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Tour date: June 1998.

Backpacking in Thailand - North

Thomas Driemeyer
2005-10-17 14:00:41

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AYUTHAYA

When arriving at the Bangkok international airport, one leaves the air-conditioned airplane into a wall of humid heat. It was 38 degrees C (100 F) in early June. One gets used to it quickly, but it sets the pace for the rest of the trip - leisurely walking is the only way to avoid breaking into a sweat all the time, and one contrives to stand near fans a lot.

I arrived with no plans where to go next, so I had a hotel booked in Bangkok to get a feel for the country before I set off. This was unnecessary; Thailand is very well suited to just hopping on a bus or train and going off on a whim. I used a train from Bangkok's Hualamphong train station to Ayuthaya, the next morning; it would have been better to go there right from the airport.

Ayuthaya was the capital of Thailand until 1757, but now it is just a large field of ruined wats like the one in the picture below. From the train station it's a short walk to the ferry, an old wooden pier with shaking stairs and a boat driven by an ancient open diesel motor. The town begins promising on the other side, but peters out very quickly, like a toy town built by a child with too much space and way too few houses. Nice wats, all ruins.

I stayed for one night in the Wieng Fa hotel, not very fancy but not bad for a Thai budget hotel.

WAT?

A wat is a buddhist temple compound. There are wats in every village that are well-maintained and staffed by monks in their orange clothes. Cone-shaped chedis can be found in all wats, either in the pointy Thai style or the older rounded Khmer style. Almost all the wats in Ayuthaya and Lopburi are ruins.

All the buildings in Ayuthaya and Lopburi are built from bricks and covered with plaster. Most of the plaster has fallen off, and the brick structures are not very well preserved - they keep crumbling, and some buildings ...