AYUTTHAYA

This weekend I boarded a train to Ayutthaya the ancient capital of Siam, an empire stretching through Thailand, Cambodia, Lao and parts of Vietnam and Burma that lasted for 400 years. Today there’s a typically ugly modern Thai city surrounding the ruins and remaining Wats (temples) and palaces.

I took a third class train for 15Baht (50c), and as we rolled out of the station I was treated to the delightful smells of Bangkok at low speed – sewerage, food, pollution, body odour all rolled on after the other in time to the clickety-clack of the train’s wheels. Thankfully after 10 minutes my sense of smell shut off, and after the 40kms it took to clear Bangkok everything was fine as the countryside was just long grass, rice paddies, shanty houses and wide fronded plants.

I stayed in a 100 year old teak guesthouse on the river that the receptionists tried to talk me out of as ‘we only have roadside left and they are very noisy’ and ‘don’t stay in room 7, it’s very small’. I stayed in room 11, not too small, and decided I’d go out that night so the noise of the road wouldn’t bother me. It was worth it to sit on the balcony overlooking the river while I had breakfast on Sunday.

The ruins themselves are in remarkably good shape given they were covered in vegetation and ignored for 300 years. There’s a great variety to the shapes and styles, taking in the traditional Thai and Burmese styles and even including Garuda images from Indonesia.

Standing amongst what was once a great city I had a sense of its power, and what spirituality meant to the people that lived there. The size, effort and wealth that had gone into creating these buildings which encompassed religious, political, and functional aspects made me feel that their beliefs must have formed an important part of their everyday life.

The historical cities that I’ve visited, such as the Roman ruins, British castles, Ostia Attica, etc, always make me feel very connected with people from that time, that we’re all just on the same continuum, and though we’ve our differences there’s so many things the same.

On Saturday night I managed to finally find a good bar in Thailand that played old blues and Tom Waits while I was there, it’s only a shame it’s 1.5hours from my place. They played a blues album that dad used to have in his car when I was in primary school, and listening to it brought back very strong memories of driving all over the peninsula to play soccer. Some of the lyrics go “We’re bound to come up muddy, when we’re playing in the dirt”, and I remember those lines very strongly and tying them into playing soccer on muddy pitches.

The train home was so crowded I couldn’t get a seat and instead stood near a father travelling with his two boys, aged about 5 & 7. For a long time the boys sat quietly playing together until one lightly hit the other, followed by slightly harder retaliation, a third stronger hit, and so on until dad stopped the fight before it got out of hand. As passengers stood to disembark dad reached up to the loops while standing. The older boy stretched and just got his fingers to the loop, smiling for feeling like a grown up. The younger boy stretched but was no way near reaching. Dad lifted him up and he hung from the loop temporarily, happy to be amongst the land of the adults. Both incidents reminded me of my brother and myself.