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| Very hot at the Grand Palace |
The second phase of my mom’s visit was all about sight
seeing after almost a week of relaxing on an island. We took an overnight bus
from Ranong back to Bangkok where we parted ways with Eric for a few hours. He
went on to Ayutthaya to reserve us a guesthouse and we went on to the Grand
Palace. A trip to the Grand Palace was part of our orientation when we first
got to Thailand and both Eric and I tried to convince my mom that she really
didn’t need to see it, but she was persistent and eventually I stopped fighting
it. It costs 500 baht each to go to the Grand Palace (which is a lot to me) and
it is definitely a hot experience, but I actually really enjoyed my second trip
there! My mom and I didn’t take a guided tour, so we were free to walk around
the palace area at our leisure, which is what I think made it better than my
first experience. It is definitely an impressive complex and we both really
enjoyed the museum for the Queen’s project, which showcases her dresses and
gives information about her initiatives to employ Thai women as weavers,
embroiders, etc.
After about 3 hours at the Grand Palace, we walked down the
street to Wat Po, which is famous for a really big lounging Buddha. After
spending so much time at the Grand Palace, I wasn’t that impressed with Wat Po.
The lounging Buddha is huge, but it seems like more of a tourist attraction and
I don’t really know what the actual significance of it is besides just being a
very large Buddha (but that is enough to make something noteworthy in
Thailand). We were pretty exhausted after our touring (which was on top of an
overnight bus ride), so we headed back to the bus station to get to Ayutthaya.
We woke up relatively early our first morning in Ayutthaya
to take advantage of the cooler time of day (still probably at least 85 degrees
though) and rented bicycles to see the ruins. It was Eric’s and my third trip
to Ayutthaya, so we were kind of pros at that point knowing which temples were
the coolest and where it was fun to ride bikes. My mom was really into the
ruins and we all enjoyed riding bikes around the park areas until we were too
tired and hot to see any more. We took advantage of our A/C room in the lovely
Baan Lotus guesthouse and didn’t really emerge until dinnertime.
The next morning Eric had to go to Suphanburi to pick up our
salary from March, so my mom and I went shopping at the floating market. I had
been to this market before, so I knew what to expect, which was a hilarious
tourist attraction next to the market including elephant rides, drugged tigers
for photo ops, goats and koi fish to bottle feed, among other things that Thais
think foreigners will love. The market itself isn’t really a floating market,
but has shops set up on a circular pier/dock. We ate some amazing coconut ice
cream and did some shopping before watching a very entertaining (and free) show
put on my the culture department. Everything was in Thai, but we think they
were reenacting some of the battles between the Ayuttayans and Burmese complete
with fancy swordplay, fire, and a small child who was killed in the end and
dramatically leaped off the stage. 
After the market we went on
the long boat tour around Ayutthaya, which stops at three different temples
(one active one and two with ruins). This was my third time doing the boat
tour, but it was still fun and I was finally able to walk around what I think
is the coolest ruin in Ayutthaya since the other times I had been they had been
working on renovating it. We said goodbye to Ayutthaya for the last time
Wednesday morning to take a van to the airport in Bangkok to catch our flight
to Chiang Mai and begin the northern leg of our trip. My mom really enjoyed our
time in Bangkok and Ayutthaya and I was a little surprised that I had so much fun too considering we did things that I have done before (sometimes
multiple times). 
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