Finding My Inner Buddha - Ayuttahaya

Yesterday we set off on an excursion with Joe, his girlfriend, Arm, and her friend, mother and grandmother. They had rented a luxurious minivan to travel in, and due to some extra space, they were gracious enough to invite us along for the day. It was great meeting the family and getting a glimpse into Buddhist Thai culture and tradition. Arm's family occupies an entire four-story building. Her whole family lives together - parents, both sets of grandparents, uncles, aunts, you name it. (And I thought my family was close!) Apparently this set-up is typical of traditional Thai culture (though apparently less so now than it used to be) - the younger generation is responsible for taking care of the elders - no nursings home here! Throughout the day we learned tidbits of Buddhist culture and custom from our Thai hosts. I feel like I have just taken a course on it.

We set off on a two hour drive to Ayutthaya, which was Thailand's capital over 500 years ago. We saw some very cool temple ruins and climbed up them. We also saw some current temples and some gigantic Buddha idols (see pictures) including the biggest Buddha in Thailand (even bigger than the reclining Buddha). We took part in some Buddhist customs - one involed shaking a jar of numbered sticks until one falls out - then you get a corresponding horoscope-esque fortune that can either be very good or bad depending on your stick's number. I was very proud that mine spoke of being very powerful and successful or something. We joked about ours, but Buddhists take it extremely seriously. A bad fortune can really break their day.

We ate lunch at a restaurant that was way set back from the road and looked like a deserted, dilapidated shack at first glance. It turned out, however, to be packed with Thais on the inside, and the food was pretty good. We visited more temples in the afternoon, and then Arm's family braved the Bangkok traffic and graciously dropped us off at our hostel.

Last night we met up with Mike and went to a Muay Thai match - a form of boxing/martial arts popular in thailand. It seemed like a typical fight except that there were about a hundred Thais off to the side of the ring gambling and placing bets and passing money around like crazy. Picture the floor of the new york stock exchange - with the symbols and gestures and yelling - on crack. People were taking it very seriously - to us, it was almost as entertaining as the actual match.

That's it for now. Tomorrow we are leaving Bangkok and heading to Kanchanaburri, the site of the river Kwai.

written by

bhkann on June 21, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand

from the travel blog: Ben's SE Asia Voyage

tagged Temples, Bangkok, MuayThai and Ayutthaya

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