Ayutthaya
“The whole city enjoyed happiness throughout all seasons.
Now it weighs heavily on my breast to see Ayutthaya disappear.
Where can I find its equal?
It is as if a crystal has lost its shine,
Each day brings new destruction
How can its glory ever be restored?”
Prince Maha Surasinghant, the brother of King Rāma I
The city of Ayutthaya was the second capital of the Kingdom of Siam after Sukhothai and remained so for over 300 years. It enjoyed an almost unprecedented period of peace and prosperity. In its heyday, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, it was literally and figuratively a City of Gold. It was a flourishing centre of trade and the palaces and temples were so richly adorned in gold and jewels, it was said you could see the roofs glowing gold from over 5 km away.
Bounded by rivers and canals, it stands on a small island in the Chao Phraya river about 80 km upstream from Bangkok. It was sacked and destroyed by the Burmese in the mid 18th century and, when Siam rose again, the capital was moved downstream, first to Thonburi and then Bangkok. A new dynasty of kings systematically stripped the little that remained of Ayutthaya to rebuild in Bangkok.
Despite this the ruins of Ayutthaya still cast an impressive spell, conjuring majesty and greatness in the crumbling temples, and providing glimpses of the golden riches in the museum exhibits, despite representing a fraction of what was once there.
Loy Manee House
Walking to our hostel through the Wat Phu Khao Thong.
Loy Manee House. Our room was on the top floor on the left.
We had again booked a local hostel , Loy Manee House, overlooking the Chao Praya river, bounding the historical centre. We arrived late after dark at the station and found a tuk tuk to deliver us to our destination. We wound through suburbs, past ghostly temple silhouettes and over the river into a large temple compound. We found we were staying in an old thai compound within the temple walls.
Everyday we heard the calls to prayer and the monks chanting. What an enchanting setting.
The house consisted of several buildings built on stilts next to the river. Under the main house was a small dining area surrounded by workshop tools, bicycles, gardening equipment and laundry paraphanalia. Clearly a work hub of the property. It led out onto a small patio overlooking the river with tables and chairs where you could enjoy breakfast, weather permitting. Leading off from there were several houses which had clearly grown over generations (6 to be exact!) to house the family. We had a lovely front room overlooking the river on the second floor.
Under the house was a hive of activity
We enjoyed sumptuous breakfasts with a choice of Thai or egg dishes and lashings of hot coffee and fruit, surrounded by mismatched pot plants and soothed by the breeze off the river.
Our hostess was endlessly helpful, assisting us with transport and local information. An old granny lived in one room and grandfather was below us in the main house, while 2 younger families were in buildings across the courtyard. We all smiled and bowed in the mornings as everyone got on with their days.
Our breakfast spot by the river
The garden was full of pot plants and flowers, from orchids to a black bat flower.
Chao Phraya River
The Chao Phraya river is known as the lifeline of Thailand. The river has been a crucial transportation artery and source of water since ancient times.
Bangkok sits close to the estuary and is known as the "Venice of the East" because of all the waterways and canals which penetrate the city from the river
The 372 km long river begins at the confluence of the Ping (Chiang Mai) and Nan (Phitsanolok) rivers and flows south, passing through 10 provinces including Ayutthaya and Bangkok.
It remains a key mode of transport with barges, public ferries and water taxis plying their trade.
Barges carrying goods to Bangkok
Every morning we started the day watching the, admittedly brownish, water flow past our patio, large barges came through often, loaded with cargo, coal and agricultural crops.
At the end of our first day our hostess arranged a boat ride on the river which we accepted with alacrity. The boatman arrived with a long boat and a large bag of cucumbers.
The river and its network of canals circumnavigate the historical centre and many of the temples front the river so it is a scenic trip.
We passed our first mosque and a Catholic Church, St Josephs. Ayutthaya, as a historical capital and trade centre, attracted a lot of international settlers and there are still Dutch Japanese and Jewish areas in the suburbs.
Old Thai houses teeter precariously on the river edge. Boats are scattered on the banks, some working fishing boats, some derelict and some made into restaurants.
The people sit on the banks fishing and the big catfish jump. Bridges crisscross the river and canals and the thrum of the traffic surrounds you.
The Mosque and the Catholic Church
Passing Wat Chaiwatthanaram in the historical centre
Life on the river
Elephants
Halfway through the trip we turned into a network of smaller canals and the boatman pulled into a grassy area edged with reeds where we found 7 elephants with their mahouts enjoying their daily bath.
When they saw the boat it was as if we had rung a dinner gong. They surged towards the boat eagerly and we found out what the cucumbers were for. We handed out the cucumbers as fast as we could. Their hairy trunks snaked into the boat but they took each cucumber so gently and whisked them away
The Thai elephants are smaller than our elephants and have patches of depigmentation on the face and trunk, but the twinkle in the eye and the aura of intelligence is the same.
The mahouts were mostly young boys and they carried a stick with a hook which they used to hook the elephant around or under the ear. It looked a vicious tool but they were not mistreating them and were all playing together in the river, squealing and trumpeting with delight. They ride bareback but use a rope around the neck to hold on.
