Thailand - Ayutthaya

Day trip to Ayutthaya on the second weekend of our stay there! The historic City of Ayutthaya was so-called the former capital of Thailand and a Siamese Kingdom till the 18th century, when it was destroyed by the Burmese. The city was never really rebuilt and remained as an archaeological site since then.

We assembled at the hotel lobby at 6am as proposed by some overly-enthusiast peers (oh-god-why). As expected, 2 of the girls wasn't able to wake up on time and passed on the trip. The rest of us took the 7am train to Ayutthaya. We arrived at close to 9am and the sun was already pretty hot. Ayutthaya was a lot bigger than I thought and quickly we abandoned the plan to cycle around and instead took up a 4 hours tour ride with one of the local drivers. The tour guide told us that he will drive us to 7 different landmarks covering the main attractions in Ayutthaya.

We set off at 10am after grabbing some food. The driver brought us to various temples around Ayutthaya over the 4 hours span and soon we realized everything seems to be around the same. As the weather was scorching hot in the afternoon, we decided to abandon the final landmark and head back to Bangkok earlier.

Above are some of the more prominent landmarks that we went. Among them, the one that really stood out for me has to be this:

According to its description, the Buddha head fell off from its original statue and landed beside a tree. It was then gradually engulfed by the tree's growing roots and became like this. How interesting is that. All in all, Ayutthaya is worth going if one is already in Bangkok and has spare time. But is it a must? Not really.