Monday, December 17, 2007

The King's Birthday, English Projects, and Christmas in Siam


The king under our personal Arc de Triumph. Apparently this is very ironic.. (Dont' know the history)

Christmas decorations at the really modern shopping area in Bangkok.


P5 English Projects.



The King's Birthday assembly at school. Also is Father's Day, but really all about the king. Crazy seeing so much yellow!! (Of course, I wore black.. I stuck out a bit)



Ayutthaya

Went up for a couple days to Ayutthaya, which is the ancient capital of Thailand. Only 40 minutes train ride north of the Don Muang train station, which is very near my house. Was such a nice, relaxing train ride. Still cannot get over how cheap the train was. Only 11 baht there (about 50 cents), and 20 baht back!! Very small town, but it is filled with ruins absolutely everywhere. They built so many temples (wats) in this small place. And now they are all just piles of bricks and you see random parts of buddhas everywhere. Really neat place and so quiet compared to central Bangkok.





Me with a Buddha statue.
Elephants!
We encountered a pack of puppies at one temple. They were sooo adorable and we wasted a good half hour with them.

Very famous scene in Ayutthaya. On most of the post cards. Not sure who put the buddha head there, but the tree grew all around it and all over the brick wall behind it.




Some of the people I came up with. We stayed in a seven bed room with little beds and wool blankets, we called it "the orphanage". But it was only 700 baht a night!




Buddha body parts.