Lena, Vinny, and Me - Ayutthaya

Ayuthaya was the capital of Thailand, then known as Siam, for four centuries, and was considered one of the greatest cities in Southeast Asia. It was responsible for laying a basic foundation for the modern country. Ayuthaya's government was shrewd, giving different minority groups and nationalities their own districts of the city and dealing with the European powers in such a way that Thailand avoided being colonized. The Burmese sacked the city twice and wiped out its buildings and people the second time. Today there are just a handful of ruins scattered on and off the island.

I came to Ayuthaya from Bangkok to see this ruined city. At first I was a bit disappointed. I'd imagined walking through an ancient abandoned city of stone like Machu Picchu, destroyed structures still in their original place. I always tend to romanticize places with historical significance, picturing them in an almost dreamlike way as if they hold some elusive mystical quality. Ayuthaya is actually a modern city with few remnants of its past, refreshingly less hectic than Bangkok but nonetheless different than what I'd searched for.

It didn't take long for this sense of mild disappointment to vanish. I met a couple of Germans, Lena and Vinny, in the Good Luck guesthouse immediately after unpacking in my spacious and air-conditioned room with a bathroom (I thought I'd deserved to spend an extra 200 baht for the night after struggling in Bangkok). I was struck by how friendly, laid back, and genuinely good people they were. Lena admitted to having a terrible sense of direction, and I think this similarity helped us become friends pretty quickly.

My first tour of Ayuthaya, after walking through the market searching in vain for a cap to keep my face from burning off, was on a small boat operated by a stout Thai woman. The boat chugged around the island, stopping at two temples to let us disembark and in front of a group of beautiful ruins for a photo op. At one of the temples, I got on my knees like the Thais in front of a giant seated Buddha statue. You're not supposed to point your feet at a Buddha image, so you sit with them underneath you. As I was kneeling, a woman next to me taught me how to pray and I prayed with Buddhists for the first time. The woman told me to ask the higher powers for anything and everything I wanted. Part of the prayer was also requesting a lot of money by quickly slapping your thighs. For some reason I don't associate Buddhism with the desire for a lot of money...

Huge!

That same night, Lena, I, and the Chinese girl who'd toured with us ate at a night market by the river where the boat dropped us off. The variety of food was incredible, and what intrigued me was how the Thai Buddhists and Muslims shared the same space, each offering its distinct cultural cuisine. I opted for a delicious and very spicy soup with everything in it: noodles, crab, shrimp, squid, chicken feet, onions, tomatoes, vegetables, peanuts, and a number of herbs and spices. Yes, I can casually list chicken feet as an ingredient in my meal. Another notable dish I should mention is green papaya salad--crunchy, spicy, a little sweet, "mwah!" as Vinny would say.

The classic attraction in Ayuthaya is the ruins, so Vinny, Lena, and I rented bikes and pedaled the rickety contraptions on traffic light-free streets to the historic park. Actually, it wound up being more of a time traveling trip to childhood. Strolling across bridges, passing by temples receding into oblivion, obliging childlike impulses to examine empty snail shells, a broken skull, giant millipedes, and tree vines, we wandered though the park. Our ultimate goal was to spot one of the massive "water lizards" Vinny had seen in the ponds on his last visit. At one point I made out two decorated elephants walking slowly in the hazy distance like mythological creatures. Besides participating in my German friends' games of curiosity, a highlight (albeit sadistic) was watching Lena and Vinny dance around slapping their legs as ants chomped on them under their clothes.

Millipede on Lena's shoulder

Something mystical after all

A warning for weary travelers in Ayuthaya: beware of Tony's Place. A super-friendly man who works there will ask where you're from and try (and succeed) to impress you with his encyclopedic geography knowledge. Then he'll give you a piece of paper with numbers listed on it and say something like "Ten states with five letters", and you'll have to list all of the U.S. state names spelled with five letters. I've spent a couple of tense hours wracking my brain for his answers as he's sat back watching me suffer like a dark wizard because I can't give up when I've got 1 or 2 left out of 10.