The King's Birthday in Bangkok

As we've mentioned before, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej is a revered and loved figure throughout Thailand. He has been in power since 1946, and is the longest reigning monarch in Thai history, and the longest serving head of state in the world. He's also a renaissance man, being a painter, author, jazz musician and composer, sailor and sailboat designer, inventor, photographer, and industrial developer. He is also fantastically wealthy, with Forbes putting his net worth around $35 billion (although this is disputed by the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs). So, the King's birthday is a big deal...


Dec 5

As we've mentioned before, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej is a revered and loved figure throughout Thailand. He has been in power since 1946, and is the longest reigning monarch in Thai history, and the longest serving head of state in the world. He's also a renaissance man, being a painter, author, jazz musician and composer, sailor and sailboat designer, inventor, photographer, and industrial developer. He is also fantastically wealthy, with Forbes putting his net worth aroud $35 billion (although this is disputed by the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

So, the King's birthday is a big deal. It all starts when you get dressed in the morning. Yellow is the King's color, because he was born on a Monday, so on his birthday, people wear yellow to show respect for the King. At least they used to. Now they wear pink, but no one told us, so we were all prepared with yellow shirts, only to go outside and finding everyone wearing pink. It turns out that the King was hospitalized in 2007, and when he left the hospital, he wore a bright pink blazer, which sparked a national trend to wear pink for the King's health. Danny did manage to find a fun pink shirt from a vendor just outside the hotel, so he ended up being appropriately attired.

King's birthday attire, from Thailand - Bangkok

Decorations are put up all over the city, including special portraits of the king, and a pair of urns, one gold and one silver, in front of most of the existing portraits. The main celebrations are downtown, where Ratchadamnoen, one of the main roads, is shut down for roughly a kilometer and lined with various booths and exhibits. As with most Thai festivals, this goes on for several days. We caught the tail end of one day (around midnight) when we happened to end up near the festivities after seeking out a famous pad thai restaurant. We came back the next day for more pad thai, and the main event.

At one end of the road, a six story government building was covered with huge decorations. A laser generated portrait of the king is projected on the building, and later in the night, fireworks are launched from the top of it. Across the street in one direction is a big stage, which holds continuous performances for at least 5 hours - singers, dancers, and drummers. In another direction is a large park which has been filled with works showing tributes to the king, including a huge rotating crystal cube filled with video projectors.

King's birthday decorations, from Thailand - Bangkok

Up and down the street a parade of lighted floats slowly circles. Some of these floats I recognized, like a recreation of the royal barge. Others are a bit stranger, like giant Easter-like bunnies, and a pair of cartoonish atomic scientists in what looks like an old camping trailer. The center of the road is filled with temporary fountains, and the sides of the road are various booths and exhibits. Some of these are embassies from around the world, others are government booths selling commemerative items, others are displays of projects that have benefitted from His Majesty's support, and others just seem to be displays.

Floats at the King's birthday, from Thailand - Bangkok

The entire area is packed with people, 90% of which are wearing pink. In the center, at the Democracy Monument, there's another stage with more singers and musicians and a bunch of electronically controlled spotlights shooting into the sky. At the far end, there's a third stage, which stars what might be Thai rock musicians. Of course, all the speaking and singing is in Thai, and with a couple exceptions all the printed text was in Thai too, so it was hard to decipher things. During all of this, fireworks would be shot off at apparently random intervals. All in all, it was quite a bit of chaos, and a fun birthday party.

King's birthday, from Thailand - Bangkok

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Bangkok Food & Markets

The upside to procrastinating and not getting blog posts done right away is that you don't have to do them right away. The downside is worse, of course: When it's time to write them, I've forgotten so much. This post covers a little of the food that's unique to Bangkok as well as the crazy markets and shopping malls the city has to offer.

Food

Though we'd had a lot of excellent Thai food already, there are a couple standout dishes that we encountered in Bangkok. Not far from our hotel we passed a street vendor selling something vaguely taco shaped. We were a little hungry, so we gave it a try, and it was really delicious. I can't even remember what all the ingredients were or what it's called, but we ate these little coconut tacos several times. The outside was sweet, but the interior was mostly savory, like glass noodles and spring roll type items. The other excellent dish in Bangkok was recommended to us by the proprietor of Sukothai restaurant in Pahoa, Hawaii. She said that Thipsamai is where all the Thai people go for pad thai in Bangkok. It's open very late (we encountered crowds and long lines as late as 1:00 am) and serves nothing but pad thai. There are about eight or so options on the menu that allow you to customize the type of noodle and whether to include prawns or not. Most options come wrapped in a thin sheet of egg, which is really pretty and a great way to get a little extra egg in the pad thai. We ate there a couple times, including on the King's birthday since it's near the downtown celebration grounds. Curiously, on the King's birthday it seemed that every order was coming wrapped in egg, whether requested or not. I'm not sure if that was in celebration or just to make things easier since the crowds were thicker than usual that night.

