Nice Temples, Not so Nice Town
Ayuthaya, Thailand
Ayuthaya’s attractions are its ruined temples, built during its heyday in the 400 years that it served as the Thai capital. These are in a similar style (although not on quite the same scale) as the Khmer temples at Angkor and the now utterly destroyed remains of My Son in Vietnam.
Statues of the Buddha at Wat Phutthaisawan After visiting the Wat, I made my way into the park next to it which runs all the way to Wat Phra Mahathat, around a kilometer to the East. The park has been built around a lake and includes a string of islands connected together with wooden bridges in various stages of rotting away. Each island seems to contain something to make the trip across the precarious bridge worthwhile. One has the remains of a small wat. Another contains a gold painted Buddha. My favorite of these features was a small building bedecked in tiny and dazzling mirror tiles. Half of the wall space was taken up by the two grand entrances on each side and the rest was a hideous hotch-potch of mirror, trimmed with gold paint. The roof was in green and topped by three towers like ones from the temples, also trimmed with gold. It seemed to be some sort of shrine, but it looked like nothing if not a public toilet from Las Vegas.
In the evening we took a boat trip to the mega-impressive Wat Chaiwatthanaram, supposedly modeled on Angkor Wat. It does bear some similarity with its imposing 35 metre high central tower, surrounded by four lesser prangs. All this is within a brick courtyard where we could see the remains of dozens of statues of the Buddha which once stared inwards. Beyond this, there was another ring of nine towers. It’s the most amazing monument, possibly the best there is in this city full of amazing monuments.
