we packed up all of our luggage and headed on to the bus for a long ride to Ayutthaya. we were only in Ayutthaya the equivalent of half a day and the idea was to see some of the temple ruins. before we stopped at the ruins, we were brought to the King's summer palace. we'd spent the four days prior in a congested city with nearly every inch filled with traffic and vendors. when we got to the summer palace it was expansive and open. of course tourists like ourselves roamed about but it was like walking in to a giant golf course rather than shuffling around a million pedestrians.
it was a hot day but they made us put on these shirts because we didn't have sleeves. you can't step foot in a temple without being covered from your knees up. it was like torture wearing that sweatshirt over my dress in that heat!
in the front of the King's summer palace there's a little spot where they sell refreshing smoothies and things of that sort. we got a pineapple lychee smoothie that was out of this world because the fruits were so fresh and ripe. we tried to get another one but this woman kept insisting "try banana special. it best." stefan felt obligated to get one and it just tasted like banana and honey. not refreshing. then she asked if we wanted to take a picture. sure, why not i thought. she then handed us a bunch of fruit and we took this pic. don't we look like some cheesy Asian ad?
then we headed to the ruins. it's kind of astonishing to first see their currently used temples covered in gold and intricate details and then to see versions of them them stripped down to brick and broken. i actually almost liked seeing the ruins like this more because there is a lot more history there. these ruins had more of a story. they were operating when Thailand was still considered Siam. sure, a big part of that story is war but it's amazing when you think about who has been in the very same place you are currently standing in at that moment in time. i imagined a ton of Burmese tearing away at the temples in Ayutthaya a few hundred years ago and then me peacefully walking around taking pictures of the distant aftermath.
and then to the next ruins.....
the Burmese army came and cut off the heads of all of the buddhas
i was definitely not supposed to climb up and do this but i really couldn't resist.
as we headed back to the bus after the ruins, there was a street vendor making fresh roti!! roti was the one thing i had to get before leaving Thailand. in SF when i get roti at a restaurant they charge me something like $5. in Thailand it cost 15baht, or 50 cents!! i was SO excited when i saw her and it was SO good.
on our way to the hotel we stopped on the side of the road to pick up some of Thailands version of cotton candy. it looks like colorful hair or noodles spun around each other. here they make it by hand and pull the candy to thin it out until it becomes as thin as human hair. they take some of the cotton candy and roll it in to a green crepe like thing. it's not bad, but not my thing. in Ayutthaya there are blocks of people selling this same cotton candy. i wonder how their businesses thrive.
we got to our hotel which was crazy awesome. it was absolutely the best hotel room i've ever stayed in in my life! it was more like a one bedroom apartment including a bedroom with a king sized bed, a living room, a dining area, and a full kitchen and bathroom. there was even a washer/dryer in the room. it was super modern looking and bigger than the little studio i'm currently living in at home! too bad we were only staying one night.
with only the night to stay in Ayutthaya but tired from all of the days travelling, we decided to lay low. so Stefan swam and ran at the gym and i took a long glorious nap. then around 9pm we headed out to get massages. our hotel was far enough from the city part of Ayutthaya that we had to take a tuktuk to take us anywhere. we had the hotel call one and she asked them to take us to a massage place. the driver stopped at a sketchy looking massage place but a two hour massage was priced at 300baht, which is $10. seriously?? $10 for two hours?? you can't even get 15 minutes in SF for $10!! they twisted us, bent us, and pounded their elbows in to our backs for a solid 2 hours. the best part for me is always the head/neck/face massage. of course for $10 i wasn't going to complain about the woman talking on her cell phone for the first 10 minutes or the constant texting. or that someone new came to replace the first woman half way through without telling me. it didn't matter. ten bucks. my god that was awesome.
it was already 1130pm by the time we were done with the massages. most of the tuktuks weren't on the streets anymore by that time but we ended up finding a guy who looked like he was done for the day and asked him to take us back to the hotel. we started driving and eventually i saw our hotel, only it was getting further and further away from us as we got on to what seemed to be a highway. we didn't take a highway getting to the hotel. i semi-freaked out for a minute thinking that we were going to another city and that he had mistaken the address we'd handed to him. i didn't want to be lost in a foreign country, at midnight, where not that many locals speak English. but then somehow we ended up near the hotel again and all was good in the world again.
we walked over to a street about a block away from our hotel where only the locals would really hang out. we sat at one of the outside food vendors selling who-knows-what. but we sat down and he offered us a simple soysauce chicken over rice with soup for about a buck. yes please! there was a lizard crawling up the side of his cart but "when in Rome," right? food from the street...a good way to end the night!
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