Day 5 Ayutthaya
Today I decided to take an organized tour to visit some of the sites outside of Bangkok. A nice air conditioned tour bus drove us through the countryside on a road the followed the river. There were many rice fields visible along the way and also the occasional banana plantation and other farms. We would pass some river barges and settlements of houses built on stilts as we went.
The first stop was the summer palace at Bang Pa-In, it dates from the 17th century and is sometimes used as a guest residence for visiting heads of state. The original main building burnt down during restoration some time ago and has been replaced by a beautiful building of Victorian architecture; some of the surrounding buildings show influence of Thai, Chinese and Italian design. The grounds are well maintained, as would be expected, with mirror like lakes and winding paths I could see how this would be a very relaxing place for the Royal family to get away.





A couple of the buildings on the grounds

Afterwards we headed to the ruins of Ayutthaya, the former capital of Siam. The area isn’t very large and the brick structures are in various stages of decay. The site is known for the statues of the headless Buddhas, the guide said the heads were stolen but he didn’t explain it very well so I don’t know if he meant by vandals, archeologists, or an invading army. It takes about 45 minutes to see the site, an audio guide can be rented at the entrance if you desire to go at your own pace. The Thais are very protective of Buddha and there are some rules that must be observed, such as don’t position your head on the neck of the Buddha for a picture. There is one head that someone placed amidst the roots of a tree, that has now grown around it; to take a photo it is required to get down very low as you cannot not have your head higher than Buddha’s.











The ruins of Ayutthaya



Buddhas head grown in the tree

The brochure stated we would return up the river by boat, and many of us thought that meant the whole, but rather they drove us to the outskirts of Bangkok where we boarded a luxury river cruise boat for a buffet lunch on our way back to downtown. I sat with a young Irish couple and a fellow from Australia who had come to Thailand to get some dental work done. Thailand is popular for medical tourism, the doctors are skilled, hospitals clean and modern, and the prices are a fraction of what you would pay at home. He said he had been here 5 weeks and hadn’t had a real conversation with anyone since he arrived, and you could tell because once he got going he didn’t stop. He did have a lot of useful insight into Bangkok, and later on the upper deck I got the full run down on the “bar girl” scene ( I guess they really don’t work for the Chamber of Commerce).
The heat in Bangkok is really intense at times, so once I got back to the hotel I went up to the rooftop pool for a nice refreshing swim and some cold drinks; not expecting much sympathy from my friends in Buffalo where the wind chill was forecast to be -17 below zero. I headed over to Nana Market for dinner, but didn’t stick around long as I have a morning flight to Chiang Mai, in the north, tomorrow.

Those ruins are spooky looking

Amazing