like Sukhothai, but , the urbanization of Bangkok has poured out and has now enveloped Auytthaya.

 On reaching Ayutthaya, we tried to look around for a map, but found none. Luckily, we bumped into a couple of German tourists who had finished their tour of the city and they had managed to photocopy a map which they generously shared with us, and we graciously accepted. We later found out that most of the maps are with all the  tuk-tuk drivers who will try to convince you to ride with them.  On hindsight, we should have probably gone with the tuk-tuk drivers, since the sun was beating down, but having biked around in Sukhothai, we decided to go with renting bikes.

We found a bike rental nearby, and before heading out to see the sights, we had wanted to eat something. After trying to look for a place in downtown Ayutthaya, we decided that most of the streetside stalls did not look very appetizing, and ended up going to a local pizza chain.  After food, we biked to the first wat structure.  Here the Buddhist temples were mostly built out of red firebricks and the ruins were large.  The very first chedi we visited had a museum and a crypt inside it.  We walked into the crypt to discover various colorful paintings on the inner walls.  We could not stand there for long, since the air was very stuffy . In my enthusiasm to get up quick, I bumped my head on the stair case (Ouch!!!). [Nicole writes: I felt suffocated especially due to the pungent smell of bat pee, surrounding us!!].

We also read with much disgust and regret, regarding the looting of these structures for all the gold and various artifacts which are now making the rounds in the international art market.   Destruction, looting and ruining seems to run in our blood (as evidenced from the various ruins we have visited in our travels).  I just hope at some point, we can create something long-lasting instead of destroy that which has lived beyond our years.

Next, we wanted to visit the working temple next to the Queens palace and an adjacent temple, with three large stupas, in ruins.  Both of these are a part of the central complex in Ayutthaya which is largely visited by tourists. Before going there, we were way-led to another functioning temple with a large sitting Buddha.  After realizing that we were at the wrong place, we made our way to the central complex. But then again, we lost our way near the complex and had to circle around a kings temple which had a gopura like a Hindu temple.  This structure was very reminiscent of a what we had seen in Sukhothai and we did not venture in to see it any closer.

We finally made it to the intended complex next to the Queens palace.  The image of the three stupas has become synonymous with Ayutthaya and they look quite impressive from a distance.  After parking our bikes, we first had some fresh tender coconut water which was very much needed.  The sun was blazing hot and we were losing a ton of fluids.

After some much needed re-hydration, we first went to the temple with a large Buddha statue made out of bronze.  This Buddha statue is really beautiful with mother of pearl eyes.  We were very happy to sit inside the temple and away from the sun for a little while.  I made an interesting observation during our travels which played out in this temple as well. Most of the foreign tourists including myself, were found hanging around the fans, while the locals moved around , as if the weather was normal.  This time though, I was really glad for the shade and grumbled when I had to move on to the next stop.

Next we visited a temple in ruins with the three large stupas. We managed to squeeze in another tender coconut along the way.  The three stupas are very big and impressive.  We walked into the core of a stupa, only to smell very strong bat pee...(yikes..) and ran out again. The place was very popular with tourists (who were posing in crazy ways) and we even found  a couple of local models who were shooting with the stupas in the background.

After this, we decided to go to another temple in another part of the town.  This involved some adventurous biking in the middle of the city traffic.  Just before entering the temple, we bought some boiled peanuts from a local (yummy!!!).  The Buddha statue in this temple was unlike any other I have seen before.  The statue is made from bronze, and the Buddha is actually wearing regular clothes, and his face has a much more Indian feature to it (an extremely sharp nose).  It looked more like Siddhartha, just after he became Gautama.  We again sat down in this temple for a while (right next to the fans :), to cool off.  Right next to this bronze statue temple, was another  smaller temple with a 1000 year old iron-casting of a Buddha with a unibrow..... Buddha it seems, is omnipresent in Thailand.  We made a lotus offering at this temple.

After this, it was time for us to head back toward the center of the town and visit our last big temple called, Wat Mahathat.  The ruins are mostly of red firebricks with a few large chedis in the center.  There were a lot of stone Buddha statues, but the heads had been smashed up - mostly during a Burmese army invasion in this area. In this temple, we also saw a Buddha head buried in between a Banyan tree, which makes for a very unique spectacle. [Nicole writes: there are a couple of theories of how this Buddha head became entwined by the roots of the Banyan tree, though nobody knows exactly how or why].

After visiting this site, we were pretty much "templed out".  We came back to the center of the town and debated going even further to visit the largest sleeping Buddha outside the town.  We began to head out to the location, but halfway through, the traffic got crazy and we were the only cyclists on the road. With the blazing sun over us, we re-thought our plan to continue on.  We decided that we did not have the enthusiasm to do this part of the trip and just headed back and returned out cycles. [Nicole writes: I'm the one to blame! Not being used to city biking, I started to freak out at the craziness of trying to bike on even busier roads going toward the site of the sleeping Buddha... it wasn't worth risking our lives, just to see one more Buddha!].

