Burning the Inheritance

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya was one of the places we had planned on visiting on our last trip to Thailand but never made it because of my knee surgery, so we were pretty excited at getting a second shot at it.  Getting from Bangkok back to Ayutthaya was one of the easier legs of travel we had had for a while.  We called a Grab who picked us up in front of our hotel and headed north. 

Along the way we passed Bangkok’s Central Terminal which we would be returning to by train in about two weeks. As we had made more or less the same drive a few days before, the route was familiar and, after about an hour of driving, we found ourselves being dropped off at our next stay, the Athithara Homestay.

The Athithara Homestay was a beautiful traditional Thai house, consisting of a main house and several outbuildings snuggled up against the Chao Phraya River on the southern edge of the old city of Ayutthaya. 

We had a traditional teak-paneled room in one wing of the main house which felt quite private and had some nice views. The main house also had a beautiful common lounge area which, with its display of ceramics, felt a bit like a museum.

The house had a series of covered decks and terraces which provided some lovely views of the river including glimpses of a mosque, a church, and a temple complex on the other side as well as the occasional river traffic. 

Our homestay was a family-run enterprise (the family who ran it lived on site) and came with a nice breakfast buffet every morning It turned out to be a great location as it was a nice quiet location but quick and easy to get in and out of the old city by Grab.  Our hosts proved to be both very friendly and helpful including arranging a river cruise with pick-up for us.

The Athithara Homestay was located at the end of a side street to U Thong Road, the main road in the neighborhood. The immediate neighborhood was mostly residential with small shops and cafes lining one side of U Thong Road and a park with a couple of ruined stupas on the other side. 

There were other side streets off U Thong similar to our own where we discovered to a couple of nicer restaurants (with great food, exotic drinks, and more great river views. One of them, at the Sala Boutique Hotel, was a bit bougie, but very good with tasty cocktails and food and awesome views of the Wat Phutthaiwasan temple complex across the river. The other restaurant, the Thanam View, was just as good, but less fancy. (There were a couple of pretty lively after-work get togethers under way while we were there.) We were happy to find that these seemed to be local places with nary a tourist in sight! 

While walking the neighborhood we discovered a Thai treat we had never seen or heard of before called roti sai mai which is a kind of cotton candy (sai mai means silk rope) wrapped in sweet roti. (It is sometimes referred to as roti-wrapped candy floss or Ayutthaya cotton candy.)  I came across a stall where they were making it and honestly couldn’t figure out what it was until one of the candy-makers gave me a sample. 

It starts with what looks like caramel which is made into a loop then stretched out, then doubled up, then stretched out again and again until it becomes a bundle of finely spun sugar threads which are then dyed any of a number of bright colors and then bagged for sale.  Tasty and incredibly entertaining to watch it being made.

We spent our days visiting temples (of which there were many) and markets (lots of them too!).  As had been the case in Bangkok, taking photos in traditional garb at temples is a thing in Ayutthaya. While we did use Grab to get around the city, we walked quite a bit as well and were surprised at how many expansive parks and green spaces there were. 

We also started to frequent the night markets which are the place to go for good cheap street food which we ate quite a bit of and where Colleen discovered what became her favorite – Thai fried chicken (TFC – much better than KFC according to her!).

On Saturday night we took a private river cruise which took us all the way around the old city and afforded some interesting views of many of the places we had seen from land and we timed the cruise to catch sunset before being dropped off at another night market.

On Sunday, our last full day in Ayutthaya, we visited a couple more temples and then walked across Bueng Phra Ram Park, a large park with lots of ponds and lakes and were delighted to find that Sunday is elephant ride day in Ayuthhaya. 

We finished our day at another night market and then headed home to pack and organize ourselves to move on to our next destination, almost 400 miles to the north, the ancient of Chiang Mai.