With only 10 days left before flying home...

Trip Start Feb 11, 2008
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Trip End Jun 30, 2008


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Friday, June 20, 2008

...we decided to make the most of our time left in thailand and to take the night train from Krabi to Bangkok and then on to Ayutthaya, where we visited the UNESCO protected Ayutthayan and early Khmer temple ruins in the centre of the town. This was an unexpectedly very enjoyable four days of wandering around piles of bricks in the scorching midday heat. The majority of the main temples are quite ruinous as the Burmese made an exact job of destroying the city in the 15th and then the 18th centuries, but two of the temple sites we visited, one on the outskirts of the town outside of the canaled "island", was spectacular, and we had the delight of only being two of the half a dozen other toursits wandering around the almost complete and lovingly restored temple grounds. The other temple site which impressed us was the first site we stumbled upon with the most photographed Buddha's head in Thailand, the one which has been engulfed by the roots of a fig tree - you'd have seen the photo on ANY tourist brochure for Thailand! It was still pretty cool and we took our own photographs once the hordes of Malay, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese and Thai tourists had wondered off.

We decided not to cram too much into our four days here and concentrate on six sites to enjoy in their entirety as we felt too much detail is lost if you have to rush around like an eejit! As it was, the four days we were there were worth it and the photos should sow that Ayutthaya should be on everybodys itinery for visiting thailand. I also figured that a visit to Surathani, a mere 40-50 k's up the road would also have been worth our time, but we both agreed that after Ayutthaya we were al "templed" out!!

With that in mind, we tought we'd spend our last few days in Kanchanaburi and take a look at the bridge over the river kwai and pay our respects to the men (both Allied, Thai, Burmese, Chines and Malay who lost their lives to the horrors of the labour camps set up by the Japanese in order to force a ralway into the depths of Burma and take the offensive to the Allied front in Burma and India.

How littel did we appreciate that such a solemn and terrible period in history could be bolloxed up, vastly mis represented and over touristed (not to mention over priced) by the insatiable quandary that is Thai tourism...
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