The evening bus took about an hour, and we landed in Bangkok right in time for dinner.

Back to Bangkok

January 21 - 23

We boarded  an overnight bus to get to Ayutthaya and were supposed to arrive in Ayutthaya around 4 am. Once on the bus, the thought as to how we would know when to get off the bus did cross my mind. Tiredness, however, overcame me and the thought never materialized into any outward question - I happily fell asleep soon after the bus departed from Sukhotai station. At about 5 am, I was shaken out of sleep by Rakesh who whispered: "I think we may have missed our stop!" It was shortly after that, when we discovered that the bus conductor did not announce stops along the way. Until this date, we actually don't know if we missed our stop, or if we got on the wrong bus!...nevertheless, we arrived in Bangkok and headed to straight for Julie's apartment. It was a blessing in disguise. Both of us were pretty tired and most likely would not have been able to appreciate Ayutthaya, as much.

That day we slept, took it easy and in the evening went out to another place that Julie and Alex had recommended. Asiateque The Riverfront, is a fairly recent "hangout"area of old warehouses that have been converted into restaurants and boutique stores. It is located by the Chao Phraya river bank and to get there we had to get a taxi boat. The place was buzzing with tourists and locals that night (even though a week night!). We walked around for a bit and ended up in an Italian restaurant. The food was pretty good, but VERY expensive for Thai standards!

The next day we got a late morning bus to Ayutthaya. We were still determined to get there, as it's only 2 hours away from Bangkok. More on Ayutthaya in the next post.

In the evening (our last in Thailand) we had dinner at a nearby bar/restaurant that we had gone to one other time. We were enticed, once again, by their Belgian beers and some pretty good fries!

Since Rakesh was only granted 2 weeks of stay in Thailand, we were required to move on the next day. I had my heart set on coming back to Thailand, as I was quite certain we would get to spend some relaxing time on some beaches, snorkeling and swimming, off the coast or on some island. We thought, we would come back, but with all the other neighbouring countries and places we wanted to visit, we realized we would not have the time to return to Thailand (at least not on these travels!). We certainly made up in other ways...

Photos: Sukhotai

All photos taken inside main historic park, unless specified

 Our rather unsuccessful attempt at posing like Buddha statues!

We each had one of these fancy red bikes to ride on for the day. They definitely helped us to cover most of the park in one day!

 Interesting figurines, most likely left as an offering

Largest Buddha statue we saw, in main historic park. Statue enclosed within a brick stupa.

Catching the sun descending in the late afternoon while visiting some temples outside the main park.

The "bus" (sǎwngthǎew) to get to/from old city of Sukhotai

Sukhothai, Thailand

January 20 to 21

We had an afternoon bus from Chiang Mai to Sukhothai. The bus ride was sold to us as being 4 hours , but took more like 6 hours.  In Sukhothai, we hired a tuk-tuk to take us to the hostel.  We always called our hostel whenever possible to enquire about local transport prices and were able to bargain a good price for the ride.

At the hostel, we were shown into a room with really thin walls and not enough space.  As we were staying there for only 2 nights, and mostly being out during the day, we decided not to complain and just went with the flow. Dinner was on a streetside cafe at night.  We ordered a rather watery tom ga kai soup and shared a salad.  After dinner, I was ripped off by a lady selling boiled peanuts!!! Why do peanuts cost so much????

The next day morning, we wanted to beat the crowds and went to take the earliest bus which would leave at 7am from the new Sukhothai district to the historic park. We had a little trouble finding the bus that goes between the two towns.  The "bus" is a modified truck with two rows of  seats. I never realized this before, but Sukhothai is a UNESCO world heritage center, and for a good reason, too.  It has one of the biggest collections of wat chedis we have seen.

The bus pulled into the old city by 7.30am.  We had breakfast at a local cafe, hired bikes and started our trip. By 8.30am the park already seemed full with crowds pouring in.  I guess everybody reads the same guidebooks.  Anyway, we had an interesting start in the park.  On that particular day, a sports event was being held with the end point being the Sukhothai park.  Outside our first Wat chedi, there was a huge stage and announcements were being made loudly over the speaker. Great!!! We were worried that this whole loudspeaker thing would ruin our trip, but 5 minutes later into the park, everything was quiet and peaceful.

There are too many chedis to name and keep track of.  We essentially followed a basic map that was provided at the park entrance.  Most of the chedis are made from red bricks, but there are some structures which are older and made from volcanic rock.  The Buddha is found in various shapes and sizes and in various postures.  There are some details around the stupas, but most of it has eroded.

