Ayuthaya

*Remember to scroll down and read from bottom to top to read about our Thailand travels in the correct order. Otherwise you'll be reading from the end to the beginning!*

I have lots of photos for this post, since we did a lot of sightseeing here. Ayuthaya is the ancient capital of Thailand, and therefore has lots of ancient ruins - temples and palaces, etc. We stayed here for a little over 2 days to take in as much as we could. Instead of mopeds, this time we rented bicycles.


We arrived in Ayuthaya in the evening by train, and then had to walk around in the rain to find a place to stay. As you can see, I'm well prepared with my backpack rain gear.


Here is one of the first ancient sites we visited, built in the 1400's.


This buddha face in tree roots was a real curiosity, especially since we didn't have a guide to explain it to us - was the face placed there, or did the roots grow around it? Either way, it makes an interesting photo.


Statues like this one were everywhere in the ruins. Even if the heads had been knocked off (by the burmese we were told) or the statues were damaged otherwise, they still had the yellow sashes wrapped around them.


Our first up close look at the elephants! This guy was giving tours of the city, with a few folks on his back.


On the evening of our first night, we took a tuk-tuk tour. A tuk-tuk is like a little pickup truck with only three wheels and the back is rigged with benches and a tarp-ish roof. Our first stop was an elephant farm. (?) There were probably 25 adult elephants (all chained up, kind of a sad life for them) and 3 baby elephants that were running around loose. We could touch them and play with them. One of the babies was very fiesty, and kept charging people. He would run up and ram into a guy, and then try to push him over from the side, giving a little kick with his back leg. Paul almost got rammed, but, not being a proud man, just turned and ran when the charging elephant came after him. They wrapped their little trunks around eveything - chairs, rocks, fruit. They look so soft, but in fact the hair on them is really bristly.


Here is clayt with one of them. They were a little unpredictable, so it was hard to get photos with us included. We were nervous to get to close and stay still for too long. But in general, they were harmless, funny and cute.


Here is the before-mentioned tuk-tuk.


Some more pretty ruins, visited the next day on a guided bike tour with an english-speaking guide.


A bug we saw just chilling out on a rock at one of the ruins sites. He was huge!!! Probably as thick as a man's middle finger and almost twice as long. We touched him and he curled up into a ball.


Here are the four of us on our bikes. The photos have no way of showing you how hot it was there. Thankfully on this day, it was a little overcast.


Here is Clayt inside one of the temples, standing next to a giant golden Buddha. The temples were really beautiful both inside and out, with lots of attention to detail - everything was ornate.


About halfway through the tour, it started to downpour. We stopped at a marketplace to shop and look around until it let up a little. Here I am enjoying the warm rain - something we see almost never in Mongolia.


And finally, here is Clayt with our bike tour guide, whose name was "R". The tour lasted about 5 hours and was a great way to see things and learn a little of the history.