"Thai tacos"	Pad Thai at Thipsamai
(from Thailand - Food)

Markets

As far as markets go, Bangkok is pretty much king. The weekend markets here dwarf the entire city of Chiang Mai, let alone its "Sunday Walking Street". Figuratively. At any rate, Bangkok's best market is probably Chatuchak Market which takes place every weekend. It's so large there are maps to help you find the section of goods you're looking for, although the map is only "suggestive," not guaranteed to be accurate. Ryan and I had a lot of fun wandering the hundreds of alleyways or diverse merchandises, looking for and at art, antiques, clothing, food stalls, scarves and textiles, coins, jewelry, marionettes, ceramics, Buddhist amulets and relics, etc., and such and so on. We actually spent two weekends here, since my knee forced us to stay in Bangkok longer than expected, which was just as well since the first weekend was hobbled by my slow limping (prompting me to buy my cane).

There's a night market not far from our hotel which has all sorts of hype and exaggerated reputation to attract tourists. I've heard it called a "VIP night market" and "one of Bangkok's best." That's all lies. The Suan Lum Night Market is worse than the Night Market in Chiang Mai in that it's more of the same same (all the stalls sell the same type and quality of item) and for higher prices. We went anyway, and there are probably some nice attractions there (we decided not to attend a marionette dinner theater though it looked interesting) and I suppose it's more convenient than going up to Chiang Mai, but even if you're stuck in Bangkok and can't get up north, the Chatuchak Market has better versions of what you'll find at Suam Lum for better prices.

In the Old City (near the palace and the historic Wats) there's a busy amulet market that spans several blocks. There's no real space set aside for the market, so the vendors just line up on the sidewalk and the pedestrians just crowd on through, winding around young and old amulet hunters armed with magnifying glasses and plastic trays of all their current selections. Some vendors sell hundreds or thousands of unframed clay tiles; others sell frames in varying degrees of ornateness. Select vendors have pre-paired "ancient" relics and frames. Walking through the market takes a long time, even when you're not drawn to browse the occasional display of Buddhas and mythological figurines.

In addition to awesome street markets, Bangkok also has some pretty intimidating indoor markets. Pantip Plaza is a five-story warehouse-sized building with an open interior filled with thousands of individual electronics vendors. There are large department stores, like Best Buy, surrounded by independent merchants selling the same goods for slashed discount prices. You can buy plenty of bootleg DVDs here as well as Chinese knockoffs of all the popular Japanese and Korean brands. Of course, you can get the originals, too, for a decent price.

Chatuchak Market map	Pantip Plaza, from Thailand - Bangkok

Shopping Malls

On a different scale than the markets, Bangkok has plenty of impressive shopping malls. Visiting one gives you the idea that Thai people take their fashion seriously. There are all the usual western brands plus Asian styles including independent local designers. We were in Bangkok in late November and despite being primarily a Buddhist country, Thailand apparently loves Christmas. There were massive Christmas displays everywhere, in none of the traditional red and green. We saw hot pink, clear plastic, neon, Borg-like, and other bizarre holiday trees.

Also at the malls are the best movie theater experiences you can buy for the same price as a ticket back home. For about US $15 Ryan and I went to see the disaster flick "2012" in a "Gold Class" screening at the EGV Grand Cinema, which means the theater seats about 40 people (though there were fewer than a half dozen of us in attendance), each with his own fully reclining, overstuffed, motorized arm chair, with blanket and pillow, and if we wanted it, bar service before the show. Who cares how good the movie was if the viewing experience is so incredible, right?

Christmas tree at Siam Paragon mall	Gold Class movie seats at EGV Grand Cinema
(from Thailand - Bangkok)

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Where are Danny and Ryan (Part 2)

OK, this one should be a bit harder...


Hopefully this one is a bit harder, so it isn't gotten on the first try :)
What I'm looking for here is the name of the town.

