Ayutthya: our final Thailand post

famous Buddha head 

fallen Buddha statue

We arrived in Bangkok's train station feeling quite familiar with the place since it was our 3rd visit there. We knew our favorite pad thai vendor and felt like we knew how the system worked. We had 4 days before leaving for South Africa which was a little long for us to enjoy spending in Bangkok. Christian had mentioned Ayutthya and after doing a little research we decided to check it out.

tree temple

Ayutthya is the site of many temples. It was mostly destroyed in a Burmese invasion, but there are still some interesting relics and temples. It was only a 50 cent train ride for the 70 km trip to get there, so it wasn't a difficult decision to go. We rented bicycles from the guest house and toured around the ruins. Some cost a bit to go in, while others were free to wander though and were in a very nice park like setting. We learned from the owners of the guest house we stayed at that the town was still recovering from a huge flood last October. There had been so much rain that the reservoirs were too full and the government decided to flood the town so the dams wouldn't burst. They were quite surprised since they didn't expect the historic area to be flooded. He showed us pictures of the water being up to the second floor of their place and that it took two months to reopen. The seem to be getting plenty of tourists again now and from what we could tell, the temples weren't damaged extensively, but there was a lot of clean up still going on. The ruins were not as spectacular as Angkor Wat, but there were still some impressive buildings and statues. Our favorites were probably the Buddha head which has become overgrown in tree roots, the chedi with a tree growing out the top, and the giant reclining Buddha.

temple spires

After our day on bicycles, we did our new favorite evening activity of checking out the night market. Again we weren't disappointed. We had already eaten dinner, so were just on a dessert mission this time. We found mini waffles filled with cream and strawberries which Matt went back for seconds of and bought the vendor out of. I found strawberry and pomegranate ice cream which was amazing. This should have been plenty to eat, but we thought we needed to try something new. We'd heard of and seen the large spiky fruit called jackfruit or durian, but hadn't tried it yet, since it's a little intimidating to purchase a giant fruit with no idea how to eat it. We saw a vendor cutting one up and some people eating it, so thought we could try some as well. If you haven't heard of durian, it's the fruit that is said to smell like sweaty socks and it's not allowed on air conditioned trains or in other enclosed places due to its smell. But if you can get over that smell, it's supposed to be delicious. I could not. If you held your breath while eating and didn't think about it, I could almost not gag. It bordered between tasting good and making me gag. Matt was able to get over the gag reflex after the first few bites and enjoyed it after that. It was good to try, but not something I'm going to go out of my way to eat again.

reclining Buddha

This picture is from Tonsai, but it is such a good shot of Cassie's it would be a shame not to have it somewhere in a post.

Back in Bangkok again, we are happy to see that the stuff we left in the guesthouse here 6 weeks ago is still here and unharmed. We were happy to see our laptop again and wondered why we decided to bring some of the things we did and why we didn't bring others. Our time in southeast Asia has been great, but we are quite excited to get to South Africa and do some climbing again! We leave in only 2 days! So, our next post should be from Rocklands!!!!!

FYI: almost all the pictures above are Cassie's. She's getting to be quite a good photographer!