Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya has seen better days.

Ayutthaya, one of the biggest cities in the whole world at its peak, lies about 70 km north of Bangkok. It used to be the capital of Siam, but nowadays its population has shrunk from a million to fifty thousand. The people vanished, but luckily many temples, or Wats, still stand strong in this ancient city. The city is actually an island, but one can hardly notice it because the city is only surrounded by a narrow river.

Our train arrived over an hour late, but it was still very early in the morning. For once I knew something about the city we arrived at, and we knew a few street names where we could start looking for a cheap guest house. We had slept well, and it wasn't hot so we decided to walk to the center even though it took about an hour.

We had hopes to find a guest house fast, but somehow we didn't see one anywhere! Finally, when the sun was already showing itself above the horizon, we saw a guest house on a side street. We went to check it out, but we couldn't see anyone. I walked a bit further inside and there still wasn't anyone. Somehow we decided to yell "Hello!" out loud, and a receptionist woke up in his hammock just a few meters from us! We hadn't noticed him and apparently he had been seeing some sweet dreams there too!

Only us and the ruins

The room we got was cheap, and we even had a bathroom of our own. Instead of sleeping we wanted to use the cool morning hours well and went to see the beautiful temples just across the street. The two closest temples weren't open at that time, but a guard let us in anyway in exchange for a few bahts ;). The day was beautiful, it wasn't too hot and it felt unbelievable to walk among the ruined temples without any other tourists. I used my time well, and whenever I wasn't relaxing or moving from one place to another, I was taking photos.

The photos will show you what I can't describe well enough with words. The ruins are big enough for you to be able to forget that you're still in a city. Without anyone else around I felt almost like Indiana Jones, hunting for treasures. Unfortunately we didn't find any treasures, but it was worth a shot!

After we had visited the first two temples, it was getting really hot again and we searched for relief in a few banks. They all had air conditioners, but no one wanted to exchange our Lao kips to any other currency. Eventually we gave up and exchanged some dollars because we were in desparate need of bahts. For some reason the bank wanted a copy of my passport with my signature on it when I exchanged the money. Strict people!

The "free" temple

With pockets full of money we went to eat and continued our temple tour after that. We visited at least three or four temples on our way to the edge of the island, and we were even able to sneak in one of them without paying! Some parts of the temples were in ruins, but many were in relatively good condition. There was something interesting to see in every single one of them. Ayutthaya is notorious for its stray dogs and after walking there it's easy to tell why. Most of the dogs were in bad shape and looked really hungry. Whenever we walked alone, the dogs would start following us, especially when we turned our backs to them. They didn't attack, but it felt like it could happen any minute. At night the situation got even worse.

In one of the temples we saw a shocking event. We had seen a few squirrels fooling around with each other in the trees, and they were more than happy to run around the trees. Then Inna saw a squirrel lying on the ground. I thought at first that it was dead, but after taking a closer look it was clear that it was still breathing. It didn't move at all, not even when I touched it gently with a branch. We stayed there for a while, watching. Suddenly the squirrel started shaking and having horrible convulsions. I have it all on video and it really doesn't look nice. I was thinking that maybe the snake we had seen just minutes before had bitten it, but I guess we'll never know. The convulsions stopped after a while, but the squirrel was still alive although still not moving.

Despite this shocking event, we continued visiting the temples. Our map showed another cluster of places of interests a bit further, and our little shortcut took us through the outskirts of the city. The people living in their small homes were staring at us like they had never seen white people before. Kids were yelling "HELLO! HELLO!", and some of them even came to touch us. It felt like we were some kind of superstars for them :). We stopped to have a drink in a very tiny cafe where an elderly woman was almost as curious as the small children had been just minutes earlier.

The last temple of the day

The cold drinks lifted our spirits, and we continued towards the river on the western side of the island. The sights there were more like the temples we had already seen in many cities before, and we didn't even bother visiting them. It had been a long day, but there was still one huge temple we wanted to visit. This temple wasn't on the island, and we took a tuk-tuk to get there. The driver was kind enough to wait for us for almost half an hour while we climbed to the huge, white, almost pyramid-like, temple. From the top we admired the beautiful sunset before climbing down and to our loyal tuk-tuk.

The tuk-tuk driver stopped being friendly when it was time to pay. We had, in my opinion, agreed that the price would be 60 bahts. In his opinion we had agreed on 120 bahts. After a short quarrel I gave the man a hundred bahts, and we left the scene. I didn't feel so great about the word fight I just had had, but I quickly forgot about it as we realized what a great day it had been!

Perhaps it's worth mentioning that in the evening I proposed to Inna, and she said yes :).