Time: Not recent (more than a week ago)
Difficulty: Medium (2 points)

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Bangkok Wats and the Grand Palace

By the time we got to Bangkok, we'd seen so many temples that they were all starting to blur together. Rather than getting completely burnt out, and not enjoying some of the best the country had to offer, we restricted ourselves to the "Big Three" in Bangkok.


Nov 27 - Dec 4

By the time we got to Bangkok, we'd seen so many temples that they were all starting to blur together. Rather than getting completely burnt out, and not enjoying some of the best the country had to offer, we restricted ourselves to the "Big Three" in Bangkok.

Wat Pho was the first one we visited, and one of my favorites overall. I guess I like the really BIG Buddhas. This temple also goes by the tongue twister name of Wat Phra Chettuphon Wimon Mangkhlaram Ratchaworamahawihan. I'd been looking forward to this one especially, since I'd seen it in a TV documentary long before we left on the trip. What makes Wat Pho special is the giant reclining Buddha, 46 meters long and 15 meters high. It's a beautiful Buddha, with a wonderful expression and incredibly intricate mother of pearl inlay covering the bottom of its gigantic feet. The inlay consists of 108 different scenes, supposedly displaying auspicious characteristics of a Buddha.

Wat Pho, from Thailand - Bangkok

Wat Pho, from Thailand - Bangkok

Wat Pho is traditionally recognized as the origin of Thai massage, and still has a highly regarded massage school. Occasionally we saw people advertising that they were trained at Wat Pho, but we never tried these out. Wat Pho also contained very nice grounds which wrapped around the main temple and contained a number of stupa, sculptures, and smaller temples. These smaller temples were as large and more ornate than some of the main temples in other towns we'd been to.

Wat Pho side temple, from Thailand - Bangkok

Wat Arun was the next on the list. This temple was founded when the capital of Thailand moved from Ayutthaya to Bangkok. The 82 meter tall central prang is unusually decorated with tens of thousands of pieces of broken porcelain. This porcelain came to Bangkok from China, where it was used as the ballast of the trading ships. Good reuse! You could climb the very steep steps of this prang (so of course we did) and get a good view over the river to the rest of the city.

Wat Arun decorations, from Thailand - Bangkok

Wat Arun, from Thailand - Bangkok

The final temple was the royal one, Wat Phra Kaew, which sits on the same grounds as the Grand Palace. This wat is most famous for housing the Emerald Buddha, a relatively small jadeite Buddha, but possibly the most revered in the country. Its small size means that the Buddha is nearly swallowed up by all the ornamentation surrounding it. (Pictures are not allowed in the temple, so mine is from the outside, and not very good.) Legend has it that the emerald Buddha was created in 43 BC, but its history is somewhat murky until the 1400's. From that point it has been associated with a variety of kings and capitals, including a stay in Chiang Mai. It was moved to Bangkok by King Rama I in 1784, and has been there since.
One curious thing about the Emerald Buddha is that it has 3 sets of gold clothes, one for each season (hot, rainy, and cool), which the king changes in a ceremony. When we were there, the Buddha was wearing his warm coat for the cool season.

Emerald Buddha, from Thailand - Bangkok

The Wat Phra Kaew and Grand Palace complex contains over a hundred buildings. Many of them were not open, but we did get to see a couple of the formal halls, used for things like coronations and other ceremonies. The wall surrounding part of the complex is covered with hundreds of large, highly detailed murals depicting scenes from the Thai version of the Ramayana known as the Ramakian. This story is THE main story in Thailand, the "National Epic". It occupies a large and central part of their art and drama. It tells the story of Rama (or Phra Ram) and contains kidnappings by demons, all kinds of battles fought with monkeys, demons, flying spirits, and giants, and many palace scenes. I'm not sure what many of the things being depicted were, or what they were supposed to teach, but it was beautiful and fantastic to look at.

Ramakian mural, from Thailand - Bangkok

Another highlight of the Grand Palace area was the Golden Stupa - a huge monument covered in golden tiles, and the menagerie of mythological creatures that surrounded it. These buildings house the ashes of previous royalty.

Golden Stupa at the Grand Palace, from Thailand - Bangkok

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Medical Interlude

I'm taking a break from (ir)regular travel updates to write about the most significant medical impacts on our trip so far, and that's not even including having my front tooth fall out about an hour into Wang Daeng Cave in Phitsanulok!

