Bangkok - Day trip to Ayutthaya (the former capital of Thailand)

As you may have read, yesterday we planned on taking it easy, seeing as we were still tired from the week of no sleep at the WFFT, but it didn't really work out the way we planned and we ended up being on our feet about 5 extra hours.

So today Rony wisely changed our plans and decided we should take a day trip to Ayutthaya instead since it involved a 1.5 hour train ride in each direction and would allow us to sight-see and rest simultaneously. Being the dutiful girlfriend that I am, I followed.

Also, I really can only find our hotel.

Ones of the rare whole Buddhas remaining in Ayutthaya ruins

Ayutthaya used to be the capital city of Thailand, and at one point was the largest city in the world when it boasted 1 million citizens. Most of the historical areas of the city are actually ruins, having been destroyed and left to burn back in 1767 by the Burmese army.

End of history lesson.

Let me start with this: Historic Ayutthaya is really nice. The town itself is kinda grungy, but that's OK.

Don't worry, they have 7-Elevens, so they're cool.

Anyway, most of what you'll see there is ruins, and it's a nice breath of fresh air (when you're not on the main road) - literally and a change from Bangkok.

Getting there is really easy. We took the Metro (MTR, not the Sky Train) to the end of the line, which is Hua Lamphong, and from there we took a Thai train. What I mean by Thai train is that everyone on it, except us and a few others, is Thai. It also means that the cost of the train's 1 hour and 45 min ride to Ayutthaya is - wait for it - $0.47. The touristy train comes less often and costs about 10 times as more, which still isn't a lot of money, but you can buy a lot in Thailand for that amount. And since we'll be backpacking for 4 months, we figure we should be as frugal as possible.

The train isn't air conditioned, but it's an open train, so there's lots of air, no bad smell, and people are walking up and down the aisles selling food and drinks all the time (and the locals buy it).

As everywhere else in Thailand, the people at the train station and everyone in Ayatthuya was incredibly friendly, none more than the very old and very drunk man on the train who "God bless you"'d us more than once and told me I was beautiful.

Now before you think the comment was because he was under the influence, please note that I was told 4 (four) times today that I am beautiful, none by people I know. Well, once I told Rony that, he said it too, of course, so that's 5, but the first 4 lead me to believe that either 1) Everyone in Thailand is drunk or 2) I am a goddess.

I'm going with #2.

We arrived in Ayatthuya, where the locals drive as marvelously as the people of Bangkok, and then took a 2-minute ferry to cross the river that cost a whopping 12 cents per person (per direction, 25 cents round trip, if you will) and then started walking.

So here's the thing. We didn't have a map and didnt' really know where we were going. But we never ended up in Harlem, Ayatthuya, so we were fine. As usual, everyone was very friendly, but most spoke even worse English than in Bangkok, so we took to asking the few tourists we could find where we could get a map.

The head of the sandstone Buddha image in Wat Mahathat

Eventually, after walking through another typical market, we arrived at our first location: Wat Mahathat. Like basically all of historic Ayatthuya, Wat Mahathat is mostly ruins of a Temple. The place was burned down, and even though much of it has survived, it is mostly black, and almost all of the Buddhas have had their heads chopped off. It's very sad, in our opinion, that someone would disrespect someone's beliefs that way, but most of the Buddhas are like that now there.

Once we finished walking around that area and the one by it, we sat down at the cutest coffee shop/guest house. Their mocha was great, and even though we didn't eat there, we loved that all of their food was offered in two different sized portions: Big and very big. The owner was incredible sweet and so very helpful. Since we didn't really know what we wanted to see (the change of plans was literally this morning), we asked her what the best places to go were, and she told us - and she was right.

One Love - the coffee shop/guesthouse/tuk tuk negotiator where we asked for directions

The best part was that she actually negotiated a tuk tuk price for us. Generally the rates there go for about 250-300 Baht ($7-9) per hour, but she got it down to 150 Baht ($4.70) for us by saying that we are her guests. The place is called Coffee One Love, and it's a bit more expensive than most places in Thailand that we've seen so far, but still very low budget, and we were so tired from updating the blog until 2 am, that we really needed the coffee pick-me-up (which was delicious).

The place we went next used to be a temple, also destroyed by the Burmese, named Wat Chaiwatthanaram. It was so far from everywhere else, that the only way to get there is by tuk tuk or cab. Another popular option is to rent a bike or a motorcycle, but we didn't want to die.

Wat Chaiwatthanaram

This temple is magnificent. At first we couldn't really understand why she recommended it, but when we saw the last side of the temple - wow. See for yourself in the Facebook pics, it's just gorgeous!

At this point, we had another hour that we could have been walking around for, but we were exhausted, so we went back to the guest house where we were picked up and walked the 30-minute walk back to the river and just waited for the train.

All in all, we had a really great time, and the (relative) rest today was really needed. Rony is lucky, he can sleep whenever he decides he wants to, but me? Not so much. So I'm updating the blog. It's only 12:20 am, though, but I will go to sleep soon becuase we have a long day tomorrow including temples in Bangkok and a flight to Chiang Mai.

Talk to y'all soon!

P.S. More pictures in our album on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=567114&id=906005363&l=0f03363831 (We added today's pics to the Bangkok album)