Having a free day of no tours yesterday, we three decided to head off to the world famous Chatachuk weekend market. We had already been to the market when we were in Bangkok last October, but we spent the day then combating the heat and wandering around aimlessly not knowing anything about bargaining or Thai food. This time we went back acclimatised to the heat and ready to shop. This place is incredible! It is so big it could take you over an hour and a half just to walk from one end to the other, and it is split into zones and sells literally everything you can think of; homewares, food, drink, bags, pictures, clothes, souvenirs, jewellery, technology, even animals! It is a shoppers heaven ....well if you have money ..... which we spend on tours and hostel dorms and cheap cocktails .... its still a great place to hang out for an afternoon.
After this, we headed out in Bangkok city to grab some cheap Thai food and go for a drink before we planned to head back for an early night before our 7am start today with our trip to Ayuthaya. Take note of the word 'planned'. Sitting having an early cocktail, we got a text from fellow teachers (a shout to to Siobhan who reads this blog was drunkenly promised last night; Hello Siobhan :-) ) who were two roads down on the infamous Khao San Road (party central).
'Ah sure we will go for one drink to say hi'.
4 hours, 2 buckets of cocktails and a cheese burger later we fell in the door. This morning was not fun.
But, despite all that, at 7am this morning we headed off with our bottles of water to Ayutthaya, the ancient city outside Bangkok. 700 years ago this city was the original capital of this area until it was captured, burned and ransacked when the Burmese arrived about 300 years ago. Now the old city is simply ruins, but what amazing ruins they are. There is still enough intact so that it doesnt take much for the mind's eye to build the temples around you. Spending so long now surrounded by the Buddhist religion, I could nearly hear the chanting and smell the incense. Many of the buddhas that are still sitting where they were placed 600 years ago now are now headless, as the heads were mad of sandstone and were robbed and sold after the fall of the city. The scale of the temple complexes are incredible, and at times you can still see where the world recaptured the fallen city back into nature. Over the centuries the jungle grew back in over the buildings, and although much of it has been cleared away over the decades, some parts of the temple simply can't be taken back from nature.
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