Thieves Amongst The Temples: I'll never forget the day that I was robbed by an elephant

Ayutthaya, Thailand. It was only when I arrived, after a humid four hour train journey from Bangkok, that I learnt how to pronounce the name correctly - ‘A-you-tay-a’.

The allure of Ayutthaya was the opportunity to gaze upon the ageing ruins of a once bustling trading centre and former capital of Siam, now a UNESCO heritage sight. I was to walk among the ‘prang’ towers, serving as memories as a glorious past; only giving a fleeting indication of how mighty the city must have stood in its heyday before its destruction by Burmese invaders in the eighteenth century.

However, like a young Hunter S Thompson minus the drugs, my brief had gone wildly off course. Rather than watching out for the ghosts of the past, listening out for the echoes of a half-forgotten history, I was riding atop an elephant down a main road.
After navigating a fairly busy roundabout, scarcely avoiding speeding tuk-tuks, the elephant’s guide brought the majestic beast to a stop by the roadside. Before I had time to hastily appreciate yet another ruined Buddhist monastery I had become victim to a heinous crime: elephant aided robbery.

It seems that the elephants had been planning this all along. As a second guide atop a second elephant was taking a picture of me using my camera, the first elephant, my once trusty transport, had used the opportunity to deftly remove a one hundred baht note protruding from my shirt pocket. The note was handed over, (or should I say trunked over?), to the snap-happy guide and that was that. It was never seen again. I had been scammed.

So as the sun set upon the worn out old city, the ruins were shrouded in darkness for another night. Woefully distracted, my first attempt to immerse myself in the forgotten relics of the past had gone awry. I fervently wished that as morning came I would be able to start anew and appreciate what mythical Ayutthaya had to offer. I looked forward to a new day, yet the grand history of the once great city meant little to me that night, as my thought alone was “I’ll never forget the day I was mugged by an elephant”.