Lovin the Thai Public Transport!

Trip Start Nov 30, 2009
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Trip End Nov 06, 2010


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Saturday, April 10, 2010

Hopped on the public bus from Sukhothai to Ayutthaya. We were the only white people on the bus. It's the way to travel in Thailand.  It's much cheaper and you don't feel like a stupid 'farang' (thai for foreigner) being herded around like sheep. It can be more of a challenge trying to figure everything out by yourself, but it's much more rewarding in the end.

After being on the bus for a few hours, we started to look around to see how close we were and something didn't seem right. Felt like we were in the out skirts of Bangkok. And we were right. Ended up at the bus station in Bangkok and showed our bus driver our ticket when we got off the bus. He pointed us in the direction of an office and we walked in there. Showed them our ticket and they hooked us up with another bus from Bangkok to Ayutthaya for free.
Bike ride around the wats
Bike ride around the wats
 
Founded around 1350, Ayutthaya became the second capital of Siam after Sukhotai.
Throughout the centuries, the ideal location between China, India and the Malay Archipelago made Ayutthaya the trading capital of Asia and even the world. By 1700 Ayutthaya had become the largest city in the world with a total of 1 million inhabitants. Many international merchants set sail for Ayutthaya, from diverse regions as the Arab world, China, India, Japan, Portugal, the Netherlands and France. Merchants from Europe proclaimed Ayutthaya as the finest city they had ever seen. Dutch and French maps of the city show grandeur with gold-laden palaces, large ceremonies and a huge float of trading vessels from all over the world. All this came to a quick end when the Burmese invaded Ayutthaya in 1767 and almost completely burnt the city down to the ground.

Today, only a few remains might give a glimpse of the impressive city they must have seen. The city has many different styles of temples woven in with a modern city. The ruins of the old city now form the Aytthaya Historical Park, which is recognized internationally as a UNSECO World Heritage Site. 

We rented bikes and rode around town looking at the Wats that they have spread out everywhere. They were really cool, but you can only see so many wats before you get tired of them. And they all pretty much look the same. After seeing wats in Sukhothai and Ayutthaya we were all "watted out".

Next we headed out to Kanchanaburi!
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