Two More Capitals!

Hi, everyone!
Last weekend, my Thai friends took me to see two more places that have been the capitol of Thailand in the past: Ayutthaya and Lopburi. Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand from about 1350 to 1750 A.D. The king moved south from Sukhothai to build a new city. I got my special traveling seat in the van again, so I could see everything while we were driving.
Ayutthaya is north of Bangkok, and the land in between is very level. There are lots of rice paddies along the road. Grandma said this is the area of Thailand that was flooded in 2011, and I could see where roads and bridges were being repaired. The area was flooded for a month before the water finally drained away!
The first temple we visited in Ayutthaya was Wat Yai Chaimongkhon. This temple is famous as the place kings used to visit to pray for success in battle. Now people come here looking for luck in sports or business deals. Wat Yai Chaimongkhon has Chinese heritage, as well as Thai, and there is a row of statues that represent the years of the Chinese zodiac. This year is the year of the little snake, but I don’t know what year I was born in!
Finally, we went to the new building. People who are grateful for their luck give the temple animal statues as a way of saying thank you. There are a LOT of rooster statues around, and I made a lot of chicken friends. I also made friends with another elephant who let me sit where the king sat to fight!

Next we went to the Wat Mahathat. Mahathat means “grand”, and the Wat Mahathat in any town would be the temple closest to the royal palace. In Ayutthaya, the Wat Mahathat has one of the trees where people place damaged religious objects. This tree has a head from a great big Buddha statue in it! Nobody knows how is got there, but the tree trunk is growing right around it! This entire area was destroyed twice by the Burmese, and after the second time the kings moved the capitol to Thonburi, across from Bangkok, which is where we are staying. The ruins at Sukhothai are older, but their condition is about the same. The brick steps are really worn down here!

After lunch, we went to see some more temple ruins. It was a very hot, sunny day and I lost track of how many temples we visited! I made some lion and monkey friends. Some of the Buddha images were complete and dressed up for the holiday on Monday.

Our last two stops were at a reclining Buddha where the building around the Buddha image was completely gone and at the Grand Palace. I liked the Grand Palace best, because I could see what the chedis must have looked like originally. Ayutthaya must have been a very pretty city when it was the capitol! Grandma and Grandpa visited the Grand Palace in 2008, and they could see how the flooding had caused further damage. I wanted to help the workers restore the chedis with new bricks. They are building rings around the bases of the chedis so they won’t fall down.

Before we left Ayutthaya, we stopped to eat some ice cream made with coconut milk. It was cold and yummy! Then we stopped for dinner on our way back to Bangkok. Did you know that there is a Thai beer named for me? Singh means lion! My Thai friends always order yummy meals for me to try when we go out together!

On Sunday, we took another trip, going north from Ayutthaya to Lopburi. Lopburi is a very old city that was part of the Silk Road for European traders. People have lived there since 700 A.D. It is in the mountains and a little cooler than Ayutthaya, so one of the kings moved there in the summer and also during the time Ayutthaya was being rebuilt after the first time the Burmese destroyed it. On the way to Lopburi, we stopped at a very famous temple in Saraburi. The temple is built around a big hole that some people believe is the footprint of the Buddha. People come to this temple for healing if they are sick. Since this weekend came just before the Buddhist holiday, there were LOTS of people trying to put gold foil in the Buddha’s footprint! I saw a naga staircase here, but there weren’t as many steps as the one I saw in Chiang Mai two years ago.

The temples in Lopburi were older than the ones in Ayutthaya, and there were more of them that started out as Hindu temples and were taken over by Buddhists later. Grandma says the Wat Mahathat in Lopburi reminds her of the Alamo in Texas. This was one of the temples that still had some walls left!

Most of the Buddhas and decorations on the temples in Lopburi have been taken inside the museum at the royal palace. It was a hot afternoon, so we spent some time inside there. After I made friends with a very old lion, we went to another building with displays about everyday life. The outside displays had straw people and were left over from a festival that just finished. I don’t know what holiday this tree was supposed to be celebrating, but it was decorated all with plastic water bottles! At the inside display, I made my first water buffalo friend!

The old monuments right in the middle of Lopburi are home to a lot of monkeys! They don’t know how to be polite: they jump up on people and grab water bottles and food out of backpacks. Grandma decided that I shouldn’t try to make friends with them, and I think she was right! When we were inside a very old temple (Hindu turned Buddhist), the monkeys hung onto the window screens and tried to get in. We had to be careful not to let a monkey into our van when it was time to go!

This picture isn’t a temple lit up at night, it’s a big fish at the restaurant where we ate dinner. Guess what we had to eat? The restaurant is next to a pond and there were radio controlled boats being raced. They are really loud!

After my busy weekend, I’m going to have to do a lot of napping and yoga to rest up. Grandma is almost done with her work here, and we’ll be going back to see Bill-kun and Karin-chan soon!
Love,
Lion-san