November 22, 2006

Ruins and floods of Ayuthaya



From Bangkok I caught a bus north the the flooded old capital city of Ayuthaya. I checked in to a guesthouse as the only guest in an upstairs room where almost every other room had fish swimming around beneath the beds. It was hot, even hotter than Bangkok I think, and it was hard to walk around in midday without feeling lethargic from the heat. There was a vegetarian market directly across from the guesthouse and I walked among the yellow flags that meant only vegetarian food was being served, simmering pots and meat-free dishes. I bought a small plastic bag filled with pumpkin curry and ate it right away wishing I had a larger appetite to try another different soup or vegetable dish. I went on to the other parts of the market selling everything from crispy bugs, pigs heads and fruit to clothes, kitchen supplies and watches and everything in between. Ayuthaya is surrounded by rivers and in the middle of the town there are no signs of the floods, or none that I saw. But once you get to the rivers almost every building and house on either side are partially underwater as with the guesthouse.




At the guesthouse that first night I had the best green curry I've ever had, lots of fresh lightly cooked vegetables and spicy. In it there were these small slightly bitter and crunchy green vegetables the size and shape of marbles that someone told me were eggplants, sweet basil, cauliflower, long beans, mmmm so good. When I went to bed that night the sounds from the karaoke place next door were drifting up to my room until closing time.




The next couple days I explored the city by foot, by bicycle and by boat. There are many temples and temple ruins to see and some that weren't accessible because of the flooding. It was interesting and amazing to walk around structures that were built thousands of years before and wonder how much longer they would exist. It amazed me just as much though to see how the everyone in Ayuthaya was living with the problems that the floods had brought. At the time I was there I think the water level had been at the same level for the previous two weeks. Many people were left homeless, businesses were shut, farmers became fishermen, makeshift shelters were set up holding lifelong possessions. People sat around smiling in these shelters or sleeping in the middle of the day, without a home without a job anymore, as I rode my bike around and into the rivers of the streets. When it got too deep to ride I parked my bike and walked knee-deep, thigh-deep down the streets past the man sharing a meal from the same bowl with a baby pig, past a squirrel in a cage (a pet?), and towards a temple that I would have to swim to to see.


Boys walking down the street in Ayuthaya.


My last afternoon I took a boat around on the rivers surrounding the city to visit some of the temples that were inaccessible otherwise. Besides seeing the temples the flooding damage was also much more evident from the river boat. At sunset we were in the boat in front of Wat Chaiwattanaram. As the sun was setting it started to rain and it was beautiful with the sunset reflecting off the raindrop splashes in the river. Goodbye Ayuthaya.


Sunset at Wat Chaiwatthanaram