The ancient capitals, Ayutthaya and Sukhothai

Ayutthaya is located one hour north of Bangkok and is a popular day trip from the capital. The city was the capital of the Thai kingdom from 1350 to 1767 when the Burmese ransacked the city. Unfortunately, the Burmese destroyed Ayutthaya's architecture, breaking walls, burning roofs, melting precious metals, and even lopping off Buddha heads. Today, a bustling city has built itself around the ancient ruins and hoards of people pour in to see the UNESCO world heritage site.

The city center is an island surrounded by three rivers. Ruins can be found both on and off the island but generally around the river. The popular method of getting around is bus tour, boat tour, or by bicycle. We rented these sweet wheels for thirty baht (less than one dollar).

The island has numerous wats(temples) spread out over a few kilometers. Two temples highlight the island, one of them being Wat Mahathat.

Wat Mahathat contains what most consider the defining image of Ayuthaya, a Buddha head wrapped in ficus tree limbs.

Speculation is that the Buddha head was decapitated by Burmese invaders. After the invasion, Ayutthaya was abandoned for more than a hundred years and the tree grew around the head. Regardless, it seems like and image from a sci-fi movie where man goes extinct and nature adapts to man's remnants.

Wat Phra Si Sanphet is the second main island highlight. This royal temple was build on what had been the royal palace grounds. The chedis (giant bell-shaped towers) house the remains of royal family members. Three of the chedis are prominent fixtures of the city.

Off the island, Wat Chaiwatthanaram is in impressive condition. The wat was constructed in the 17th century and the Burmese used it as their army camp, choosing not to ransack it. After Ayutthaya's fall, the temple was looted, bricks sold, and nature allowed to take over, but much of the main prangs and chedis survived. This site was incredible.

The trouble with Ayutthaya is the city is truly bustling. Tourists pack the temple sites. Buses, cars, and even elephants pack the city streets.

It's a bit difficult to move site to site on bicycle, being the least important vehicle on an overcrowded roadway (that's not completely true, the pecking order is elephants, buses, trucks, cars, tuk-tuks, motos, bicycles, and pedestrians so we went up a notch in Ayutthaya). We did visit a peaceful area north of the city, the elephant kraal. Elephants were being trained to perform manual labor, be a tour guide, or act as entertainers. We watched one shout with joy as he was bathed.

Laura gave twenty baht to feed them a few corn husks.

One showered us with trunk saliva as a thank you.

Sukhothai was the Thai capital prior to Ayutthaya for more than a century. Instead of building around the old city ruins, new Sukhothai is twelve kilometers from the ruins. This means the Sukhothai Historical Park has plenty of room to work with. A beautiful park is maintained within the old city walls and park purveyors have sustained the ancient moats, canals, and ponds that surrounded the temples. The ruins required a bicycle to get to all of them. They did not disappoint!

The central temple, Wat Mahathat, is a monolith of a temple, easily the largest we have seen.

Nearby Wat Sa Si, surrounded by water, had one of the more beautiful Buddha images.

An interesting array of characters joined us for our early visit to the historical park. Four men in casual attire sped from wat to wat in their Toyota SUV; we caught them leaving a pigskin offering to Buddha.

Wonder how Buddha is going to take that? At Wat Mahathat, two determined monks passed by us to eventually bow, chant, and pray to a Buddha image.

Finally, we encountered this lady.

She was trying to sell me alive frogs, fish, or eels that were captured in her plastic bags. When I scrunched my face in confusion, she lifted a bag to me and pointed to the pond behind her. Huh? My heavy heart caused me to call Laura over, I explained the situation, she inspected the contents of the bags, we discussed the morality of the woman, and finally, we spent twenty baht to release two frogs.

They'll get a days worth of freedom until they are re-captured and sold to the next farang (foreigner) tomorrow. We should have released them into some other pond!

Sukhothai Historical Park was a deep contrast to Ayutthaya. The park was free of heavy traffic making it fun to bike around. The major temples were in good shape, for ruins. There were endless temples off the beaten path that were crumbling but away from the tourist crowd and still used for worship by local people. We enjoyed the ambiance of Sukhothai's ancient ruins with its canals still flowing as they had in the 13th century, uninterrupted by seven-elevens.

Now, a break from the travel blog to comment on everyday life in Thailand. I've never seen more stray cats and dogs in my life! At first, I noticed the cats, mostly because they were unpaying customers at all the guest houses we were staying at and also because we miss our three children. As street food is plentiful in Thailand and the cats weren't skinny, I figured they had plenty to eat. But, were cats eating rice with mixed vegetable? Why were they at the guest houses? Ayutthaya showed us why. Ayutthaya had tons of stray dogs and no cats... maybe the dogs were hungry? One evening, as we were searching out some night market food, Laura spotted the largest rats I have seen since New York city's subway. They scampered about, uninhibited by people strolling by, collecting rice grains left from the day market. Laura's appetite was gone instantly while my stomach rumbled. Unable to eat at the nearby night market, we walked a kilometer to the riverside night market; the quaint scene was inspiration enough to get Laura to take a seat. We sat down next to a wall of bushes along the river and ordered our food. Seconds after our order, a rustling in the bushes brought our attention to them. Then, out of the leaves, a beady-eyed mouse poked his inquisitive head out. What you guys eating tonight? Much to Laura's dislike, the mouse joined us for dinner, obviously interested in the rice with chicken and garlic. Where were those stray cats when you needed them? We have found their friendly faces everywhere else, from guest houses to streets to the pigeon-tempting ruins of Sukhothai,

often begging for attention.

Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia on a Shoestring states there are more than 120,000 stray dogs in Thailand. They seem to survive on the abundant street market food, either gifts from market guests or leftovers from market cooks. They have never been threatening while passing and provide loads of entertainment on the streets. The temple ruins of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya are home to the most pious of the stray dogs.

Next, we are off to Chiang Mai, the northern capital of Thailand. We plan to spend time there taking classes before traveling to Laos.

Khao Yai National Park

After a long bus ride north, we arrived in Pak Chong just outside of Khao Yai National Park. Khao Yai was established in 1962 and is one of Thailand's major natural attractions. It is Thailand's largest park, covering 2,168 square kilometers. The park's evergreen forest is home to tigers, gibbons, bears, elephants, hornbills, and a lot more. After dealing with southern Thailand's heat, the average temperature of 23 degrees celsius was music to my ears (not so much to Laura's). Due to the enormity of the park, we decided to sign up for a day and a half guided tour with Greeleaf Guest House.

We spent our first half day exploring a local cave. The cave was near a Buddhist wat and used by monks for meditation. There were a number of religious icons left from previous visitors. Our guide's interest focused on the local cave dwellers, bats! During some months of the year, the cave is home to hundreds of bats. For our visit, only some stragglers were still left. From extremely close quarters, our guide pointed out four different species of bats dangling from the cave ceiling. They seemed content to have visitors. One bat, the guide called a wrinkle-faced bat, was one we'd see much more that night.

We left the monastic cave for another cave high up in a nearby mountain. Everyday, around 5:40 pm, millions of wrinkle-faced bats exit the cave for their daily meal. As we waited at the mountain base, we realized we weren't the only ones waiting. Six to seven raptors soared above waiting for their daily bat burger. Suddenly, in a black wave, the bats left the cave for the Khao Yai forests. Hundreds, thousands, millions of bats.


We watched for 45 minutes as the wave of bats left the cave, its direction shifted east to west, north to south, up and down. Our group maneuvered under the wave to listen to their wings sift through the air. They hunt for up to four hours alone in the forest and always return to the cave. They exit the cave in unison using the "safety in numbers" theory against their predators. Each of the raptors enjoyed a bat burger that night.

As we returned to the guest house, we got gecko training. Laura was selected as the guinea pig to kneel on the ground while the gecko got placed behind her ear. Amazingly, the gecko froze behind her ear for about one minute until the guide plucked it off her. We each got our turn with the gecko ear dressing and some held the frozen heart-pounding gecko in their palm.



Turns out the geckos "play dead" when threatened and after a minute or so, make a break for it.

The following day we entered Khao Yai for a morning hike. During our macaca-filled drive to the trailhead, our guide exhibited his amazing spotting skills by spotting a water monitor sunning himself high in a tree.


Our hike was three hours through Khao Yai's spectacular evergreen forest. The guide focused on sounds, stopping and looking based on noises I could hardly hear, let alone identify. On one tree, he snatched a flying lizard, who played dead similar to the previous night's gecko.


The lizard uses its wings to sail from tree to tree.

We continued on, eventually getting interrupted by shaking leaves high in the forest canopy. Our guide took off into the forest only to gesture "COME HERE! COME HERE!" A female gibbon with her newborn was perched above us with a curious stare.


For about one hour, we watched a family of four gibbons with a newborn leap tree to tree, cleaning each other's fur, eating, and just monkeying around. This was a Khao Yai highlight!



In the afternoon, we traveled to Haew Sawat waterfall.


This waterfall has created more tourism to Khao Yai National Park than anything else and it isn't even the park's most spectacular waterfall. The movie "The Beach", starring Leonardo DiCaprio, used the top of this waterfall for a major scene in the movie. A little Leonardo goes a long way...

The late afternoon game drive was uneventful until our master spotter spotted the first wild python I have ever seen. Through the amazon forests, Rwanda's Volcano park, and Thailand's Khao Sok, I rather happily never stumbled upon this.


Our game drive ended with an elephant road crossing and another elephant enjoying a salt lick. Overall, an excellent experience with a top notch guide.

Now, a break from the travel blog to comment on everyday life in Thailand. Thailand is a contitutional monarchy. The current king Bhumibol Adulyadej just turned 80 years old and has been on the throne for more than 60 years. He is the longest reigning Thai king in history and longest reigning current monarch worldwide. To say he is revered by Thais is an understatement. Thai people credit him with the modernization of the country (American Vietnam dollars probably didn't hurt). His image is unavoidable on a daily basis; it's in central city plazas,


posted above and beside roadways,


on advertisements, on banks,


even on every bill and coin.


