Ayutthaya
Throne of Kings
16.07.2009 - 17.07.2009
-18 °F
I'd like to tell you all about Ayutthaya, the ancient and historical capital of Siam, but I'm afraid I didn't learn much there. I visited several area landmarks including crumbling ruins, Wats and ancient palaces, but I learned little along the way because I was still half catatonic from being sick. My time in Ayutthaya was more a refusal to bow to illness than an actual tour. I was in Thailand, and by God I was going to visit the landmarks. So I paced myself and took a lot of pictures, but left the learning for later.
One thing I have failed to mention, a curiosity you may have noticed from pictures, is the absence of heads on most of the statues of the Buddha in Thailand. This is because over the centuries, Siam and Burma have sometimes gone to war, and in the areas where non-Buddhist Burma conquered Siam, they systematically removed the heads from all Buddhas they could reach. So all over Thailand, including in a photo from a Buddha at Jim Thompson House in an earlier post, you can see that the old Buddhas are headless.
I was carted around Ayutthaya by the manager of my hotel, who offered the transport service for an exorbitant (for Thailand) cost of $6 an hour. It was still a good investment. Incidentally, my hotel room was $16 a night (and another hotel I had in Bangkok was about $24 a night) and it was quite serviceable. It was better appointed than the $50-a-night room I had in Cabo San Lucas. It did have a couple of lizards roaming the walls when I checked in, but I was so tired I didn't care, and they were gone when I woke up. To where, I do not know.
I found this fellow repairing stonework at the Ancient Palace, among the stray animals.
Ayutthaya, as well as most of what I saw of Thailand and the Philippines, is occupied by an endless menagerie of sickly looking cats and dogs. They roam everywhere, in parking lots, temples, and here in this ancient palace. None of them look very healthy.
Some of them, alarmed at my approach, got out of the way in a very energy-conserving way. It was clear that they were not well nourished. If you are going to come to Asia and you love these animals, my advice is to bring some pet snacks. I kept wishing I had some. The Thais apparently regard them as vermin and pay them no heed whatsoever.
I find it funny that Thailand is a monarchy, and yet the country seems to be quite well run. Hmm.
Posted by RobinAsia 29.07.2009 22:00 Archived in Thailand
