Temples of Ayutthaya
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2010
1
3
26
Trip End
Apr 16, 2010
Where I stayed
Ban Sun Pra Guest House
Ayutthaya, Thailand
Saturday, January 16, 2010
We got off the train from Bangkok at night took a boat over one of the rivers (Pa Sak), you see Ayutthaya is an island surrounded by 3 rivers: Chao Phraya, Lopburi and Pa Sak, and walked to so far the best Guest House in Thailand - "Ban Sun Pra Guest House". An old, authentic teak wood house with beautifully aranged rooms full of genuine antiques and an amazing setup, right on the river across from a gorgeous Buddhist Monastery. Really, perfect!
Next morning off we went to visit the Temples. The Historical Park of Ayutthaya is pretty much part of the city, unfortunately, but we rented bicycles for the day ( a little more than $1) and it was perfect. Made our way from temple to temple in 30+ Celsius taking hundreds of pictures until exhausted ended up back to the guest house for an amazing dinner. Not just the setting is fantastic, so is the food, so far there is only one other place in Mae Sot ("Aiya" Restaurant) that can compete with it, kudos to the chef!!
It was a beautiful evening at the end of a good day, with good company and good food, beer (of course) and happy feelings. What could go wrong? Nothing you would say. Wroooong!!
What I left out from the story was the lunch. Yes, the lunch! On the side of a temple under some "Pepsi" umbrellas, in the heat, me picking up something from a pictured menu and ending up with something that look nothing like what I ordered... OK it was a papaya salad with seafood. Honestly I couldn't taste the papaya part of the salad and the seafood turned out to be tiny little crabs, like the ones you see on Vancouver beaches, and when I say tiny I say Loony size (one Canadian dollar coin) crabs. Too late to send it back, the "Chef" was off packing the leftovers from other lunches in a bag for... I suppose the piggy at home...? So I ate! Did I mention I was HUNGRY?!
That night was a beautiful night, the breeze was gentle blowing through the trees, once in a while you could hear a night bird calling, a boat was slowly going down the river .... There was something of a completely different nature you could hear from the shared bathrooms! Let me just say that I got very intimately acquainted with every square inch of that bathroom stall, every crack on the floor, every mosquito or whatever the hell were those creatures crawling, every sticker on the walls. I stared at all of that the few times when I could un-squint my eyes and breathe in for few glorious moments.
The dawn came quietly, outside of the bathroom area. After a while, exhausted but happy that I can stand again, I went to bed for another hour.
Everything was fine, that day I ate toast for breakfast and lunch, no beer at dinner time (Darn!). The problem was riding the bike... and it was another 30+ Celsius day...
We liked the city so much we decided to stay one more day and one thing worth doing was to take a boat ride around Ayutthaya, stopping at few temples and ending up at dusk meeting the Elephants on the side of the river. Beautiful creatures, gentle and sweet, touched us literally and in our hearts. These are the working elephants, although I couldn't find out what is the work that they do, and at dusk they come home take a bath, eat and settle for the night.
It was hard to leave Autthaya the next morning, we had a really good time there, not to mention I developed a special connection with that bathroom.... But we moved on to the next spot: Sukhotay the capital of the first Thai kingdom.
Comments
Hey Tony, you're supposed to connect to people not bathrooms along the way :-)
Nevertheless, your unique connections make for great stories. Stay healthy and have fun!!!