Two sights of beauty

Which is more beautiful, my lovely wife, or the hat for sale that says 'Marlboro'.  I mean, my wife is pretty darn beautiful, but a Marlboro hat - just think of how that would look on my head.  And everyone who saw me wearing it would say - man, that guy has taste.

Tough call.  

Boar: it's what's for lunch

When we were in Ayuthaya we ate at a riverside restaurant that, I kid you not, that was literally built around/against a huge tree growing through the center of the roof.  

One of their special dishes was wild boar.  It was excellent, not gamey, and it was like being a character right out of Lord of the Flies.  I felt like a hunter that had just brought down a big kill.

Old school shaved ice

Here's someone shaving ice the old fashioned way.  Old school!  Pour a bit of syrup on top, and you have yourself a cool snack for a hot day.

I'll bet his handshake is like iron from doing this so often.

Ayuthaya - Wat Chai Wattanaram

We saved the best for last - Wat Chai Wattanaram was terribly cool.  It was very intact (perhaps it was less ruined for being across the river?) and almost no one was there with us - we pretty much had the place to ourselves.  Very easy to imagine how it might have been, but the sinking ground still made for some interesting gateways and angles.  Ruined buddhas as is the norm in Ayuthaya, but some still had detail you could see.  And you could really start to imagine the fires that were hot enough to turn some bricks to glass.  Well kept lawns to finish the effect.  Stunning.  Posting all the pictures at once so you can get the full effect of walking through the complex.

Ayuthaya - Wat Phra Mahathat II

More pics from the evocative Wat Phra Mahathat

Ayuthaya - Wat Phra Mahathat

Our next stop was an old temple complex that hadn't been rebuilt nearly so much.  It was a great place to see how the sinking ground of the area affected the buildings (Ayuthaya is an island, so heavy brick structures tend to not remain level over time).  It was also the site of a very famous buddha - a buddha head that is entwined in tree roots - very sacred, as it represents the divine intertwined with nature.  Walking through the ruins was every bit as fun as walking through ruins in Italy - I was bouncing around like a rabbit in a carrot patch, and Sam was as bored as I remember her in the Roman Forum.  What can I say - old rocks do it for me.

Ayuthaya - Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon

Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon had been rebuilt a fair bit (especially buddha statues) which was great because it was the first big temple we visited in Ayuthaya, and it gave us a good idea of what some of the less intact complexes had once looked like.

Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon had some very unique features for us - lots of intact buddha statues, worn bricks on the staircase to the central tower (chedi), a place on the top of the central tower that you can enter to see golden statues, great views from the top of the whole complex.  It was also very much still functioning and in operation today - there were monk's quarters off to the side where monks live (and which show one of Ayuthaya's other specialties - old style wood houses that are raised off the ground).

One little temple in the complex is popular for people to pray to for kids, hence the hello kitty stuffed animals inside it.

And that little green thing that Sam is holding is an unripe mango that fell off a mango tree in thecomplex.

Ayuthaya - Wat Na Phra Meru

One of the temples we saw in Ayuthaya had been rebuilt a few times, so the outside was very modern looking.  Inside they had a buddha statue that hadn't been destroyed/melted down when the Burmese invaded what at the time was the Thai capital.  It was huge, and it was gold, and it was in the old style - note the ornate clothing.  Cool stuff.

An adjoining temple had another statue, but it was stone and very mellow.