Just before lunch, in the heart of the park, near the king's statue we found an old inscription stone in ancient Thai.  I spoke with a couple of school kids regarding this.  They were the ones who told me that this was ancient Thai script.  They showed some text from their books and the difference was clear.  What was remarkable, was the similarity this script had with some of the south Indian languages, including my own, kannada.  I made a copy of the script to show it to my family.

We then broke for lunch where we went to a guidebook recommended restaurant.  The restaurant name was a play on coffee something.  We found half a dozen restaurants which had coffee-something for their name!!! We managed to find the original recommendation, and had a fairly heavy lunch.

Post lunch, I was in the mood for sleep, but we had too many places to see.  We biked around to two ruins outside of the main park.

The first was a stupa which had elephant pillars at the base.  This was a very unique stupa and was appropriately called Chang Lom.  Chang is a Thai word for elephant. From Chang Lom, we headed north to another park.  Here we first encountered ruins of what appeared to be a huge temple complex, but only the foundation had survived.  Right across from this ruin and in the midst of tamarind trees stood, two Hindu styled gopura.  This was another older Hindu temple belonging to Shiva which had been converted to a Buddhist place of worship.  Interestingly some of the naga and garuda motifs were still intact on the outside walls. Here again, the ancients had stacked up massive stones to build a 60ft tall gopura.  The trick behind stacking up huge stones was eating away at my mind.  Even with beasts of burden (in this case, elephants), they must have possessed extraordinary skills for their time to pull this off.

North of these gopura structures, we visited one of the biggest sitting Buddha statues we have seen.  The Buddha is enclosed in a massive fort like structure which pretty much hugs the statue.  The statue is atleast 70 ft tall.  It had some of the most beautifully long Buddha fingers we have seen.  Locals who come to pray have attached gold leaf offerings to the Buddhas fingers and this part of the statue was shining yellow.  Nicole and I had managed to come to this statue before any other tourists waltzed in, so we were lucky to get a unhindered shot of the Buddha. The fort enclosing the statue has a few narrow passageways and is supposed to have some carvings.  These are now closed for the public and we could only make out a few lotus carvings at the entrance gate to the passages.

Outside the Buddha statue, we encountered a massive mango tree at least a 100ft tall.  This completely unleashed suppressed emotions in me and I could not help but hug the tree.  At the entrance of the road to our house, in Bangalore, for the longest time that I can remember, there once stood two similar trees.  Two giant pillars that had probably taken a hundred years to grow so tall and big.  Then one fine day we (people) cut them down, so that we (people) could make room for one more car to pass by on the road.  When the trees went down, I was in the US, and of course, coming back home did not feel the same ever again. This tree in Sukhothai had brought back those forgotten memories and had cheered me up.  I hope that the tree survives for years to come, and that the Buddha has mercy on us wretched selfish creatures who brought down the two trees in Bangalore.

From here, we embarked on one of the most fun parts of the trip to Sukhothai.  It was getting late in the evening and we were debating if we had enough time to visit the smaller stupas which are much further away from the main center.  We decided to go along with the plan and were richly rewarded. The entrance to this part of the park was about 5km which we covered on the main highway by bicycle.  Once we entered the park, we took a smaller gravel road, which went along various stupas, hidden away in wild country and atop small hillocks. We had some great views of the Thai countryside from one such hillock.  We also encountered a small fire burning in the forest and later realized that this was a controlled fire that was set by the forest trooper to burn off all the excess leaves around the monuments (what a dangerous way to handle dry leaves in a dry forest!!!!). [Nicole writes: I began to freak out. Even though part of me wondered whether it was a controlled fire, another part of me wondered if it was arsen (the latter taking hold of me)! There was nobody in sight for a while, but then luckily, a trooper came by and with some sign language, my nerves were appeased - he motioned to us that it was ok, but then he continued on!!??]. Finally the road leading back to the main park, took us through some Thai countryside and this was a spectacular bike ride.  Nicole and I even managed to shoot a video from our cycles to record this moment for posterity :).

We got back in time to return our rented bikes and headed back to the new city.   The evening was spent in our hostel eating some more great Thai food and chatting to fellow travellers (mainly with one from Scotland). Later, we caught a night bus heading off to Ayutthaya (or so we thought...!).

Postscript:
Unfortunately, the bus that we got on was heading off to Bangkok and stopping along the way at various cities.  Nicole and I having no clue as to what Ayuthayya looked like, and also being sleepy in a night bus, missed our stop in Ayutthaya and headed off straight to Bangkok!!!!
Ayutthaya it seems , had to be conquered another day.....