(Sorry for the upcoming late entries! We haven't had Internet access until now. Or, if we did, we didn't have time to use it. So everything has been handwritten and now will be transcribed by us. Haha.. no outsourcing!)
Friday, October 31 (Happy Halloween! No Halloween out in Thailand, though!) 8:27 pm Thailand / 6:30 am US
Today we visited the ancient capital of Ayutthaya, about 45 minutes away from Bangkok. Our 1st stop was Bang Pa-In, the summper palace for the king. It was such a beautiful place with canals, manicured lawns, and Italian (yup, we wrote Italian) architecture. Kinda reminded us of Disneyland, sad to say that in Thailand! The main attraction, of course, was the palace itself which was decorated from roof to furniture to paint colors in Chinese decore since China gave this palace to the Thai king for prosperity. Lucky guy! Sorry, no pictures were allowed so you'll have to check it out online. =D
1st food adventure of the day: we tried a mangosteen which looked like a hard old plum but tasted like a lime to Ryan with a lychee texture for me. And we got it for free! Woo hoo! Thanks to Nok and us ordering 3 fruit juices. And another parting gift: free pomelo (it's like a grapefruit but it's super sweet out here!)
Onto the ruins next and boy were they amazing! We climbed to the top of Wat Yai Chai Mongkol (more steps for us - our glutes are gonna be rock hard!) where there is a temple for the Reclining Buddha. Seriously, though, words cannot describe how beautiful the ruins are. As Nok said, "You'll have to imagein how beautiful this was. The king said Ayutthaya was more beautiful than Bangkok." Unfortunately, it is all left to our imagination since Ayutthaa was left burning for 7 days and nights by the Burmese and all the treasures including the Buddhas were either destroyed or stolen.
Lunch was next and we ate at a street-side restaurant (an open cafe where young boys no older than 10 years old were taking our orders and cleaning our tables). We had a tapas-style lunch with mini bowls of Thai soup noodles with pork, rice noodles with pork balls & soup, and Pad Thai (Ayutthaya style with crispy chips on the side). Don't worry - the parents cooked for us! =)
Onto the ruins of Wat Wat Chai Wattanaram where the Buddhas were left in their original state: burned and decapitated. Here we got a really good idea of how much devastation the burning of Ayutthaya caused and it saddened us both. Throughout the touring of the ruins, we could tell how deeply affected Nok was and that, in turn, made us realize how connected she is to Thailand and its history.
We also visited Wat Phra Si Sanphet, famous for its 3 spires of the Royal Temple and the walls of the Grand Palace, and Wat Mahathat, famous for the Buddha head in the Po tree that grew around one of the ruins.
Our next adventure happened to be the street market of Ayutthaya called Chao Phrom. It wasn't quite on our itinerary - we were tired of walking since it was ~90 degrees today and we were sweating like pigs! Here we got a true feeling for shopping Thai style. We encountered everything under the sun: from exotic fruits that looked pretty scary (black buffalo-shaped fruits that tasted like chestnuts; red horned dragonfruits; red colored rose fruit) to live frogs & eels to pigs, rats, and porcupines for sale! Of course, we had to try/eat some desserts: grass jelly drink (freshly made) and my new favorite snack: deep fried potato balls (glutinous rice with potato flour).
Today's most exciting adventure, though, is taking the train to Chiang Mai. First of all, the train station is a covered platfore in the middle of nowhere (no nice concrete building, no windows, no ushers, no turnstiles). There are geckos on the walls and people just sitting and eating/staring off into space/sleeping on the bench. The, after waiting 1.5 hours, we find out that our train is delayed by 20 minutes (should arrive at 7:40 pm instead of 7:20 pm). No worries - another food adventure: Indian roti cooked Thai style with egg and banana - hot & fresh off the grill! Yummy! Oh yes, and an order of fried rice with chicken to go & a pomelo for dinner courtesy of Nok. (I think she's trying to fatten us up!). Okay, our train finally arrives at 7:40 pm and yea!! we're in 1st class, which brings us to the most exciting part of our train experience (my 1st time on any train, by the way). You would think that 1st class means 1st to board nearest the front. NOPE! Nok led us off the platform, into the gravelly area of the tracks. And it's totally dark! We are literally standing 5 feet away from the train as it arrived at our stop (yes, we stayed safely behind the dotted line, but my hari was still flying all around from the draft of the train!). Wow, that was the closest I have ever stood to a train! The cabin is clean - bunk neads and our own sink. The toilet is... um... interesting. A stainless steel hole with a cap-thingy and hose to wash down "stuff". At least, you can flush it (China's toilets didn't do that) and there's 1 bar to hang onto. The train ride is ~12 hours so I know I'm going to have to go sometime, but I'm trying to put it off as long as I can. And tha'ts why I'm journalling right now. =) Wish me luck with the toilet situation (definitely no #2's!) and lucky Ryan : "I can just pint and shoot!"
