In Pictures: Ayutthaya

By Kin Enriquez -

For this week's In Pictures we go to Ayutthaya, an ancient city that was once the capital of Siam. We visited the city and the ruins during the food tour of Bangkok. It is about 76 kilometers from the Thai capital.

Tourists walking along the ruins
Located in a fertile floodplain at the banks of Chao Phraya river, Ayutthaya became a powerful kingdom in the 15th century, and reached its golden age in the 18th century. Wars and dynastic struggle contributed to its decline years later.

Phrangs of the ancient temples
A hawker sells some food to the locals

Today it is a bustling city as well as the location of a UNESCO World Heritage site. The ruins were what's left of the ancient city after it was overrun by the Burmese. Within the ruins are several Buddhist temples, or wats, a grim testament to the brutal destruction of the city. 

Aside from the ancient temples and the statues of Buddha, we also visited the floating market, and I took the time to ride an elephant. 


Wat Chaiwatthanaram
How to get there: by train, take one from Bangkok's Hualampong station to Ayutthaya. By bus, take one originating from Mo Chit bus station. It will take 1-2 hours of travel to get to the park. Full trip report here.

 Useful Info: 50 baht park fee is collected from foreigners


The reclining Buddha in Wat Lokayasutharam 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Off the Beaten Track: Mapun, Tawi-Tawi

By Kin Enriquez -
Image
Guest post by Mara Ione Sarail Mapun? Where is that?” I get this question a lot when people ask me about my hometown. I’d ramble on and on the island (its location and the culture and the pretty spots...) but since the place is not really in any of the Philippines tourist spots and is in the middle of nowhere, I might as well talk about Atlantis instead. But the island does exist.  Mapun Tawi-Tawi or Cagayan de Sulu) is an island municipality in the Sulu Sea on the southwestern extreme of the Philippines, located very close to Sabah. Or from the way I see it on the Philippine map, the island is located on the Philippine’s “armpit”. Mapun is a volcanic island. The picture above shows Mt. Nanggoy, an inactive volcano near the Sapah Lake. The most popular tourist attraction in Mapun would be the three crater lakes on the west part of the island. Legend says that the three lakes were once volcanoes that erupted together. The first two, Danao and Singuwang, becam
Read more

Golden Tara of Agusan

By Kin Enriquez -
Image
One of the main reasons why I am always drawn to museums when I travel is that I would want to see, in real life, the fascinating things that I've only read in books or have seen in the films, such as archaeological artifacts or the paintings of Van Gogh and Dali . Museums give you access to all that. I majored in History when I was an undergraduate in the University of the Philippines. As such, I am always excited to see artifacts and historical curiosities that I encounter during my travels. But sometimes, they also make me sad, like when I saw the Golden Tara of Agusan in the Field Museum in Chicago.  The reverse of the Golden Tara The Golden Tara is a gold statue of a Hindu-Malayan deity discovered in 1917 in Esperanza, Agusan del Sur, in southern Philippines. Weighing about four pounds, the 21-karat gold statue depicts a woman deity sitting cross-legged, ornamented with a headdress and various accruements in the arms and legs. It was dated to early 13
Read more

National Museum of the Philippines

By Kin Enriquez -
Image
It's quite ironic that many people sometimes neglect to see the treasures that are right in their doorsteps. The usual excuse is, "they're just there and they aren't going away anyway."  I sometimes have that problem; I've been inside some of the great museums abroad, but I haven't been to the one just a few miles from where I live. I did try to rectify that last weekend, when I went out of my usual weekend routine of going to the gym and then to the mall. I went to see the National Museum of the Philippines in Manila instead.  Facade of the Old Congress Building, home of the National Museum Known in Filipino as the Pambansang Museo ng Pilipinas , the museum is the official repository of historical and cultural treasures of the Philippines. The museum is composed of several institutions, including the National Planetarium and the Museum of the Filipino People. It also has several branches around the country, the Fort Pilar Museum in Zam
Read more