Southeast Asia

Slept really badly last night thanks to this terrible cold. i think i was also a bit stressed about moving onto a town where i had no accommodation booked. Went out at 10 to cash travellers cheques, although i should have know that a 10 o’clock opening time was really somewhere between 10:30 and 11:00. When i did finally get them cashed i got a really good rate 41B per US$. Also managed to find Keflex under another name for $10 a box. Cant get over how easy it is to get prescription durgs here.

Caught a taxi to the bus station for 85B + 40B expressway toll. The northern bus station was huge, but i found the bus to Ayuthaya no problems. the ride took 1.5 hours and cost 55B. There was barely anyone on the bus and we only stopped about 15 times so i had 2 seats the myself the whole way. Today the drivers choice in TV was Thai Karoke videos which he played so loudly i couldnt even drown it out with my ipod.

Ayuthaya is the former capital of Thailand. It reigned for 417 years and due to its location at the convergence of 3 main rivers, an island is formed which makes the city not only extremely open to trade but also very difficult to attack. However persistent attacks by the Burmese were unable to be resisted and after 2 years of war the capital fell. The fighting lead to the devestation of the city as the Burmese looted the city’s architectural and religious treasures stealing the gold that covered the buddhas and decapitating any remaining buddha statues. it is the holy ruin that make the town such a big tourist attraction.

Arriving in the town i immediatley realised that Ayuthay held no appeal other than its ancient ruins and i decided to stay only 1 night before moving on. A tuk tuk driver at the bus stop dropped me at PU Guesthouse, which i chose from my lonely planet, and offered to take me around the temples that afternoon for 1000B. i managed to get the price down to 500B by saying i only wanted to see 5 temples (more than enough for me) which i chosen from my Tourist book / map. We set off to see the Wats at about 2:30. The wats here are much more how i imagined they would be in BKK with extensive grounds and grand architecture. Despite the fact that the Wats were in ruins it was easy to see how grand they would have been before the attacks. i found them much more interesting than the BKK Wats which are essentially just a gold room with a buddha in it.

i had a really wonderful afternoon wandering around all the holy ruins and my tuk tuk driver was worth every cent i paid for the information he gave me about the Burmese attacks on the former Thai capital. About 5:00 i started to get really hungry so my driver took me to a food vendor by the side of the road where i ate the best Pad Thai i had ever tasted. The woman only asked for 15B, which i thought was ridiculous, i gave her 30 and asked my driver to tell her it was delicious. I saw the final set of ruins just before the sun set, they were the most impressive of all. My driver dropped my back at the guesthous at 6:00 which was 3.5 hours for 500B. Still quite expensive, but it would have cost at least 200 to do it by myself and meant staying another night which i wasnt keen on, so it worked out well.

Went to bed feeling like shit, my cold is really bad.

Tags: Thailand

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2005 at 11:18 pm and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.