First, there's our efforts to avoid malaria, which caused problems of their own, then there's the knee infection I got, which required minor surgery. Fortunately, I'm writing this well after the resolution of all of this and I can report from the future that everything turned out okay and we're still fine. But for a while - with both situations - we weren't so happy with how things were turning out.

Doxycycline

First up is malaria prevention. Before the trip, we'd investigated several anti-malarial medications. Doxycycline, Mefloquine, Malarone and Chloroquine. Each had certain drawbacks: Doxycycline can cause an upset stomach and sun sensitivity (i.e., easy sunburning); Mefloquine use was discontinued by the US Army because it causes psychotic hallucinations and disturbing dreams; Malarone is relatively symptom-free, but very expensive and Chloroquine doesn't work in Southeast Asia for reasons of drug resistance. We ended up selecting Doxycycline for our period of longest exposure in Thailand, which meant we'd be taking daily pills for about five weeks. During those weeks, we were fortunate not to experience the sensitivity to sun, but boy were we slammed with stomach problems and we spent a lot of time experimenting with different ways to take the pills to relieve these symptoms as much as possible.

We were advised to take the pills on an empty stomach (no food for two hours before or one hour after taking the pill), which made planning mealtimes difficult. We were also advised to take the Doxycycline with plenty of water, and that's probably what ended up hurting us the most. I'm not accustomed to drinking much water first thing in the morning, but when we started, that's what we did. For a while we woke up, took our pills with a half liter of water each, waited an hour and then had breakfast. Under that routine, I spent the first half of each day feeling really queasy and unwell, and Ryan had stomach cramps for hours. Eventually, with some experimentation, we revised our routine and began taking the pills after breakfast, and with sweetened tea instead of water, which helped immensely. Even still, we felt stomach-sick every three days or so until about a week after we discontinued the Doxy. Boy, was I ecstatic to be done with Doxycycline!

Okay, I don't like talking about stomach troubles much, but I thought it might be helpful to anyone else about to embark on a similar adventure with Doxycycline. Of less use to anyone else is what happened to my knee, but perhaps the personal drama is interesting nonetheless.

Carbunculosis

Somehow in Ayuttaya I managed to get a small bite or scratch on my knee. It got a tiny infection, and for whatever reason, the wound closed up over the infection, trapping it inside. Then it grew, got worse, and eventually impaired my ability to walk. I noticed the bump when it was tiny. There was a red spot with a white pimple in the center on the top of my left kneecap. I ignored it, perhaps I scratched at it, but it was nothing.

The next day, it had grown into a small swollen lump. It was tender to the touch, and sometimes it stung when my knee flexed all the way, but I pretty much ignored it more. I might have mentioned to Ryan that it was hurting a little, but there wasn't much we could do. We got on the train and went to Bangkok.

By the time we arrived and had to walk to our hotel in Bangkok, my knee was hurting a lot. The bump had swelled up until I had a second kneecap on my first kneecap. I couldn't flex my knee at all without some pretty severe pain and I decided I should probably stop by a hospital and see what was what. Fortunately, there was a very nice hospital a couple blocks from the hotel. BNH Hospital specializes in ex-pat care and has been around for about 100 years, so that was a stroke of good fortune.

The doctor I saw there told me I had should have surgery: the wound should be cut open, the dead tissue removed, and the infection cleaned. I didn't like the sound of that, and there would be a long recovery process during which I couldn't go swimming. That would mess up our caving and beach plans, so I asked about an alternative option. Maybe I could just take some antibiotics and hope it cleared up on its own, he suggested. I thought that sounded better, so that's what I did.

Despite the antibiotics my knee didn't get better. It continued to hurt, and so a couple days later I went back in and this time agreed to the surgery. It hurt like __________(expletive, indicating a painful noun). I got about a dozen injections of local anesthesia, and then there was a scalpel, a lot of cutting and scraping, poking, prying, sharp metallic tweezers, bottles of fluid, gauze pads and at last some smelling salts to revive me from my inevitable wooziness.

Even after all that, my knee still hurt (a hole in your knee might hurt, you should assume), and while walkinghobbling around at the weekend markets I picked up a Burmese military cane (a souvenir item here that proved functional enough for my needs). You can see the cane in the photos at the Lopburi monkey festival. The monkeys there loved the cane and climbed up and down it, especially when there were peanuts or other treats involved.

Monkeys on a cane!

