Old Temples and Ruins
In Thailand, I wanted to go to old temple ruins really bad. Yuki’s family helped make that possible and we visited two locations, Ayutthaya Ruins and Wat Chaiwatthanaram.
Ayutthaya Historical Park covers the ruins of the old capital city until its destruction by the Burmese. It is another UNESCO World Heritage site and includes several Wats (temples). We saw the large Wat Phra Si Sanphet and the Phara Mongklon Bophit Buddha inside. The Wat is significant because it served as the model for the Emerald Buddha temple in Bangkok, Thailand’s most important temple. Additionally, the Buddha is one of the largest in the world. I didn’t felt like the building itself was less glamorous than the Emerald Buddha temple in Bangkok but there was a sign in the back that showed over 2 million Baht donated to the temple in the previous month alone.
The large ruins with the three main stupas have ashes of three kings in them. I found it kind of weird how I could climb up the steps to where a king lay, something that wouldn’t be allowed in the West. The Stupa themselves are enormous but only take up a small fraction of the entire park area. Several brick walls in various states of falling over are the remains of buildings surrounding the Stupas. Most of the buildings are just the floors and the column bases.
I really enjoyed being able to walk all over the ruins and touch the walls. We got some great pictures and in the back of the park found areas that weren’t covered with tourists. Then we went to Wat Lokayasutha that has a big reclining buddha and wandered our way behind it to where there were some more pagodas and temple buildings. Yuki and I climbed a really steep pyramid to see it from the top but there wasn’t much. On the way down the steps, I imagined that the Incan pyramids in Central America are probably as steep because we were using our hands to make sure we didn’t fall over.
The ruins have trees growing out of them and it seems like every wall is leaning over slightly, Ayutthaya Thailand
After an expensive lunch that wasn’t all that good, we went to the most interesting place, Wat Chaiwatthanaram. I think this is a sort of poster image for Thailand but still well worth the visit. Wiki has this to say about it:
“The temple was constructed in 1630 by the king Prasat Thong as the first temple of his reign, as a memorial of his mother’s residence in that area.”
This place would look fantastic at twilight on a clear night but still looked great here.
The central prang is 35m high with four smaller prangs around it. I thought it was pretty cool and photogenic, even if in the middle of the afternoon. At twilight, it would probably be pretty spectacular.
The ruins got me really excited and I’m really glad we got to go out and see them. I don’t know if all the Khmer ruins are the same but I wouldn’t mind seeing more. I’m still planning on going to Phimai, Phanom Rung, and Angkor Wats.
Yuki and Jack check out a buddha
