Thailand Pt 3- Last Day

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Day 3

The final day, two of our party left and it was just me, Scott, and Bangkok for the day. So the first thing we did on our last day was to hit the temple of the Reclining Buddha, Wat Pho (“wat-po”). The Buddha was fantastic! It was absolutely huge, 15 meters high and 46 meters long, that’s almost half a football field. It is totally plated in gold except the bottom of the feet, which are marble and have various designs that show the 108 characteristics of Buddha. I wish I had a decent camera so that I could have gotten all of it in a single photo, and at the same time showed its size in proper perspective. Instead I can just say it was…impressive.

We decided to leave the “Oriental City” and head north to Ayutthaya (“ah-you-tay-uh”) which was the original capital of Thailand, or Siam as it was previously known. As it is the old capital of Siam, it stands to reason that the old capital buildings are there; another way to say it is there are RUINS there. So we went north so that we could see ruins.

Our options of travel were to take a 1.5 hour minibus up which would cost about 300 baht (9 USD) or a train; we were feeling especially cheap towards the end of our trip, and we heard that the train, although a longer ride, was cheaper. So we walked to the station to find out the price. First we asked how much longer the trip would be, it was only 30 min. longer, which wasn’t bad at all. The second issue was the price, which we assumed wouldn’t be much better than the minibus considering the small difference in time. To our great surprise, we were told it was only 15 baht, 50 cents! Needless to say we took the train. It was a long and hot ride on a wooden bench. Thank God I was able to sit next to a window and get some form of breeze to cool me down. On the trip we saw the slums of Bangkok: small huts made out of rippled sheet metal, stacked on top of each other and alongside each other so closely that they were sharing the same piece of metal for their walls. There were little children running around with filthy shorts and sleeveless shirts that looked as if they may have been white at one point, like around the time when Jesus walked the earth. The laundry was strung across lines that hung over the muddy shallow streams that they were previously washed in. After about 20 minutes of that, we got started to see the countryside of Thailand. Central Thailand, heading towards the northern district, is really really flat. It was also very green. Lots of fields of I don’t know what, but there was lots of it.

As we neared our destination I began to worry that there wasn’t going to be anyone at the stop. After we had gotten an hour away from Bangkok we stopped seeing buildings and people near any of the train stops. People would get off the train, there would be a sign written in Thai labeling the stop, and they would walk away in between fields of green over wooden boardwalks and raised dirt paths, with not a building or other person in sight. Much to my relief however when we got there, there were people, houses, and small shops. Although it wasn’t clear where the ruins were, we walked 5 min. away from the train and crossed a small river to where we thought they should be. The river acted as a moat; it went all the way around the majority of the ruins. It took us about 30 minutes of aimless wandering when we got to the island that we finally saw the tip of a tower. The ruins were stone, concrete and brick. They date back as early as 1370, but much of them has been rebuilt and reinforced and are now protected and well kept. We paid the 500 baht (approx.15 USD) to get into the first set of ruins, and we walked around and saw everything. Then we got the next set of ruins and come to find out, you have to pay to get into each ruin individually, but we were being cheap once again and didn’t pay to get into any more of the ruins. Instead we walked along the outside fence and we took pictures from there. In between the ruins there were quiet fields of mowed lawn with a pond and some trees. It was a commons of sorts, so we walked around and saw a few more ruin parks, and then we saw a huge temple. We walked over because we weren’t doing anything else. Inside was another huge Buddha, this one happened to be sitting. So we did our best to take pictures of that one, and then we made our way back to the train.

Now the schedule showed that a train would run through there to Bangkok every 30-40 min. However, when we went up to buy tickets for the “next” train, the man behind the counter told us that another train wouldn’t be there for at least 3 hours. When we asked why this was so, we were told that there had been an accident south of our position and that no trains would be able to get through. Thankfully it was only a cargo train and no one was hurt, however after hearing that we decided the bus was a better option. Quick note: we researched the accident when we got back to Singapore, and we saw that there were 2 other accidents in the course of that week in Thailand; one of them killed 13 people. Point and case, DO NOT EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, take the train. So we caught the bus and went back to Bangkok.

That night, I went by myself to a Muay Thai boxing match. Got 2nd class seats to watch some guys try and kick the crap out of each other. It wasn’t very exciting at first; the weight class for the first match was 90 lbs, I was later told that they were 13 yrs old. They were quite aggressive though, trading kick for kick. Like I said, I was by myself and it just wasn’t much fun without another person to commentate with. Luckily though, I ran into two other Americans that were in Bangkok for the week. They were both from San Diego, but one was originally from the Boston area. I went over, said hi, and from that point on had a great time. The younger of the gentlemen (he had just graduated college) got into betting with one of the locals and that also made it very exciting. It was interesting to see how solemn and almost sacred it was to fight. The beginning ritual was very serious; it involved some cultural music coupled with choreographed movements around the ring. After they bowed to each other and the referee signaled to start, the music continued and the atmosphere exploded. It was one of my favorite parts of being in Bangkok City.
That is essentially the end of the trip. The next day we ate buffet breakfast, I picked up my suit, and we took a cab to the airport.

go here for pictures if you havn't already seen them:

http://s867.photobucket.com/albums/ab231/gonyaj/Thailand/

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