So here I am, in Ayuthaya. The town is not to big and I came here for to see the former capital of Siam, before Bangkok became the main city. Right, Thailand is Siam in case you didn’t know it 😉
Got stuck a bit here, but could use the time to relax, meet some other folks and make my travel plans more concrete to make the best out of my time here.
I arrived here two days ago, during the afternoon. Didn’t feel too well that day, headache, dizziness, 37 degrees body temperature. I wasn’t sure whether I got any of those tropical maladies, but at the end it turned out to be just a bit of overheating and dehydration. No wonder, I was in the local folks‘ bus for hours, sitting on the „sunny side of life“ and fell into sleep, of course without wearing a hat. Some bottles of water and a good rest the first night helped it.
Yesterday I rented a bike for 40 baht, that is 1 Euro. I saw nearly everything that is to see here and that is a couple of ruins of those temples from the time when Ayuthaya was the capital of Siam. Actually it was the longest serving capital in the country’s history. But man, those ruins are quite impressive! One can unfortunately only imagine, how big the place must have been once. But they have a fairly good study centre about that time here, with models and maps of the city of that time and that helps understanding a lot. The country and the city were so important that a couple of European countries had their envoys and ambassadors here, like the Dutch, French, British etc.
During the late afternoon we (two Aussies and I) did a boat tour around the rivers and channels here, and also saw some temples at the other side. Quite impressive as well, if you stand at the foot of a 15m high sitting Buddha, viewing down on you. Unfortunately our boat had a breakdown (empty batteries), but help was there rather quick.
Otherwise there’s not much to see here. Greg and Jim, the Australian guys and I decided to go to Chiang Mai together from here. Unfortunately we couldn’t make the bus yesterday any more, so we had to wait for today’s night bus. Travelling during the day for 13 hours on the train wasn’t really an appealing option. So we will travel tonight on an ultra-modern, VIP bus with sleeping seats and be in Chiang Mai – the „Capital of the North“ tomorrow at 6:00 in the morning. And 300 baht isn’t too much for such a ride.
Yep, folks, that’s it from here. I’d say, if you are stationed in Bangkok, it’s fine to do a daytrip up here if it is only for the ruins. If you want to relax and hang out, you can do this here of course as well, but Kanchanaburi is better suited for this, I guess – of course this is just my personal opinion 😉
Actually there are some quite nice ruins of former temples here and they have a quite good, though quite small museum on the Ayuthaya time. In former times the city must have been quite big and a lot of European countries had their ambassadors here. Today there is unfortunately not much left except those ruins, but they are still impressive.
The nice thing about the town is, it is completely flat.