Ayutthaya
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The last two days have been a whirlwind of activity, as we left the city and checked out sights further afield.
Yesterday, we hired our buddy “Mr. T” the taxi driver to take us out to the ancient capital of Thailand, Ayutthaya.
He regaled us for almost the entire journey with a concert of songs familiar to fans of Nat King Cole, Simon & Garfunkle, Bee Gees and Elvis. Apart form his inability to pronounce the letters “R” and “W”, his pitch and intonation was absolutely true to the original recordings – ie:”Lice men say, oony fools lush in…” We traded songs the entire trip. It’s embarrassing to say that his repertoire of English songs was much stronger than mine. After offering a few tunes from “My Fair Lady”, the best Canadian song I could offer was Trooper’s “We’re Here For A Good Time, Not A Long Time” – a classic, to be sure… If the journey had lasted much longer I would have embarrassed myself with a rendition of “Rubber Ducky”, my personal stock of songs was getting so low.
Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand for over 400 years, and saw the reign of 40 kings. By comparison, Bangkok has been the capital of Thailand for 200 years, and has only seen six kings. Canals filled with enormous man-eating cat fish and traditional Thai teak wood stilt houses abound beside new-money mansions and desperate tin-siding ramshackle dwellings. Mutts of similar pedigree roam the streets everywhere and mine each other, but defer to people when they’re not sleeping across the steps of their master’s homes. Families line the dirt roads and paved highways with makeshift or permanent market stalls, selling everything from plastic bags full of eels to be set free (in order to gain the favor of Buddha), to salted fish, to lotus flowers and wreathes of jasmine and roses to be offered at a Wat, to clothes, household items or food to be cooked on the spot. The intermingling of sweet, salty, fishy and spicy smells in the heat and humidity of the day makes for a sensory experience not familiar to North American existence.
The ancient Wats and Buddhas of Ayutthaya are laid out in a pattern that imitates Ankgor Wat in Cambodia – a comparison we will be able to make next week. The prayer halls and stupas here are ancient crumbling bricks that once formed the support structure for facades that were doubtless as visually overpowering as the Wats we have already visited in Bangkok. Much like the ruins of ancient civilizations in Turkey, the ruins here are dispersed around the city in a way that has seen them integrated into the everyday life of the modern population. It is not uncommon to see a crumbling brick stupa in the middle of a highway divider.
A stupa and chedi are essentially the same things. They both appear to be massive upside down ice cream cones, built to house the ashes and / or relics of Buddha or a worthy individual (ie: kings). They are located all over Ayutthaya – some larger, some smaller – all impressive in their longevity and their structural integrity, given that the city was sacked and burned by the Burmese after an ancient war, and the bricks from the palace were used by the Thai King who decided to move the capital to Bangkok 200 years ago. The present palace was built from the scavengings of the old palace.
We wandered the grounds of several old Wats, prayer halls and Chedi’s in Ayutthaya, as well as the largest chedi in Thailand – the “leaning chedi” – Thailand’s answer to Pisa’s tower. Incidentally, there were several bats in it. This chedi was built to commemorate a Thai general who had defeated the Burmese in a war fought from the backs of elephants in the jungle on what is now the Thai / Burmese border.
After the heat of the day had exhausted us, Mr T took us to a restaurant for lunch, where he introduced us to a traditional Thai desert – an odd combination of kidney beans, sweet corn kernels, diced papaya & pineapple with cubes of translucent sweet gelatin mixed up in sugary water and ice, topped with a strange tapioca-like seed. You have to try it to understand it…
That was Monday in a nutshell…
June 1, 2006
15:30:45
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