Ayutthaya, Summer Palace, and Chao Praya River

About an hour north of Bangkok is Ayutthaya, the previous capital.
























This site was unprotected, in other words people could come and take want they want and a lot of the Buddha’s heads have been removed. It was too heavy to take the entire Buddha so collectors only went after the heads and left the bodies.




So if you are over at your friend’s house and they happen to have just a Buddha head tell them that you found the body to that head. Think the steps are steep at Chichen Itza in Mexico, try Thailand.


What was at the top.


We weren’t the only ones here, there was a class on a field trip. In fact it was not uncommon to see pickup trucks with kids pouring out of them on the way to school, but then I guess our schools buses don’t have seat belts either.


There was also the famous Buddha head that a tree has grown around.




After visiting Ayutthaya we headed to the King’s summer place. The King has a huge place in Bangkok right along side his private horse racing track and the people love their king. His summer place is not called that because he goes there during the summer but rather because it is always hot here. I don’t know how they measure that as it was pretty much hot everywhere. It was well guarded.


Not a bad place to hang out.














Plus you need a place to store your food.


We then jumped on a boat to take the river back to the hotel.






A few temples along side the common folk.




The main traffic on the river are barges heading up and down, three or four barges being towed by old single engine boat.


There are also a fair number of longtail boats traveling the river. These differ from the longtails in the islands in that they have actual old V8 engines mounted in the rear to provide power to the prop. Bangkok seemed to have three types, ones that have the cooling fan and protective air filter still on it, ones that only have the cooling fan, and ones that realize the spinning cooling fan could be quite dangerous and have busted it off.




They provided a nice buffet on the boat of authentic Thai food, which actually tasted quite different from our US version of it. It was a cleaner more true taste, the US version seemed to be a sugar filled and processed. That night I met Dr. Ansusinha and his wife for dinner. We went to a buffet that offered all kinds of Thai, Chinese, and Japanese food, which I tried everything and enjoyed all of it. It was also great to talk with “locals” to get the insider information on Thailand, where to go, what to see. Thanks for dinner guys. I hoped to sleep through the night however I again work up from 2 to 6 still trying to adjust.