I love history and always try to read up on places that I visit, guide or no guide. Ayutthaya left a kind of sadness in me - seeing this budhaa head encapusated in a tree was not so nice. Well,this is history and mankind. Anyways, it was sad to see pieces of little rocks placed in order at certain points. We hired a local boat guide who took us round the site by river stopping at any of the historical sites we wanted to look at, each one has a mooring station so its pretty easy to get out and look around, we found the local guide very knowledgeable and pleasant and nothing was too much trouble.
We only stopped at five places but each one had a different aspect and great to read a bit of the history of each one. Lots of photo opportunities as expected.
To appreciate the whole city not just the ruins you would need a few days to soak it up. This is a wonderful place extending over a huge area. We didn't do either of the things we are advising, unfortunately, and probably chose the wrong afternoon option, taking the boat trip back to Bangkok although the lunch was decent and the views were interesting.
There is so much to see in Ayutthaya that you have to give it at least hours and you have to read up about the history first I usually do but on this occasion, sadly nowhere near enough. Fortunately we had a good guide, which meant we made good use of the more limited time we had.
The city, the former capital of Thailand, dates from and was burnt down by the Burmese in , never to be rebuilt. It is thus much more of a genuine 'ruin' than say, Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We began in the excellent museum, where there are some haunting Buddha images of various periods and you can take non-flash photos. We then went over to Wat Mahathat, where there is the iconic Buddha head that a tree has embraced in its grip. We then walked through various areas of the ruins but should have stayed longer: we had to make the 1.
