Day 463: Ayutthaya

For a period of several hundred years, Ayutthaya was the glamorous capital city of the Ayutthaya kingdom - until it was sacked and partly destroyed by the Burmese army in the 18th century. Today, temple ruins are dotting the city, and treasures excavated from the ruins are on display in Chao Sam Phraya National Museum. The amount of gold in the museum is very impressive - especially when you consider the involvement of looters. In the 1950s, the museum explained, excavations found a number of relics that had been enshrined inside one of the stupas. After these findings became public, looters started robbing some of the other stupas in Ayutthaya. When the government realized this, they quickly reacted and accelerated their excavation schedule, thus limiting the extent of damage the looters could do.

Unfortunately, the museum didn't allow photography, but the front page of the brochure they handed out to visitors had a lovely picture of the most stunning exhibit: a richly decorated golden elephant.

After visiting the museum, I went to explore some of the ruins. I first stopped at Wat Mahathat - or, in the words of the Japanese tour guide who happened to pass by me: Watto Mahathatto (Of course, I knew from my time in Japan that the Japanese language is no friend of consonants at word endings, but still, his pronunciation of the temple's name amused me to no end.)

The first thing I noticed on the temple grounds of Wat Mahatat was the leaning tower of... umm... Ayutthaya.

As I saw later, this tower isn't the only leaning one in Ayutthaya. Funnily enough, Wikipedia has an entire list of leaning towers (on which South-East Asia is grossly underrepresented, by the way).

Wat Mahatat also has another proof of the power of nature: a sandstone Buddha statue that has been completely dissolved inside a tree - except for the head which gazes at the visitors from its prison within the tangled roots.

The majority of the ruins in Ayutthaya are built from red bricks. However, I saw the remains of something like stucco covering the bricks on some of the buildings. I assume that back in the day, the buildings were either white or painted in some other way, and no bricks were visible at all. Must have been quite a different atmosphere! (The University of Melbourne has done a virtual reality reconstruction which shows white temple buildings.)

My next stop was Wat Ratchaburana. This temple has a row of stupas that are either very well-preserved or very well-restored. In contrast to all the other buildings, these stupas are made from a different white-ish material.

I then decided to cycle to a temple a little way out of town, Chedi Phu Khao Thong. In contrast to all the temples in the city, where it's strictly forbidden to climb on top of anything, you're free to climb up this one.

The top revealed a nice view of the surrounding landscape, but the coolest part was when I discovered that a little tunnel led to the inside of the spire at the top. At the end of the tunnel, there was a small opening where a lovely red glass Buddha statue was enshrined.

On the way back, I had a quick look at Chedi Suriyothai...

... and then I decided that I had seen my fair share of ruined temples for now ;-)