Ayutthaya

Yesterday, that'd be Thursday and boy am I ever loosing track, we took a drive to Ayutthaya. The main purpose of this trip was to ride some elephants. After all, how many people go through life and never have that experience?

Ayutthaya must have thousands of these

So this time the driver was one of Dang's nephews, a fellow just graduated from high school who was on break from his dancing gig. Apparently there's a whole branch of Dang's family who are engaged in "show business" traveling the country in a big variety show of traditional folksy entertainment.

Anyway, Dang and I took the back seat while he drove his Honda City, accompanied by a friend who rode shotgun. This was much more comfortable than the VIP Van and I'm not sure why because the leg room in the van is superior in every way. Just goes to show that leg room isn't everything, I guess.

We didn't stop at any temples until we actually got to Ayutthaya, but once we got there, we attempted to do nine temples in a day. This, I'm told, is something of a magic number that if accomplished in the same day will result in especially good fortune. Spoiler alert; we failed, but we came close.

Apparently, Ayutthaya was the first Bangkok; the first capital city of Thailand. It was conquered some time ago by invaders from Burma and largely destroyed. Thousand years-old ruins were everywhere to the point that I was reminded of my day of hiking all over Rome years ago. It is a navigable big river city and is also the victim of frequent floods. Canals and water were everywhere.

Actually, there is standing water everywhere in this country and I haven't been bitten by a mosquito yet. Being from Texas where the native mosquitoes seem particularly plentiful and savage despite the lack of water anywhere, I'm surprised and grateful.

Blurry (sorry) but a semi-vintage tuk-tuk

 All the tuk-tuks in Ayutthaya are of a vintage design that is unique to the rest of the cities in the country. Many are truly vintage restorations, but I suspect most are fiberglass bodied replicas of the real thing. I suppose it's because Ayutthaya is genuinely a tourist destination. There were plenty of Koreans, Japanese, and Europeans nearly everywhere we went and there were even small groups of fair-haired tourists attempting to navigate the city by bicycle.

The whole expedition got to ride. I've got to say, these seemed like happy elephants.

Oh yeah, almost forgot the best part. We rode on the back of an elephant. I could have opted for the 60 minute ride but decided that 20 would be enough. I kind of wished it had lasted longer. I saw a group of folks on other elephants who must have opted for the longer version and they were sitting in the driver's position, you know, sitting on the elephant's neck and getting the full experience. At one point our driver saw my iPhone and asked for it. I hesitated, but Dang explained that he was offering to take our picture. He then climbed down, directed the elephant with voice commands, lit up a cigarette and proceeded to take a butt-load of pictures of us with various backgrounds and poses and did a swell job of it too. I guess I can cross that experience off the bucket list.

 Tomorrow we take an overnight journey to Pattaya.