Ayutthaya

The Divine Seat of Personal Freedom Pavillion

 Our port is about 2.5 hours outside of Bangkok, so we had a long trip for our tour. Our most interesting stop of the day was Bang Pa-in Palace, built in the the 19th century by Rava IV as his summer residence on the site of an old monastery, built in the 17th century. The palace was rebuilt after a 1938 fire and is used primarily as a reception area for dignitaries.
In the middle of a pond is the Aisawan-Dhipaya Pavilion, the Divine Seat of Personal Freedom, a classical Thai style building. Another ornate building, built in Chinese style is the Phra Thinang Wehart Chamrun, Heavenly Delight Royal Residence, all in black, gold, and red. This was used as a royal residence by Rama VI. (The current king is Rama IX.) The gardens were beautiful, especially the elephant and rabbit topiaries. Finally, the Ho Withun Thasana, Sages Lookout, had great views of the entire complex.

Buddha Face at Wat Mahathat

Of course, no visit to Thailand is complete without an elephant ride. Since elephants are seldom used by logging anymore, tourist shows and rides have become the alternative employment for these domesticated elephants. We had a 15 minute ride near an ancient Wat in the city of Ayutthaya.
After lunch at a nearby hotel, we visited two temples in the afternoon. Ayutthaya was the capital of Thailand from the 1300's until 1767 when it was burned by the Burmese. At the time, there were 500 temples, but all were burned, many to melt and capture the gold sheaving. Wat Mahathat was built in 1347 and is best known today for it's Buddha face in the fig tree. It's a large complex with numerous stuppas, but all in rubble.
Wat Chai Watthanaram was built in 1632 near the river. It is being reconstructed because the buildings are quite unstable. The central prang is 35m tall with four smaller prangs surrounding it. These represent the Buddhist world view, Mount Muru, the central axis of the world, surrounded by the four continents. Our guide during this tour told us very little of what we were seeing, so I've had to rely on other sources to fill in the details.

Wat Chai Watthanaram