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Walking the streets night or day one finds people lying on the walkways unconscious, sleeping, or in at least one case, dead
and covered with flies. No one seems to notice. The pace is hectic and the fumes are terrible. Many people wear masks.
Often, traffic police-men wear actual gas masks. By the next morning, I had enough of Bangkok, and we fled. Taking a bus
for 40 minutes, we boarded a rickety old train and paid our fare of a few cents for a journey north to Ayutthaya, in the province
of Phranakhonsringutthaya ayah. It made good sense since it is historically significant, away from the city and its 8 million
people, and is on the rail line which can take us to the airport on Sunday morning quite easily. The train engine actually
had a direct drive with gear changes rather than the diesel electric locomotive systems we know.
I watched, fascinated, through the open window of the passenger car. One peasant woman walked alone in the canal, knee-deep,
sifting through the reeds, finding here and there a precious rice stalk, washed down from a rice paddy somewhere nearby.
She gently removed the stalk and lay it in a v-shaped piece of cardboard she holds in her left hand, where a dozen or so other
stalks are cradled. Then she wades slowly on, searching for the precious, life-sustaining grains, oblivious to the new highway
and the crush of traffic roaring by only yards away.
We left the train around noon and John led me down a street to a river with steep banks, paid one Bat each for us to climb
down a ladder to a boat which took us over to the island fortress capital of the Siamese king until it was overrun in the
17th Century. Looking at the hundreds of bug bites on the back of John's arms and elbows, I booked the hotel.
We decided to find lunch before exploring the island and walk in an open air backpackers place called "No Worries".
As we walked into the tropical shed, a chorus rang out, "Hey John!" It reminded me of Norm on Cheers. "You
are back, play the guitar for us." John played some classical pieces as several locals crept near to listen and watch.
The next morning, we saw the guitar with most strings broken. "Japanese", said the owner, sadly, as if that were
explanation enough. Walking around the corner, I became aware of a black lump of something at my feet and heard a picking
sound. There huddled a leper, picking scabs off the stumps of his legs with the only finger left to him. He kept his face
down. I silently thanked him for that and moved on. There was no begging, no cup of pencils, no asking for help, for which
there is none; only resignation, and waiting.
This island has hundreds of Siamese monuments built in the Cham and Burmese style somewhere around the 14th Century at
the confluence of three rivers. It was the commercial, political, and religious capital of Siam until it was over run by
the Burmese in the 17th Century. There are something like 200 towers here, most quite impressive. We rented bicycles on
the 27th and traversed the roads of the island and the nearby mainland.
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| Temple green of Ayuthaya |
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