Ayutthaya

Man, I am beat! Today was a good, if not very long, day. I rented a bike first thing this morning and headed out. Ayutthaya is actually an island surrounded by several rivers. The morning and noon time were spent rolling up to random ruins on the main island and taking copious amounts of photos (I now have over a thousand for the trip). I had planned to keep track of all the places I stopped (so I could accurately recount them here) but I soon realized that this would be far too difficult as many of the ruins were unmarked and the map my hostel gave me was pretty unreliable. I also went to several intact, and active new monasteries and temples. It definitely added to the experience of seeing the ruined temples to walk across the street and see fully built, albeit far smaller, versions.

The most impressive structure I saw was actually a few miles north of the island on Thai Highway 301. The bike ride here was smoother but far more death defying than in the city. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find the ruins with my shoddy map but trust me it wasn't hard to find over the flat farmland. I eventually ended up at gigantic the gigantic (and almost fully intact) Khmer (Cambodian) Pagoda Phrai Khoa. It was simply huge. I climbed the horrifying narrow steps to the tops just to climb back down even narrower steps to reach a crypt deep within the structure. There was a very neat series of Buddha images including one made entirely from some sort of red gem (rubies). Very cool.

This afternoon I took a boat trip around the island to see some of the harder to reach items. All in all, today I saw two sitting Buddhas over 12 meters tall, one of Thailand's oldest reclining Buddhas, and miles and miles of stupas and rundown walls made of brick. Also, very cool.

Tomorrow it is on to Kanchanaburi, or some such place. Here I will see the bridge which crossing the River Kwai which was made famous in the film The Bridge Over River Kwai, which I have never seen. Appartently this area was a huge POW camp during the Japanese occupation in WWII. The trip is winding down, part of me is excited to get back and another part is dreading it.
C. Johnson