Grand Ayutthaya

... took me, because I clued in, when it took too long to take me back to my hostel, and I asked him where we were going... We ended up crossing a bridge over the river (which is DEFINITELY not between the train station and my hostel), and I started arguing with the guy about how I didn't think he knew where he was going... He kept on insisting he did, and I was starting to get concerned because at this point, I was in God knows WHERE Bangkok. Finally, the ...

... br><br>Today the Thai teacher found a guy who is letting me borrow a bike for the semester, but it is so old I don't think it will last that long, but thats ok! It takes about 7 minutes to bike to school.<br><br>The weather is very very very hot and humid, aahh, i am glad we have ac at school. <br><br>So today was my first day of teaching. <br>All I have is 5 different groups students, and I teach 14, 50 minute classes a week! 2-3 classes a day ...

... to feed the turtles. Pretty exciting, actually. They're massive. You feed them banana slices on a skewer. They're pretty competitive. The fish feeding though.. I swear, you could go down to these spots at the river with a net and have enough food for at least a year. The water right by the shore is just fish flopping around all over each other, and the water is calm elsewhere. I take a handful of pellets and throw them as far as I can, and there's an ...

On the way back from the college we stopped at the Ruins of Ayutthaya. It was amazing to be on top of something from 1200 ad.. We have nothing like in California, being so new and everything. It just really put it into perspective on how old their culture is in comparison to ours. When we something is an Antique it is what about 50 or a 100 years old? That's nothing in comparison to these. <br>

Ayutthaya Is a town full of ruined Temples, I rented a bike from my Guest House and proceeded to get completely lost right away, which included my doing a very large circle and only realising this when i pasted my Guest House, eventually i got the hang of the very bad map and started to overdose on ancient Temples which as you can see from the Photos, it was well worth the effort of cycling in the heat, my favert were Wat Phra Magathat onThanon Chao Phrom which has ...

... out on the lawn while everyone was taking pictures with the elephant shaped bushes and play Frisbee. There is one girl here who plays ultimate Frisbee competitively so she at all times has 2 Frisbees in her backpack, which comes in handy a lot. <br> After the palace tour we went out to lunch at this beautiful restaurant right along the river. The best part about the whole dining experience was the restaurant was a buffet. So we all just kept getting up and trying everything ...

... flip out about having to go to school here. Coming from Garfield, anyone would. I was definitely shocked. Despite all of this, it has something that GHS doesn't have. Everybody is happy to be here. It's not a drag to come to school. Just about everyone is friends with each other, it's not cliquey. There's definitely different groups of people that are friends, but they're all super nice and accepting towards me. Even if I don't understand a thing they're ...

... new market being set up in a street or group of streets. Stalls, as you would expect, sell a huge range of fresh food but the more surprising aspect is the huge number of stalls that sell prepared food. Some of this is designed to be eaten right away but stalls also put the food into tightly closed plastic bags for people to serve at home. It is quite normal to see folk making their way home with a clutch of plastic bags with meat, spices and ...

... evoked reverence. The stones were crumbling on its bordering walls, but its stupa seemed to rise like a gigantic corn cob in the middle of the remnants. I gasped as I found its name in the brochure that I brought. Whew! I was amidst the ruins of Wat Phra Ram (the temple of Rama), Ayutthaya's oldest temple. <br><br> Built in the 1300s, the wat was done in Khmer style with a prang mounting the main structure. Unlike the others, this wat ...