We took the night train from Chiang Mai to Ayutthaya. Unfortunately, the train was running late so we didn't get to Ayutthaya until 6:45am. This was bad as we missed our appointment to get in our day room in the Sherwood Guest House. We got some breakfast at 7-11(a very common shop in Thailand) and waited until 7:30am for our friendly guest to come back after dropping her kid to school.
The city of Ayutthaya is the "old" capital of the Thai Kingdom. It was founded in 1350 by King U-Thong and the Thai kingdom was ruled from there by 33 Kings, until the Burmese successfully took it in 1767, sacked it, burnt it, and destroyed it. The city was abandoned after that and the seat of the kingdom moved to Bangkok, a city that was easier to protect as it was surrounded by swamps. Although terrible events, the good news for tourists is that the city is a treasure of temples and sights that remained unchanged for years. Most of the ruins of the old temples are part of the Ayutthaya Historical Park, a UNESCO world heritage site. Our first stop was Wat Mahathat, a well known site because of the Buddha head surrounded by the roots of a bodhi tree (with a special meaning as Buddha's awakening was under a bodhi tree). The head was actually buried under the ground and it has been slowly carry up by the tree.
The rest of the temple contains hundreds of headless Buddha statues (nobody could tell us why they were headless) and ruins of the "Grand Palace" just behind the temple. A reconstruction of a 20m tall column gives an idea of how magnificent the palace was. We were at the temple and palace just at opening time, so we had the place just to ourselves. Ayutthaya is a popular day trip from Bangkok, but most tourist don't arrive until 10:30am or 11am, so the morning is very quiet.
From Wat Mahathat, we headed to the monastery and temple of Wat Phra Ram. The tall Chedi commemorates the story of the two brothers, Chao Ai and Chao Yi, the two elder brothers that were fighting for the throne. They had a duel on an elephant with the result of both of them being killed. His younger brother, King Borom Rachathirat, built two pagodas and the Chedi to commemorate (celebrate?) the event that made him King.
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The Chedi was also the place of a robbery in the 50s. There were stories of a treasure hidden inside the Chedi, but before archeologists could find it, a band of thief found their way to it. The amazing treasure was split, and the major pieces were cut in small segments for easy transport. The thieves were captured and most of the pieces were recovered (except for a major gold piece for which only 1/3 was recovered). The treasure is now housed at the National Museum where we had the opportunity of seeing them later in the day.
Our next stop was Wihan Phra Mongkhon Bophit where a large, very large, bronze cast of Buddha is housed. This Buddha is the largest bronze statue in Thailand. This modern temple, in the shape of an oversized Swiss chalet replaced the original temple that was destroyed by the Burmese troops. The temple is next to the three spires of Wat Phra Si Sanphet which are the iconic view of Ayutthaya. These three bell-shaped chedi taper off into descending rings.
The temple is located in the Grand Palace compound and it was used as the private royal chapel of the Thai kings. It's believed that the temple contained a 16m high standing Buddha covered with gold. The Burmese troops, burned it down as a mean of extracting the gold in the surface. The resulting 250kg of gold were then taken as loot back to Burma. A surviving segment of the arm that gives an idea of the dimension of the statue can also be seen at the National Museum in Ayutthaya.
The temple are next to a beautiful park with nice reflecting ponds, a teak house, and an elephant camp. There is also plenty of shade for a picnic or for just escaping the Thai bright sun. After a brief visit to the Teak house, we headed towards the elephant camp. This was a more elaborated camp with the handlers dress up traditionally and the elephants carrying a large chair with a gold and red umbrella on top.
Cute picture to the left, right? Wrong. Without context, this picture looks like a young elephant doing a nice trick. In reality, it was one of the most brutal animal cruelty I have seen and it made me questioned how much fun I had with the elephant riding a few days ago. The young elephant was being trained and it wasn't very happy about it. Periodically it would try to rebel which was swiftly stopped by a hit of the cane held by the trainer. If you look carefully, you can see that the cane ends on a pike which was used to dig on the elephant skin and in some instances on the more sensitive skin behind his ears. This went on for a long time, with the elephant being abused every time he failed to follow the trainer's commands.
From the reclining Buddha, we headed back to our day room to have lunch and to take a shower before heading back to Bangkok. There were three possible ways to come back: train, bus, and mini bus. We decided to take the train. The decision was based on what would be closer to our hotel in Bangkok as we were going to arrive during rush hour. Our fare to Bangkok in third class was an amazing 20 Baht ($0.60). For reference of how cheap this 1.5 hour train ride was, the Tuk-Tuk that took us from the hotel to the train station charged 50 Baht. We arrived at Bangkok and quickly hop into a taxi. The driver was getting more and more upset about traffic, until he finally told us that we either pay 200 Baht (instead of the meter fare, which would be around 80 Baht) or we had to get out. We tried to negotiate to no avail so we left the car, leaving an unhappy driver as we declined to pay for the partial ride. We quickly spotted a Tuk Tuk, we a much cheerful driver, that took us to the hotel for 80 Baht.
From the hotel we went near the famous Khao San road (left) for our final dinner with our guide and the rest of the group. Some of then were continuing to Southern Thailand, some of them were heading home. I had an early flight the next day, so I declined the invitation for drinks at the highest building in Bangkok and returned to my hotel to get ready for my flight to Japan.
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