Ayutthaya for a Day — TO FALL UP

Greatest Moment: A perfect day in Ayutthaya on motorbike. We saw many temples, a floating market, fed elephants, road on the opposite side of the road, ate dinner at a night market, and ended the day with an outdoor performance.

Worst Moment: Our room had one too many bugs in it. With our DEET-free bug spray, we sprayed the crap out of our bed, unknowingly suffocating ourselves with citronella fumes. Kathy stood at the open door to waft fresh air in for ten minutes.

Lesson Learned: Small towns are excellent to rent a motorbike for. So much sight-seeing can happen without the sometimes over-priced tuk-tuk fares, and you rely on yourself which was a great feeling, in such a foreign place.

Cultural Insight: There is a lot of pride in this small town, especially in Thailand arts and culture. In Ayutthaya, tradition is greatly displayed for foreigners and for locals alike.

"...an island of palaces and pagodas, canals and waterways like a Venice of the East, attracting adventurers, and leisure travelers, diplomats and merchants, mercenaries and missionaries."

This became so apparent to us when we decided to ride our motorbike to a temple that we had seen earlier setting up lights. Wondering what it was for, and knowing we would have to return our motorbike in a 45 minute time, we decided to just pop by it and see if it was anything. It turned out to be our favorite 45 minutes of the trip. In the middle of Ayutthaya there is a park with many temples. In front of one in particular, that night there was a performance and cultural celebration. We parked our motorbike along the side of the road and followed a trail of oil lamps, that lead us to an area of drums and chimes. Approaching the lit temple and the growing sound of the music, we saw the performance of a group of women dancing within a long read banner. Men soon appeared bearing flame torches and battled around them. An elephant appeared at the end of the battle (a battle it seemed to us), clothed in dazzling reflective tiles and deep red silk. On top of it all, there were Thai foods for the tasting, and though we had already ate, we couldn't say no! So we ate the dragon fruit with honey, drank the coconut milk, marveled over the sweet and sour soup, by-passed the pad thai noodles, and had the most delicious dish of all--and one we cannot name! It was served in a coconut shell, and she scooped in it ham slices, corn, a moist and soft type of bean, syrup, milk, and a fried egg. It was so sweet and delicious, Jamie has been on a desperate search for it since!

We returned that night to our hotel, so much more in love with the country than we were before that day. That catapulted our decision to then go up to Chiang Mai and see more of the nature and the culture before we go into the peninsular islands of Thailand.