I had to go back into the hospital for daily cleanings, which meant more prying, prodding, tweezers directly into the incision (OUCH!), gauze pads stuffed under my skin, soaked with antiseptic juices. We had to change our plans to accommodate the doctor's orders. We stayed a week longer in Bangkok than we'd intended. We skipped several days of beach (Ryan went swimming one day in an ocean water park while I stayed on the sand and chatted with the local Thais running the park) and had to abandon some of our cave plans that involved water. My knee is healed now, but I've got a ridiculous scar now that does all the fancy things scars do, like pucker up in the cold or turn colors. Whee. Don't get one, I say.

Bonus anecdotes

Just for honorable mentions, I'll talk about the tooth I teased you with, and Malarone, which we took in Argentina (yes, we're that far behind in the blog!) My crown came off after lunch in Tham Wang Daen in Phitsanulok. I carried it back to town and visited a mor-fan (dentist, literally "doctor-tooth"). For 300฿ (US$10) he glued it back in place. Since it's still there now, I suppose that turned out okay.

As for the Malarone, it's expensive, sure, but it had none of the problems we had with Doxycycline. First of all, we only had to take it for 1 week after exposure, not 1 month. Second, it's taken with food, not on an empty stomach. It's too bad that it's so expensive, because it seems by far to be the better experience, and I'm happy to report that we didn't get malaria while on either drug. Of course, the risks were fairly low in both cases, so maybe we never really had to test the medicine's effectiveness, but that's the way it is with preventatives. They feel like a waste when nothing happens, and they're definitely a waste when something happens, because it's not supposed to. Read more!

Where are Danny and Ryan (Part 1)

We haven't been updating the blog as much as we'd planned, because there's always stuff to do. To relieve the boredom between posts, we're going to start a set of photo puzzle posts.


What we'll do is post a photo, and you, the audience, can guess in the comments where we were. As a starting hint, we'll let you know if the photo was recent (within the last week), or older. Other hints will follow if no one is getting it. Keep in mind that I'm only able to check every few days, so we won't be able to declare the winner immediately (or let you know that all guesses are wrong). Restrain yourself to one or two guesses between the times that we check in. Winner gets points based on the difficulty of the photo. Be specific in your guess. For example:

The correct answer for the above photo would be "Half Dome", not USA or California, or even Yosemite National Park.
At the end of the trip, whoever has the most points will get some memento.

Here's the first one.

Time: Recent
Difficulty: Easy (1 point)

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Ayutthaya

This was the 3rd of the 4 historical areas we were visiting, and the 3rd in the timeline as well (Phimai/Phanom Rung, Sukhothai, Ayuttaya, and Bangkok). The main part of the city is a large island, created by the intersection of three rivers.


Nov 24 - Nov 25

Ayutthaya (or Ayuthaya) was the second capital of Siam, taking over from Sukhothai around 1350 and lasting until it was sacked by the Burmese in 1767. The main part of the city is a large island, created by the intersection of three rivers.

This was the 3rd of the 4 historical areas we visited, and the 3rd in the timeline as well (Phimai/Phanom Rung, Sukhothai, Ayuttaya, and Bangkok). Ayuttaya is much larger than the other sites in terms of how spread out the ruins are. We had intended to rent bikes, like we'd done at Sukhothai, but when we arrived, we discovered it was still very much an urban city and not a historical park. So, we skipped the bikes and walked and took tuk tuks and taxi trucks instead.
We stayed at the Baan Thai, which was a new "village style" hotel across the river from the main city. It was a beautiful place with each room being an individual cabin set in very well kept grounds. Our cabin had an indoor and outdoor shower, which was fun, but not for me since the outdoor shower was cold water only. Danny enjoyed cooling off in it though. There was a large, open air dining room and lounge next to the cabins, and tables near a large pond with a waterwheel. The hotel also had a pair of guardian geese which hung out at the edge of the pond as it ran along the main driveway. Whenever we walked past on our way in or out, the geese started a terrific honking.

Baan Thai hotel, from Thailand 2009 - Ayutthaya

To get to the city proper, we had to take a ferry, which was about a 5-10 minute walk down the street, right next to the train station and a small food market. The ferry fare was very small, I think 3 baht (10 cents).