Elephants in Thailand, especially in the tourist trade, have been contentious. You are exhorted not to ride them in most tourist literature because of the fear of exploitation and cruel training practices.
Having said that, elephants have been trained in SE Asia for centuries for transport and agriculture and war so there is a long history and precedent for them as working animals.
We did not see any abuse but in the old town they walk around with saddles giving tourists rides between the temples.
I won’t lie it does not look very comfy, you sway a lot and have to hang on tight. A tiered umbrella is suspended above and the elephants are decked out in red and gold. The elephants look bored but not stressed. The argument that the elephants find it painful, or the load too heavy, does not really ring true. I have seen elephants push over massive trees without breaking a sweat. They can certainly cart the odd tourist around without discomfort.
Despite this we steered clear of the elephant tourist trade and our encounter in the river was one of many little unexpected gems in our journey.
In our tours around Thailand we saw more elephants in Ayutthaya working in the tourist trade than anywhere else. Elephants are still important in Thai culture and venerated. The white elephant is particularly sought after.
A white elephant is a rare kind of elephant, but not a distinct species. Although often depicted as snow white, their skin is typically a soft reddish-brown, They have fair eyelashes and toenails. The traditional "white elephant" is commonly misunderstood as being albino, but the Thai term, chang samkhan, translates as 'auspicious elephant', being "white" in terms of an aspect of purity. I dont think we ever saw one, the king apparently still has around 10, but many of the asian elephants have large areas of pale reddish pigmentation, a bit like vitiligo. I think there are strict criteria of how much of this pale pigmentation is needed before the elephant is officially designated as "white"
In Southeast Asia, the white elephant was closely linked with Buddha. The possession of a white elephant symbolised kingship. Competition for white elephants drove royal courts to wage war with each other. Ayutthaya fought numerous wars over white elephants, especially with Burma. Maybe that is why Ayutthaya still maintains the elephant tourism.
The term "White Elephant" is defined as a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of. This is because, if the king gave you one, you had to look after it, feed and house it royally, but you were not allowed to use it for anything. An expensive but basically useless trapping. Legend has it the King of Siam used to gift white elephants as thank you gifts. Possibly to people he did not like too much!
The Historical Centre
Wat Lokaya Sutha is a ruined temples containing an enormous reclining Buddha image (42 meters long and 8 meter high). The buddha was once encased by a viharn, but that has collapsed to the basic foundation level. The Buddha is aligned to a north/south axis, and it is facing west and has been restored. On the alter in front there's a small replica which is covered in gold leaf added by visitors.
Buddha reclining like this is the position indicating his death and entry into Nirvana.
We had 2 full days in Ayutthaya but no where near enough time to see everything. We decided to try and crack the main temples on our first day. We had hired a tuk tuk driver to take us around. Although most of the temples are within a 3-4 km2 area it would have been suicide to try and walk the route in the heat.
It is well signed and well set out. The temples are all ruined although some restoration has been done. Basically, when the capital moved south to Thonburi, and then Bangkok, a lot of the buildings that remained after the looting of war were scavenged to build the new city. Each temple has a scaled model at the entrance to orient you to the size, scale and set up in its heyday and that helps a lot.
Scale model of Wat Phra Si Sanphet
Our first stop was at Wat Phra Si Sanphet, famous for 3 central chedis still standing, in each of which a king was interred. In 1932 a hoard of gold treasure was found buried in the chedis.
This was duly excavated, only to be stolen by "pirates". I gather this is code for unscrupulous locals including the police.
Only about 10% was eventually recovered.
Next stop was the neighbouring Wat Mongkhon Bophit which is a modern temple built to house a huge buddha found in the ruins. It was restored and has been covered in gold leaf, but sadly it was undergoing some cosmetic surgery and so not open for us.
In bowls decorating the paths to the temples however, we found some beautiful lotuses with busy bees.
This large white lotus above is the one most popularly sold at the temples for offerings. The others are usually the decorative flowers in temple waterways or pots.
The life cycle of the temple lotus.
Perhaps the most important temple is the Wat Ratchaburana, one of the most complete and impressive temples with a large Khmer style prang surrounded by chedis.
You can climb the steps into the prang to look down into the crypt which is dark and evil smelling and full of tiny bats clinging to the walls and ceiling.
Here more gold treasure and Buddha statues were found buried in a secret chamber.
What is left of these treasures, as well as some artefacts from Sukhothai and elsewhere, are displayed in the museum complex
The view from the steps gives a good vista of the grassy compound.
Our last visit in this long hot day was to the most famous temple, another Wat Mahathat. It contained Buddha relics and was once a royal monastery, the residence of the supreme patriarch of Buddhism. It was the centre of Buddhism during the Ayutthaya Kingdom. Lots of gold treasure was looted by the Burmese from this temple but a hidden crypt was later found holding buddha relics and gold in one of the stupas.
The central pagoda collapsed at the beginning of the 20 th century and has not yet been fully restored.
