It was a Chinese temple that houses the oldest large cast bronze Buddha image (about 19 meter in height) in Ayutthaya. The hall where it was situated was under construction when we were there. We spent just about 10 minutes in this temple.
Next, we went on to Wat Mahathat, which covered a very wide area but was in ruins.
Here are panoramic views of the wat:
And Wat Mahathat is famous for the face of the Buddha with a tree growing around it. The sight is really amazing.
The group took a picture with the Buddha image.
A statue of Buddha under a tree.
贝 with a statue of Buddha in the background.
We snapped lotta pictures here. It was almost noon time and we were sweltering under the sun. So, when we saw a guy selling icecream at the exit, we bought some from him to cool ourselves down.
Me and the icecream man.
While we were having the icecream, there met an ang mo who volunteered himself as a tourist police in Thailand. We chatted with the old man for a while, and then headed to our next destination, Wat Phra Si Sanphet.
The symbolic three chedis at Wat Phra Si Sanphet.
One of the chedis
Looking closely, we could see Bodhi leaves grown out of the architecture, or even on the stairs.
Next to Wat Phra Si Sanphet is the Viharn Phra Mongkol Bopitah that houses a large bronze cast Buddha image. We removed our shoes and went in to have a look. Then at the main hall, i suddenly kneeled before the Buddha, and Sui was astounded by my behaviour since she knew that i wasn't a religious person. As she looked carefully, she then noticed that i was facing a standing fan. Uh huh, i was actually enjoying the breeze from the electrical fan, and i didn't wanna be seen as blocking the way of the worshippers, i just had to pretend that i was there to pray too.
So having to cool myself down a bit, we left the temple. As we were putting on our shoes, we took notice of the signs at the entrance:
It's really surprising that the Thai authority didn't have anyone checked the English before making the signage.
The next on the itinerary was to have a ride on the elephant's back. Unfortunately, there was a long queue of tourists and we didn't wanna wait for it. We also found the price too expensive; if i remember correctly, it was about RM50 per ride (which could carry two persons at a time). So, we gave it a miss, even though we saw the elephants from afar and thought that the little ones were really cute with some baby hair on top of their heads.
By this time, it was almost 2pm already and we were famished. It was time for lunch.
As the driver could hardly speak English, i asked him (with hand gesture) if we were going for lunch. He said yes, and then mentioned a name of a place that sounded like "Wat" something. I thought he was bringing us to another temple, and tried to tell him that we wanna have lunch, and again received an affirmative reply from him.
Then, he drove us to a remote place with a statue of elephant God at the entrance.
We went into the building, which looked like a restaurant but there wasn't anyone attending to us.
We started to wonder if this was another temple (which we saw nothing so special about it at all), or it was the place for our lunch. So, 贝 gave his brother a call, who in turn called the driver. The driver then brought us further to the back of the building, where we finally saw the place where we were supposed to have our lunch.
Yeap, it was a lunch on boat, just as what i had written on my plan to 贝's brother. At first we were kinda hesitant, not that we were afraid of boarding the stationary boat but because we were perspiring like crazy and would really hope to have our meal at a place with aircon. After checking with the waitresses (who spoke Mandarin!) if there were fans on the boat, we decided to go ahead with the arrangement.
贝's brother then asked to pass the phone over to the waitress, and actually ordered the dishes for us! So, we had an excellent authentic Thai cuisine on a boat in Ayutthaya.
After lunch, while KT was footing the bill, we saw the menus of the restaurant and realized that the name of the restaurant actually started with the word "wat". No wonder the driver kept telling us he was bring us to a "wat" when i asked.
Labels: travel