Our first night there, we found out about a night tour that the hotel owner could hook us up with. The major monuments are illuminated for several hours each night, and although you can't enter the grounds at night, they are very pretty to look at from outside the gates. We took this tour, run by a woman and her husband. The only downside was that they brought along their little girl, who was fun, but was then used to give us the hard sell on an all day tour, which we refused due to the expense.

[There were more upsides than downsides. In fact, we had a lot of fun seeing the sights and playing with their daughter, but what irritated me was that when we were all done, the woman who guided us around for the evening asked about our day plans. When we mentioned that we'd probably go back around and see the temples again when they were open, she wanted us to hire her for the day. We didn't want to spend that much money, and turned her down, and then she began pleading "for the sake of her daughter" etc, and giving us a hard sell. That's what Ryan means by "the only downside" - but it's not like we had a miserable time. In fact, we had a great time, other than that. --Danny]

Wat Chai Wattanaram at night, from Thailand 2009 - Ayutthaya

The next day, we set out to visit as many of the monuments, temples, and ruins as sounded interesting.

• Wat Chai Wattanaram - It had a beautiful spot right by the river and a pleasing geometrical arrangement. We climbed up the staircase and around the ledges on the central prang for a different view of the Wat and the surroundings. Here we encountered an unusual selling practice - a vendor would take a picture of you with a digital camera as you entered, and while you visited print and shellac your picture on a small plate. Then when you left, he'd find you and try to sell you the plate. We wondered if we bought it if we'd find layers of other people's pictures underneath.
  
  

  From Thailand 2009 - Ayutthaya

  
  
  
• Phu Khao Thong - This monument was out of town and seemingly not popular. There weren't any other visitors while we were there, except we did find a small group of people working on the inside of the monument, gluing thousands of little mirror tiles on the wall. We took a taxi here, and then made the mistake of not having it wait, thinking it would be easy to get another. We had to walk a long way back* until a nice woman gave us a ride. There was an active Wat next to the monument where there were lots of puppies, chickens, and a couple horses. This monument was constructed by the Burmese during the occupation, and outside of it is a monument to King Naresuan, who led the armies and kicked out the Burmese. The King's monument contains friezes showing his fighting skill - attacking the Burmese and fighting a shark and crocodile. There are also hundreds of his fighting cocks throughout the grounds, ranging from small souvenir size to bigger than man-size and covered with mirrored tiles.
  *[We had to walk 3 km in the hot, Thai sun to get to the next temple on our list, until this very nice businesswoman shopped and offered us a lift. Not only had there been no taxis, tuk-tuks or any thing of the like, we were hungry and thirsty, since we'd also run out of money and not seen an ATM all morning. We spent "the last of our money" several times: I spent my last 20฿ bill on a drink from a serendipitous vendor at Phu Khao Thong, then we spent Ryan's last 20฿ note on the roof tile at Wat Na Phra Meru, and at last, we spent our very last 5฿ of change on a chicken snack. That is, I confirmed that it was chicken (some meat on a skewer), but I didn't think to make sure she meant meat, and not chicken fat. It was grilled chicken fat, and we were out of money with only a single baht coin in my pocket. Much later, we managed to find an ATM next to a 7-11, and boy did we go crazy with slurpees, ice cream and drinks. --Danny]
  
  

  From Thailand 2009 - Ayutthaya

  
  
  
• Wat Na Phra Meru - The woman who gave us a ride was kind enough to drop us here, where we saw their 1300 year old Buddha, one of the oldest on the trip. The temple was also replacing their tile roof, and we made a small donation in exchange for writing a message on one of the new roof tiles.
  
  

  From Thailand 2009 - Ayutthaya

  
  
  
• Wat Phra Mahathat - This temple ruin is famous for the Buddha head cradled in the roots of a tree. Legend has it that thieves stole the Buddha, but it was too heavy to carry, so they left it by the tree, which grew around it. It was a little smaller than I expected.
  
  

  From Thailand 2009 - Ayutthaya

  
  
  
• Wat Suwan Dararam - We stopped by here just because it was on the way to something else, and it turned out to have some very pretty murals.
  
  

  From Thailand 2009 - Ayutthaya

  
  
  
• Wat Phanon Choeng - A very different temple, because of the heavy Chinese influence. There were lots of statues the likes of which we hadn't seen before. It was also a very noisy place, with gongs and bells and chanting and firecrackers. Plus, it had a very nice giant Buddha. This was definitely one of my favorites of Ayutthaya.
  
  

  From Thailand 2009 - Ayutthaya

  
  
  

More Photos...


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