It was now our third day in Bangkok and today the plan was to visit Ayutthya. The travel agent whom we had befriended at Taksin station was a great help and we were able to organise the tour on WhatsApp. A minibus would pick us up from our hotel at Sukhimvit and take us to the central meeting point where we would join a big bus and do the tour.
We were picked up on time at 6:30 and we departed, as scheduled, at about 8am for the actual tour. Our first stop along the route was the Bang Pa-in Palace. This is a Royal Estate spread over 46 Acres which dates back to the 17th Century and is the Summer Palace of the Thai Royalty. It is breathtakingly beautiful, comprising several colonial structures, memorials, waterways and manicured gardens, all a feast for the eyes, It is a pleasure walking through the property and admiring the various buildings and the meticulously maintained gardens. Yet you do not come across anybody actually working there except for the Royal Guards whose duty is mostly ceremonial. You can rent or even share a Golf Cart (THB 400 per hour for a 6 seater cart) with other tourists if you are not inclined to walk, but we preferred to walk.
For those who are interested in more historical facts about the palace and also about Ayutthya, there is a lot of information on the internet and I encourage those who are interested to do their own research.. For now, I”m posting the photo gallery of our visit there.
By about 11:30, we were all back on the bus and headed to the ancient city of Ayutthya. At first, it reminds you of Sarnath, another ancient Buddhist city just outside Varanasi. in India. Ayutthya is about 80 Kms from Bangkok and is now a UN heritage site. It’s history dates back to the 14th Century, when it was a prosperous trading port and the capital of the Kingdom of Siam. It suffered massive destruction during wars and upheavals in the 18th Century and is now an archaeologist’s (and a photographer’s) delight, full of ancient ruins, Buddhist temples, time-worn statues of Buddha – including a huge stone statue of the Reclining Buddha. There is a also a large stone Buddha Head embedded in the roots of an old tree – nobody really knows for sure how it got there. The history of the place and its monuments is too vast to be part of this short journal, but my photo gallery of the visit there is below.
The good part of this tour was that while the journey to Ayutthya was by bus, the return was going to be by boat. We now headed to the pier where we boarded a semi-luxury cruiser with an open deck on top and an air conditioned cabin down. The cabin was like a large dining hall and we enjoyed a multi course buffet lunch as we headed back to Bangkok. It took a little over 2 hours, and along the way the guides pointed out to us several interesting sights and temples on both banks. Pictures from our boat ride are below.
From the pier, we got back onto our minibus for the drop back to our hotel. All in all it had been a good day. It had been a different type of tour, not tiring and not too late. For tomorrow we had the floating market and the train market on our agenda and we were looking forward to that as well.