If you accidentally drop a bill and step on it to prevent it from blowing away, you'll be arrested and jailed. The bright yellow royal flag flies wherever the country flag is.


People wearing royal yellow t-shirts are a daily sight. Pink t-shirts, signifying good health for the king, and blue t-shirts, signifying support for the queen, are also a daily sight.


Each guest house we have stayed in contains numerous images of the king. This obsession has turned into a major business as stores in all cities specialize in selling only royal-related paraphenalia. Could you imagine if Americans treated George W. Bush this way?


I can already hear the suicidal gunshots going off in Massachusetts.

We travel to Ayutthaya, Thailand, the Thai capital from 1350 to 1767 and a UNESCO world heritage site, to view the remains of historic temples.

A national park, a beach, and a butt hose

We visited Khao Sok National Park for three days. The park's headquarters maintains two trails through thick rain forest jungle. Although guided treks were readily available, we decided to explore Khao Sok on our own. Unfortunately, the park is in very early season and large portions of their trails weren't open until December 14th. We made the best of our visit and followed guides passing by the "Path Closed" signs to explore deeper into the forest. Although the park is home to sun bears, tigers, elephants, and other exotic animals, the only mammal we saw was a spooked monkey and that was just for a few seconds. The issue with viewing animals was that the rain forest was extremely thick with low visibility.

We also hiked primarily during the day when animals would be least active. We did, however, see a number of exotic birds and insects.

The trail followed a river with numberous swimming holes for an opportunity to cool off in the jungle heat.

The evening highlight in Khao Sok was the monkey swimming hole at Art's Riverview Lodge. The bar overlooked a river swimming hold that a monkey family would visit on a daily basis. For about an hour, the monkeys would feed, play, and make new monkeys just across the river from the bar.

One evening we went to the Morning Mist Guest House for a meal recommended by Lonely Planet. Having missed lunch, we ordered a double dose of Thai food. As we were completing the meal, the restaurant owner took out his massive pet toad.

The toad went table to table getting petted and handled by the guests. When he visited our table, the toad felt an intense attraction for Laura or her food. He leaped from the restaurant owner's cupped hands at Laura and landed into her chicked and mushroom soup. After Laura's screams created quite a stir at the bar, the toad was recaptured and I got a free half bowl of frog-slimed chicken and muchroom soup!

Since traveling in Thailand, Laura has been obsessed with finding a beautiful beach. Koh Tao didn't provide what she was looking for so we took some other traveler's advice and went to Krabi. Krabi is known as a climbing mecca of southern Thailand. It is full of steep limestone cliffs alongside beautiful beaches.

We landed at Ao Nang, a beach town resembling many U.S.A beach towns. A highway runs through town with tourist shops and restaurants on one side and the beach on the other. The great thing about Ao Nang is regular longtail boats run to Hat Rai Leh, a beach surrounded on each side by limestone clifs and only accessible by boat.

This is what she was looking for!

We were some of the first visitors to the beach to see its stunning beauty. The waters were warmer than our showers have been and they were so translucent, I could see my shadow on the sand below me. After enjoying the beach, we explored the peninsula. This area was hit heavily by the 2004 tsunami and we wanted to assess the recovery. There were few remnants of the disaster along the coasts. On the inner peninsula, there was a lot of contruction but it was difficult to tell if it was new building or re-building. It seemed that Hat Rai Leh's tourist dollars made for a quick recovery.

Upon our return from the beach, we rented a kayak to explore the limestone cliffs more closely. The ocean waves had beaten caves into the bottom of many cliffs. Stalactites (or is it stalagmites?) creeped down from the roof of the caves as birds swooped from side to side.

Having finally found the beach, we ared headed north to Khao Yai National Park, Thailand's largest park. We are happy to leave Thailand's tourist-laden coasts.

Now, a break from the travel blog to comment on everyday life in Thailand. We have encountered a toilet sensation! Keep in mind that Thailand's septic system doesn't acept toilet paper so soiled paper must be disposed of into a garbage can. Too much of this can make for a stinky bathroom. Each toilet in Thailand is accompanied by a butt hose, a hose and sprayer resembling those that come with a U.S.A. kitchen sink. After dropping a deuce, one grabs the butt hose for an anal spray down. This typically two-handed operation, right hand sprays while left wipes, provides a refreshingly clean result eliminating dingleberry possibilities. As a butt hose novice, I was using toilet paper to perform a "clean check" and dry. As a butt hose professional, it just takes good water pressure, a thorough wipe, and a butt shimmy at the end to dry. No paper required! How can I get one installed in my U.S.A. bathroom?

Maybe I've discovered the reason for Europe's bidet? Rumor has it that remote region toilets may only be accompanied by a one gallon bucket filled with water. This bucket contains a cereal-bowl-sized second bucket floating on top. The cereal bowl is used to scoop and splash the nether regions. Hopefully, the butt hose has prepared me for such a toilet.