Day 71: Ayutthaya

Today was a day trip out to the ruined old capital city of Siam, Ayutthaya. We'd booked an organised tour the day before as it's supposedly a beautiful spot and annoying to get to without a car. So off we went with a very early start - 6:20am pickup, the earliest we've had in quite a while! Picked up a few others nearby, then over to Khao San Road where the main group was waiting.

After what seemed like forever we were finally on the road and moving. The minivan wasn't quite full, maybe one or two seats spare. I think basically everyone spent the outbound journey sleeping - I certainly did!

It's going to be tough to chronicle exactly what we did today, as we stopped at several locations with unpronounceable Thai names. Essentially the old city of Ayutthaya was the capital of Siamese civilisation between about 1400 and 1780 or so when it was burned to the ground during a war with Burma, after which the capital was shifted south to the new city of Bangkok.

Very little actually remains of the city, mostly piles of brickwork and some ruined temple complexes. What's left is oddly beautiful, though. We stopped at I think four locations in the morning between about 8:30am and midday when we broke for lunch. Each site would have some large stupas still standing, and usually some Buddhist relics like statues and so on. Lots of good opportunities for photos, as the buildings (despite being ruins) were in generally good condition. It reminded me a lot of Pompeii though obviously the architecture is very different. Just the preservation and so on.

Overall we had a great time, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who visits Bangkok. Although our "guide" wasn't all that - we knew in advance that it was going to be "arrive, get a 5-minute spiel about the location, explore on your own", but the guy's English was fairly poor and he was very difficult to understand. I don't like criticising bilingual people since I can't speak any other languages, but I didn't think his language skills were quite up to the job of leading a group of 20-25 tourists.

Arrived back at the hotel around 4:30pm so it was quite a long day. We relaxed in our room for a bit before heading back out. We'd been recommended a nearby restaurant called Cabbages & Condoms where the venue is full of artworks made from condoms and all the profits go to sexual health charities, but the prices were high and the constant latex smell made it quite off-putting.

Instead we walked a couple of blocks further to Sukhumvit 11, a well-known expat area with no tourists. We had a semi-pricey but very tasty dinner at a Mexican restaurant before finishing the day with a couple of beers at a notorious bar called Cheap Charlie's. It's literally just a hole in the wall in an alley, but it definitely was cheap! Just don't mind the rats. Back to the hotel where we organised our next stay (we have to check out tomorrow and need another place in Bangkok as we aren't quite done yet); which we did while a thunderstorm raged all around. Again!Read more