I'm off to see the wizard

Ayutthaya aka Zach

Well I'm in Ayutthaya now, I got up nice and early and took the train up here, its about an hour and a quater north of Bangkok and it used to be the capatol of Siam for a really long time. There is so much history here and I spent the day walking around looking at old ruins and wats. The ruins were amazing to walk through and I saw the biggest buddha statues I've ever seen in one of the wats. I took a bunch of pictues which I'm trying to get back home asap as soon as rob gets the ftp working again and I have a good internet connection there will be lots to look at. I also took a few videos the other night at the jazz festival and one at the zoo so I hope those come out alright with sound and all. I'm so exhausted from walking around in the blazing hot sun today (heh ;) ) that I'll probably be out before 12 and thats good because tomorrow I'm planning on catching the train up to Lop Buri and leaving my bag at the train station while I wonder around the city chasing monkies and then at night I'll get back on the train for the othernight to Chiang Mai. That is of course the plan as of right now but we'll see how tired I am and how much my legs are killing when I get up in the morning. Oh I almost forget to write about the great lesson I learnt today. When buying a ticket for the train you must specify that you want a seat, me and 5 other tourists ended up standing at the back of the train cramed into a 3x2 little space because we all bought standing tickets. I'm glad it was only a one hour ride and not the 15 hr ride up to chiang mai. I really enjoy riding the train b/c you get to see the most beautiful scenery, today I saw lots of rice paddies that were so green and lush, just amazing compared to the dirty city of Bangkok I was leaving. The cool thing about Ayutthaya is that you have people living amongst those old ruins, its just a normal city around them. Also it is a man made island, the southern point is where two rivers meet and they connected them at the top for protection a long long time ago. Well there is tonnes more history about this place, a lot of which I'm oblivious to but one last tid bit before I go, it was home to 33 kings of Siam. History lesson over for the day, if you want to know more open up your google and do some reading on your spare time.

posted by Brandon Share @ 7:28 PM