Thailand - Day 7 Ayuthaya

Today was an excursion to Ayuthaya. So again, went to our breakfast buffet as usual. Today I think it was vegetarian noodles. All tasty stuff.

Went to the local bus/van station to take the van to Ayuthaya. It turns out that it goes to the main bus station, where we will have to change vans. It was little confusing but we made it.  The drive was about 40 mins. The roads were all great and Ayuthaya was also a very pretty city. There were many tourists in the city. Once we reached the city stop, we would have to take a tuk tuk and see how many temples we could see.  There are many ancient temples here.  I let Prachi decide which temples to visit as she had a better idea. We negotiated with the tuk tuk to take us to all these temples below and the driver and guide decided the order according to the locations. It would take about 4-5 hours to see all these. Which was great, we would get back to Bangkok in time to enjoy our last night in the city.

Our ancient temple tour was as below, with some stops here and there….

1 – wat yai chaimonkhon (sleeping buddha) – beautiful old temple. It had these steep stairs to go up and then we could walk around and see the whole compound around. Very pretty. We walked to the very large Buddha statue at the back. Then as we were walking to the exit, we came to the sleeping Buddha.

 

After this first temple, all other temples started looking the same. They had similar architecture, huge compounds and very systematic layout. There was usually a line of sitting Buddhas around the compound, some so old that they were broken.  It was a very hot and humid day. There was a lot of walking. We did get some fruit in the middle but otherwise, no lunch. There was not many tourist shops either – which is good. It was nice just to walk in these old compounds and wonder how it would have looked back in its glory days.

The only temple that was a little unique was Wat Mahatat where there was a Buddha head trapped in a tree. Reminded me of one of the temples of Cambodia.

For some of the temples it was interesting to see how the buildings were tilting or curving into the ground from years of change in the earth’s surface. It was interesting. I think next time, I would do maybe four temples.

2 - Wat chai watthana ram: The next temple was actually a complex of temples and a world UNESCO world heritage site. There were many temples in this complex, of course all were destroyed. It must have been a beautiful campus when it was at its peak. All we could do this time was to just walk around and enjoy. We did not have a guide so could not tell which building was which one.

3 - wat lokayasutharan: This was very much an open temple. There was a huge sleeping Buddha statue to see. It was very serene here. 

4 – wat phrasisanphet: I think by the time we came here all temples were alike. There was nothing unique about this one.

5 – wat phra ram: By the time we came to the last temple, we were exhausted! It had been so hot and humid all day and this temple was not much different. What I found unique here was that some towers were starting to tilt in the ground (like leaning tower of Pisa). The rain must cause the ground to change in hardness. 

6 – wat mahatat: This temple was also the same as all. The only unique thing was that a there was a Buddha statue in a tree – the tree had grown around the statue (reminded me of Cambodia). 

The tuk tuk dropped us off near the van and we came back to Bangkok.  We were very near the Chatuchak market, so we walked there to see if more shops were open, and they were not. So then we decided to come back to our hotel and go up the Baiyoke tower. 

Baiyoke Tower

And today was the day for the massage! Finally we got in time to spare one hour for massage. We both got one hour massages, mine was just the foot massage and it was good! Highly recommend.

As we came into our street, we saw the Indira market mall!! We had not seen it before because we never came at time it was open. We went in and wow! What a market!! We were totally engrossed in it. So many shop owners knew Hindi and there were so many Indians around. It turns out that Delhi shopkeepers come here to shop for bulk goods. It was really good, watches, belts, t-shirts, jewelry, suitcases, phones….whatever one wanted, it was there! We left at around 8 pm otherwise we would be late for our tower trip….and we still had to eat dinner.

Right across were all Indian restaurants, so we decided to have dosa for dinner. Awesome! Went back to our rooms, go cleaned up to go to the Baiyoke tower. We were thinking since it is part of our hotel, we would get up there for free, but no, we had to pay a 600 bhat (a discount for us because we were at the sister hotel). The ticket includes the ride up and a free drink at the bar. The Baiyoke tower is indeed beautiful inside. We were first at the 83^th level and then took the stairs up to the 84^th, which is the rotating rooftop deck. It was glorious to be so high up. And the view was just something else! Stayed out in the open for a nice long time. It was of course windy, but not cold. The rotating deck was a little noisy, but it did not matter. We made 2-3 rounds and then came down for our drink.

 

The bar was very nice. There were different kinds of chairs and places to sit. There was enough room for a lot of people.  There was live music. All the seats were by the wall to wall glass windows. Very nice! Came back around 11 pm. Was totally exhausted.