there is so much to see in thailand outside of the city. this past sunday stephanie and i went to see the ruins in ayutthaya. it is a city just a little over an hour north of bangkok and was the capital of the country before bangkok was, and before it got the name thailand, from the mid 1300s to the mid 1700s when it was burnt down the burmese. the religion of that time was still buddhism though, and so there are many temples and wats, or at least piece of them, still left to be seen.
we took a mini bus from pinklao and left around 10. it was pretty easy and we got there around 1130. we decided we were hungry and tried to find a place and beth and neil recommended from when they visited the week before, but apparently, soi 1 is extremely hard to come by. we settled for a nice little restaurant on the side of the street and got some thai food while we planned out our day.
the city itself isnt too big, but there is a lot to see. so we decided to take the popular option of renting bicycles for the day. this is what i was most excited about. i dont remember the last time i rode a bike, and considering how hot of a day it was (nevermind that this is suppose to be the 'cool' season, its all relative), riding was the only time we had to cool down because we actually got a breeze.
after we found some bikes, and a map which we could decipher, we went right down the street to our first stop, wat mahathat. its one of the most popular because it is home to one of the most famous images in thailand:
its a buddhas head amongst the roots of the tree. before getting there, we had seen this image on postcards and in pictures, and so seeing it was awesome. the best part of that way, and probably the day, was the puppies. when we went to walk up on part of the ruins, we were hesitant because no one else was and we thought it wasnt allowed. once we got up though, we noticed why no one was venturing up there. by the other set of stairs was a mother dog, quite literally guarding her litter of pups (there were 8!) and growling at anyone who came in her view and too close to her babies. steph and i were watching from above, and so eventually she stopped growling at us, and we named some of the puppies based on their personality and looks, like chubby (see picture), beached-whale, and fighter. we wanted to take them home.
reluctantly, we left the cuties and went to our next stop, just across the street, wat ratchaburana. this one was cool because we were actually able to climb in and around the remains, up through steps and stuff. it is the one that has been most restored, but the site is amazing.
from there, we had heard about the temple with three pillars, or wat phra si san phet. its built on the grounds of what was the grand palace back when ayutthaya was the capital, and the three pillars, or chedi as they are referred to in the buddhist culture, contain the ashes of three different kinds from that kingdom. it was at this point that i noticed that there was really something wrong with my camera, as every picture was overexposed, even on automatic setting, and whenever i tried to change a setting an error message would occur. in fact, i got really annoyed with it and most of these picture are awful, but im including them so that everyone can see what im talking about here.
past some elephants while biking
the last place we knew we wanted to see was the big lounging buddha, known as wat lokaya sutharam. however, our map was misleading, or rather, we were pretty bad at reading it, and wound up cycling through almost the entirety of the old city before we came upon it. needless to say, by the time we got there we were hot, sweaty, and feeling pretty gross.
we snapped some pictures because we were there, but neither of us were feeling up to it. besides, even though its impressive and there are not pillars blocking it, i had just seen wat pho, which was bigger and gold. so since we were tired and had seen the main things we had come to see, we decided to head back and return the bikes. we had plans to do a sunday roast back in bangkok, so we wanted to leave before too late. even though that didnt end up happening, leaving when we did was good....if only we had puppysnatched before doing so.....
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