Ayuthaya & Bangkok

We were up for a 7:30 a.m. departure for today's optional trip to the village of Ayuthaya. Seven or eight hundred years ago, this was the capital city of ancient Siam. Today it is largely in ruins, but one can still imagine something of what it must have looked like. 

We visited a temple that is still in use, and which has a famous reclining Buddha nearby. In the area of what used to be the royal palace number or large "stupas," or memorials to long-dead kings, remain more or less intact, even if their outer layer of plaster and bright mosaic surfaces are long gone, revealing the underlying basic brick. Foundations of many of the other buildings remain exposed. It was quite fascinating

On the grounds of some of the ruins was an elephant "show" of sorts. One could ride an elephant for a price, or for 40 Thai Bhat (about $1.35) one could pose for a photo with one of two baby elephants. It was pretty pathetic. One of the elephants was obviously ill-tempered (he even urinated on some of the customers!). Parents of a little girl about three years old insisted on getting her photo with an elephant despite the fact that the little girl was terrified and screaming. We weren't sure if the worst part was the mistreatment of the animals or of the children, but it wasn't uplifting

We were supposed to have had a short boat ride followed by lunch in a restaurant and then return to the hotel by bus. However, the political demonstrations taking place in Bangkok forced a change of plans. The bus drove us part way back, but dropped us at a river landing so that we could cruise back into town on the water. The cruiser included a buffet lunch, then we could relax and enjoy the ride. If the lower deck hadn't been so frigidly over-air conditioned we might have stayed at our dining table, but we were among the first to the upper deck, where we had the opposite problem of being baked int he mid-day sun. We saw a group of demonstrators that had blocked one bridge, but we sailed right under them.

The plan was that, if the bus could get through the various roadblocks that the demonstrators had threatened to establish, it would meet us at the landing. Otherwise, we could take mass transit back to the hotel. We are all hoping for a mass transit experience, but the bus was waiting for us. The demonstrations never got big enough to block too many streets.

In the evening our guide invited the group to an optional walk around the neighborhood to interact with some local people. Most of the group said they were be eager for that, but when the time came, Mary and I were the only two takers. It was a fascinating stroll trough high rise condos, a very up-scale park (where we saw a group of young men playing a very aggressive game which is sort of the Thai national sport. Played with a "ball" made of bamboo or rattan (or these days, plastic) about 8" in diameter, the game is sort of a cross between soccer and volleyball, with three men on each side of the net. The ball cannot be touched with the hands, or any part of the body below the elbow.

He also walked us through a very working class neighborhood, and we we thought the conditions there looked pretty bad, he topped it by walking into part of the urban slum. It was quite fascinating to see how people were living in these places.