Ayutthaya

M and I caught the bus early Saturday morning, ready to get the h out of Bangkok. An hour and a half later, we were across the city and leaving by train from Hua Lamphong railway station. Right outside of the trainstation are several shanties lining the tracks, the little streams are full of human trash and waste. Kids play on piles of wood or right next to the train tracks. But as you leave Bangkok, the area gets less shanty-like, not that the area gets much wealthier looking.

As we rode along, the cities give way to more rural areas. This area is flat and very wet. High reeds, grasses, and giant lilly pads surround the railway broken by huts, banana, coconut, and I think a version of the birch tree. It is quite a beautiful place!

We got off the train two hours later at Ayutthaya. It used to be the capital of Thailand until the Burmese came and burned it to the ground in the 18th C. Now the city is built on ruins, and these ruins are every where!

The energy in Ayutthaya is great! The train station is busy, tourists every where and Tuk Tuk drivers harrassing everyone for a ride... then the locals try to sell you over-priced food and drink. But once you make it off that main road towars the Wats, everything is fine. There are wide open spaces and just a feeling of calm.

I had my goal: to visit Wat Phra Mahathat and see Buddha's head in the tree. So I insisted we find it first. We found it about third, as there are so many ruins around. But we rushed into Mahathat and found Buddha, where I took a thousand photographs of him. Then we wandered around the magnificent Wat. There is so much to see, it is overwelming!

We wandered quite a bit more, past some other temples. Then we settled on some food and decided that since our camera batteries were dying, we should probably find a place to bunk for the night. An hour later we found a place that had rooms available. We stayed in this tiny guest house that was made up of cabins. These cabins were quite nice, they were one room and a bathroom. Electricity, air con, shower, and vanity, and walking distance to everything. No cockroaches, lizards, or frogs, but LOTS of mosquitoes. Thank God for bug spray and netting! Also the walls were pretty thin, so you can hear everything from outside and there was a fountain next to the wall by my bed and ooh boy, the sound was not so good on the bladder!

After struggling to stay in bed for more than a half hour at a time, I finally got up and got ready for the day, to find out it was raining. But it was a nice, soft rain that kept you dry, but the weather cool. M and I went on a long trek to find coffee and then remembered my plan to ride an elephant. So we decided to trekk across town, we were told "only one kilometer." Funny thing, when we reached one kilomenter, we had one more, and so forth and so forth until we finally found the elephants!

Only, we couldn't ride any of these elephants. This was more of a camp for elephants. But the people who worked there were really nice, one guy was from the Midlands of England, he moved to Thailand to get away. Another guy is from Santa Barbara of all places and is a theoropist for humans, but is currently working on elephants that have suffered from mental trauma (such as abuse or just has a disorder). They didn't really show us around the camp too much, but let us wander on our own and pet the elephants. Then they called us a taxi to come pick us up and take us back to town.

So I didn't get to ride an elephant, but I did get to see them and pet them. What a beautiful weekend! We were sad to get back to the hustle and bustle of Bangkok.