Pondtales

Time for a Holiday

THAILAND | Tuesday, 29 May 2012 | Views [956]

After getting back into Bangkok from Laos I had a few days to kill before Lisa my mate from Ireland was arriving, so I went up to Ayuthaya, one of the former capitals and one of the greatest greatest cities in Siam. I was there in 1997 and remembered it quite a quiet, sleepy place, I can remember watching a snake slowly crossing the main road through town in the middle of the afternoon with not a car in sight to bother it. So I was very dissapointed when I got off the bus, Ayuthaya today is an ugly concrete mess, full of traffic and fast food chains.

I had basically gone to photograph the temples, some of which date back 600 years or more. But in top of the bad weather making it very hard to photograph anything, I wasn't too imppresed with the temples, after seeing the temples at Angkor and other temples I've seen in the 7 years since I was last in Thailand they didn't really seem too impressive. All in all a bit of a waste of a few days I could have spent in Laos really!

I then had 2 weeks on 'holiday' with Lisa, we spent a few days in Bangkok while we thought about what to do, we ended up deciding that we should have a proper holiday and went back to Ko Chang for a week. We spent the time on the beach, swimming, did some snorkeling which was pretty good, and went out for an elephant trek, which was very interesting! Very cute elephant, got to feed a baby one as well.

We went back to Bangkok for a couple or days, went out to the Grand Palace which for all the times I'd been to Bangkok I'd never been to before. Shouldn't have bothered really, I don't find Buddhist temples particulaly impressive anyway (apart from some of the older one's in places like Luang Prabang in Laos), and there were too many annoying people getting in the way all the time. Bloody tourists... The most interesting part was the Emerald Buddha, a small jade statue which is the most revered Buddha image in Thailand. Which, as Lisa pointed out, looks exactly like Yoda. On this possibly sacrileges thought we decided that we should proberly leave...

Lisa had to return to Ireland, and I'd decided to go back to Laos for another vist, so after she left I headed north, stopping at Sukhothai, Chaing Mai and Chaing Rai. None of which particualy interested me, I was quite dissapointed with Chaing Mai, notable for me for the 2 day vomiting session it gave me, and Chaing Rai stays in my memory for the night of severe stomach cramps I got there. I realised that Thailand was never going to interest me as much as places like Laos or Cambodia, it was mainly a good place to pass through, sort stuff out then head for somewhere else...it was definatly time for Laos...!