Wat Mahathat is also known for the head of a sandstone Buddha image that is entangled in the roots of a holy Bodhi tree in the temple compound. One story is that it was left by thieves who simply had too much to carry, so they placed the Buddha head at the base of the Bodhi tree with the intention of retrieving it. In time, the head was completely covered over by the roots, it is a popular photo spot.
And so, with this last highlight, our day was done, the heat and the exercise had done its job and we were ready for home. So much more to see but too little time.
Go for Gold
On our second day in Ayutthaya we headed for the museum.
We had been told of a gold exhibition of treasure from the temples and we were keen to see the riches unearthed from the temples we had been visiting in Ayutthaya and in Sukhothai.
We arrived early at the museum entrance only to be faced by a sea of school children, sitting, neat as pins in rows on the steps. We skipped ahead to enter before the crowds but they caught us up and surged around us. They were pretty well behaved but so small they made us feel like Gulliver in the land of Lilliput.
The gold exhibition is of pieces taken from the 3 main temples. They were well displayed in illuminated cabinets.
Gold and crystal chedi, votive tablets and even a small gold pavilion . Numerous buddha statues in all poses and sizes and inscribed votive tablets. There were many statues and household implements.
The most important finds include 2 sets of Buddha reliquaries which were in a series of stacked boxes like a Babushka doll, and found in Wat Mahathat.
Each layer was made of different materials, wood, stone, crystal, ceramic, bronze, silver, gold. The more expensive the material, the closer to the relic inside. The 2 sets of relics did not look human to me, but it is about faith after all. As I understand it the relics derive from teeth and larger pieces of bone not consumed in the cremation fire, and these make up the origin of the distributed relics kept in temples. They may just look like charred fragments so not recognising them does not automatically make them false, but I have a feeling some of the relics floating around are figurative rather than literal.
Above are coverings for one of the Buddha relics. They stack together and are made of different materials. Below is a photo of the relic they housed.
Considering the collection we viewed was less than 10% of what was first found, and this in turn was a fraction of what had been looted by the Burmese, it gave some scale to the riches once housed in Ayutthaya.
We had an informative visit to the museum and caught up to all the children in the coffee shop after. They were all eating laser cut ice cream in the shape of elephants in full regalia. How cool is that. We got a purple one.
Bang Pa In Palace
King Maha Vajiralongkorn, or Rama X, is the reigning monarch of Thailand since 2016. As the 10th king of the Chakri Dynasty, he is considered the world's wealthiest monarch with an estimated wealth of around $50 billion. He spends much of his time in Bavaria.
20 km south of Ayutthaya, on the Chao Phraya river lies the Bang Pa In palace. This is one of the more modern Thai palaces, built mostly by Rama V, King Chulalongkorn. It is unusual in that it draws a lot from Victorian, European and Georgian design, apart from a huge Chinese house gifted by the Chinese government and shipped from China and erected in the grounds.
The temple across the river was designed by an Italian architect and is possibly the only Italian Gothic temple Buddha has.
Everything looks slightly surreal and out of place, these Victorian buildings with sweeping lawns and lakes. Various buildings for entertaining and a series of smaller houses for the various members of the royal family and royal entourage.
There are rooms displaying statues of the royal line, gifts to the royal family and household furnishings and ornaments.
The royal family still come here to stay and sometimes entertain foreign dignitaries and heads of state. It is the current kings fishing spot.
The Chinese House
We spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering the grounds and buildings. My special favourite was a topiary of a herd of elephants. A bit overgrown but great effort. I immediately tried to work out if I too could have a herd of elephants in my garden at home! Hot and exhausted we headed out to catch our Grab taxi back. Our driver was an off duty police officer. Interesting.
Travelling in Style
Our time in Thailand was drawing to a close. Our plans to return to stay in Phuket clearly not viable. We had 5 days left and one huge destination in front of us, the capital of Bangkok.
We don't like big cities, Bangkok sounded alien, crowded and difficult to navigate. Not the sleepy friendly little places we had become accustomed to but a darker side of Thailand with scams, fleshpots and chaos. We had no idea where to stay. I booked a train to get there and then had the good fortune to find a berth on a boat moored on the Chao Phraya river in front of the Royal Palace for 5 nights. That sounded more like it.
Just before we left Ayutthaya, our next host Roger emailed me and asked if we wanted him to pick us up in a boat and cruise from Ayutthaya to Bangkok. You bet we did, transport sorted. I binned the train tickets and we set off for a nearby ferry point to meet him.
Roger collected us in his big blue barge and took us all the way to Bangkok free of charge, only asking for a small amount towards the food and drink we consumed. The only other customer was an American lady on a sight seeing trip. In exchange we promised a glowing reference. It was the least we could do. We joined the river traffic and spent 4 hours gently chugging through the villages, towns and countryside like royalty. Now that's how you enter Bangkok.
Crossing the river on a ferry to reach Roger's blue barge which was moored at a temple pier (below)
Cruising south on the Chao Phraya
"One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
A little flesh, a little history
I can feel an angel sliding up to me.
One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the devil walking next to me."
Chess