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Wat Phra Mahathat
Early morning at the Wat Ayutthaya, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a former capital city of Siam, a place we’d never visited, and a mere 2.5 hrs. drive from Kanchanaburi, so it was decided, Ayutthaya would be next on our Itinerary before we headed back to Bangkok to see in The New Year.
After weighing up our options we decided to book ourselves onto one of the dreaded tourist minivans, it was the quickest way to get from A to B in this instance and I’d read up about the do’s and don’ts beforehand. I arranged for the staff at the hotel to call the travel agency to book our seats, I also asked if they could request that we were the first pick up in order to bag the best seats…….which they did; so apart from the driver jumping a red light on the way out of Kanchanaburi and getting stopped by the police, we had a reasonably good journey and were dropped off right outside our hotel in Ayutthaya at around 4pm.
When we checked into Somjai Place the guy on reception gave us a photocopied map of the area and highlighted the sites that he thought were the most impressive or
Seated Buddha
Keeping an eye on things of interest to us. I knew there was a daily market close to our hotel which was allegedly in the “backpacker area” so we asked him about that as well and he advised us that it was open from 8pm to 2am………that was our evening’s entertainment sorted, markets in Thailand always have food stalls and lots of bars!!!!
Wandering around the streets in close proximity to the hotel we were disappointed in the fact that there didn’t seem to be any restaurants, bars or other backpackers around, in fact during our two night stay we failed to find any of the afore mentioned at all………maybe it was like Alex Garlands “The Beach” and required a special map!!! Not to be put off, we emerged after a quick shower and change onto the now dark streets of Ayutthaya, not only dark but also deserted much to our frustration. We sauntered on down to the market in the hope that we’d find all the action going on but to our annoyance the market stalls were all packing up for the day……for god’s sake it’s 8.15pm!!!, which goes to show that language barriers cause confusion. The market trading hours were obviously 2pm
Buddha head entwined in a tree
It's considered disrespectful to have your picture taken with your head higher than Buddha's as I found out when the guard blew his whistle at me to 8pm and not 8pm to 2am as we’d been informed. We ate in a lovely little local place opposite the now empty market where the owners really looked after us and served up the most absolutely delicious Thai food and threw in a Thai lesson for free, after which we had no option but to retire to the hotel for an early night.
We needed a scooter to get ourselves around Ayutthaya, the guide books talk about hiring bicycles but there was no way we were navigating ourselves around in the blistering heat by pedal power, no thanks, not ever!! The guy on reception sorted us out with a scooter so we set off with our photocopied map to experience the sites of this UNESCO World Heritage Site, unbeknown to us we were too early for our first chosen site of the day so decided to do a little bit of exploring to see if we could find the elusive backpacker area…..ever the optimists!!! We didn’t find it at all but what we did find was that the scooter we’d been given was a heap of shit and kept cutting out and failing to re-start, so back to
the hotel we went to exchange it for a rather fetching pink machine which Barry hated and I loved, the guy at the hotel confessed that he knew the scooter we’d originally been given was in need of some attention, thanks for that mate!!!!!
The sites marked on our precious map turned out to be quite worthy of seeing, although quite spread out it was nice to be able to do them at our own pace once we actually found them, and we did actually enjoy our morning at Wat Phra Mahathat, Wat Ratchaburana and some other sites that I’m unable to remember the names of. Being inland Ayutthaya gets really, really hot and sticky so we had several stop offs for drinks and to give ourselves time to cool off from the relentless heat. It was during one of these stop offs that we realised the guy from the hotel had totally marked the hotel location wrong on our map, no wonder we’d had trouble finding our way around, he’d put the hotel two streets away from where it actually was…..thanks again mate!!!!
The afternoon was more of the same, site seeing further afield we headed for
the floating market that the reception guy had said would be worth a visit. If you’re reading this and thinking about entertaining the idea of visiting the floating market in Ayutthaya, DON’T BOTHER!!! There’s actually nothing “floating” about it. The market is housed in enormous warehouses built on a wooden pier next to a canal and has some of the weirdest and wackiest things on display that you are likely to see. The place was heaving with domestic tourists who were lapping up the atmosphere alongside forlorn looking foreign tourists who like us, were wondering what the hell we were doing in a ram packed theme park in one of Thailand’s ancient capitals……bizarre!!!! It was time for a sharp exit and feeling slightly disheartened by our market experience we wondered whether we should just call it a day and return to the hotel for a snooze, after all it’d been an early start and the heat was knocking us out. After consulting the map we decided on doing one last site, and we were so glad we did.
The big Buddha is situated at Wat Phanan Choeng south of Ayutthaya and an absolute nightmare to get to due to
the queues of traffic all heading in the same direction; luckily we were able to jump the queues on the scooter. The Buddha is absolutely stunning, he’s the biggest and oldest gilded Buddha in town, constructed in 1344 and sitting at 19 metres tall he’s actually an amazing sight and draws in the worshippers and tourists in their thousands. We were literally swept along with the crowds of people all jostling to get their glimpse of Buddha; we love Thai Wats especially the working ones like this, the smell of the incense, the saffron clad monks, the gilded artefacts and the serenity always make for an interesting visit. We were lucky enough to be there when the dressing of the Buddha ceremony was taking place; worshippers are invited to purchase swathes of gold cloth which is then draped around Buddha whilst the congregation chant and monks bless the crowds with holy water, another new experience for us!! and it more than made up for the bad experience that we had left behind at the market.
Two nights was more than enough for us in Ayutthaya, and whilst we weren’t particularly looking for a wild night out it would have
been good to have had the option of at least a couple of bars and restaurants within walking distance of each other. The sites are quite impressive but to be honest we felt we’d wasted precious time in Ayutthaya, it could have been covered in a daytrip from Bangkok which is exactly where we were heading next………..bring on the New Year!!!!
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