I plan on writing more about this particularly after I do some more research. We went into the city of Ayutthaya, 85km north of Bangkok. This is the site of the previous capital of Thailand. There are palaces and temples that are in ruins all over the city. According to Wikipedia, King U-Thong founded the city in 1350. Over the course of the many years and many different kings that ruled the area, lots of temples and palaces were built. In 1767, the Burmese came and ransacked the entire place, leaving all of these gorgeous places in ruins. Beautiful ruins. We spent the whole day on a tour that led us through many of the famous sites.
We started out at a huge temple site of the ruins of Wat Yai Chaimonkorn. It’s still a functioning temple.
There was also a huge reclining Buddha.
The climb to the top was beautiful. Just amazing.
We moved next to Wat Mahathat, a site that was thoroughly ransacked by the Burmese. In addition to falling many of the buildings (some of which miraculously remain standing), they decapitated many of the Buddha images. Since the 1800s, many of the other statues originally untouched by the Burmese were slashed and the heads were taken and sold to museums or other history-preserving entities.
Another interesting sight here was the Buddha head in the tree. Here, Buddha’s head is planted with the tree, and over the years, the tree winds itself around grows up and around the sculpture. This was really beautiful.
We were then shuttled to another huge pagoda at Wat Phu Khao Thong, actually constructed using three different styles of building: Thai, Burmese, and Sri Lankan.
It was a pretty steep climb all the way too the top... and all the way down to the temple at the bottom...
Again, there was a working temple behind it. Beautiful. I’m still very intrigued by (and relatively clueless when it comes to) Buddhism.
We went next to a huge reclining Buddha that is randomly in a field. Calico, if you ask me.
And the awkward tourist shot to give a bit of scale. This thing was huge.
Next, we went to the huge old grand palace of Ayutthaya. It was really pretty epic.
Traditionally, when people come to pay their respects to Buddha, they place goldleaf chips on the images. Not only is it an interesting custom, it's beautiful.
The ruins behind it were more intriguing and just beautiful. Wat Phra Si Sanphet is the largest temple in Ayutthaya.
Ayutthaya was beautiful. If you ever head to Thailand, don't leave this place off your list of cities to visit!
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