Ayutthaya

The International Department at the Rangsit University organised a day trip to Ayutthaya for the exchange students. Our group consisted of 11 students and 6 teachers.

First, I would like to point out some historically significant facts. The Historic City of Ayutthaya, founded in 1350 become the new capital of the Siam (Thai) Kingdom. Until the 18th century the capital flourished and become the world’s largest and most cosmopolitan urban area and a centre of global diplomacy and commerce. However, as it reached its peak of development, the capital was attacked in 1767 by the Burmese army who, unfortunately, destroyed the city and forced the citizens to leave their homes. Although the capital was never rebuilt its remains are known as one of the most fascinating archaeological sites in the world. This was followed by officially acknowledging the remains of the ancient city as part of the World Heritage property.

For our daytrip in Ayutthaya, we met at the Rangsit university where we received our breakfast and briefed about our Ayutthaya schedule. It was very early 7 o’clock departure. It took us around one hour to reach the old capital via bus.

We had a very nice tour guide called Pom, who has not been working as a tour guide for a while due to the corona virus restrictions. This was not any problem for him, and he was rather enthusiastic about our trip to Ayutthaya. Along the way he though us some useful words in Thai, and he was constantly joking throughout the day. I believe he mainly did Ayutthaya tours as he knew about everything within the city, making him the best tour guide.

Our first stop was at the Wat Yai Chaimongkol temple. You can see in the pictures below they dressed the Buddha statue in silk clothes as a sign of respect and celebration. There were many Thai people at this sacred place as they came there to pray. While going through the place we Saw a group of monks wearing different types of clothes. Later, Pom explained the different ranks between Buddhist monks and how we can see these differences throughout their clothing.

Our second stop was at the ruins of Wat Maha That or known as the Monastery of the Great Relic. It was one of the most important monasteries of the Ayutthaya Kingdom. One of the busiest places at this monastery is the Buddha head that has a tree around it. (see photos below)

On our next stop, we boarded a ship on the Chao Phraya river. We had an amazing lunch here; the food was delicious, and we could try many things such as the local river prawn, green curry and Thai chicken wings and fermented cabbage😊. After lunch, we had a karaoke session which was very funny as Thai people really like singing, I am pretty sure every Thai person on the boat sang better than me. We got so into it that we even sang a Thai song together. Moving on to our next activity during which we got the to feed the fish in the river which was amazing as some of those catfishes weight more than five kilograms.

Our final destination was the Wat Chaiwatthanaram temple. It was fascinating to see this special place, especially for me as I saw this place in different films. I believe it is Ayutthaya’s main tourist attraction, as the temple's name means: The Temple of long reign and glorious era. Wat Chaiwatthanaram was a royal temple where the king and his successors performed religious ceremonies.

As our trip came to an end, we boarded the Bus to head home. On the way Pom strongly recommended us to try the local desert which was called unicorn-hair roti. The roti was delicious and I believe everyone was sleeping on the way back as we were exhausted even though Pom was still talking to the microphone in the bus’s microphone all the way home. I really liked our daytrip in Ayutthaya and I hope it is not the last one.