Life of a Thai Heel: Ayutthaya

Last Wednesday, Marsh / Matt / Kristina / Kathleen (from Fuqua) / and I hopped into a sketchy looking white van.

Spoiler alert - if the start of this blog post didn't already give it away - we lived to tell about it.

We were headed to Thailand's former capital city - Ayutthaya. Back when Thailand was named "Siam," Ayutthaya was a hoppin' place. (quick side note history lesson - the country's name was changed in 1939 from Siam to Thailand. Thailand means "free living" or "land of the free" but I still have yet to figure out what Siam means). We heard that Ayutthaya was the central trade location, boasted beautiful temples, and was the number one paparazzi hang out in hopes of seeing the king. In 1767, the Burmese (Thailand's northern neighbor - now Myanmar), attacked the city and burned almost everything to the ground. Many people were taken as slaves, and the grandiose nature of the religious temples was nearly demolished.

Only about an hour away from Bangkok by car today, Ayutthaya is noted as a popular day trip for those with some free time. Although so many of the temples were destroyed, the ruins can still be explored (the city has 360 temples today!)

The tree grew around the ruins

To get there, we had two options: (1) hire a taxi driver to take us there, wait around for us, and bring us back (2) take the local bus.

Although we stand out like tourists through and through, we've been trying to assimilate as much as possible.... when possible. It's not as easy as one would think over here (on average, I'm a head taller than everyone in a big crowd), but we do what we can. So, we figured we'd go for the bus the locals take.

Considering how twisted around we always end up when we try to get somewhere, the bus ended up being pretty easy to find. Bangkok has taught me many things - two of which are (1) who knew we were so dependent on the GPS on our iPhones (2) UNC may need to start a navigation course, since four almost-ready-to-graduate MBAs can't find their way in this city sometimes

The "bus" actually ended up being one of those sketchy looking white painters vans. We paid our 60 baht, and hopped in. Then we waited. And waited. We were about to wait juuust a little bit more, but the van lurched to life. Off to Ayutthaya we go!

My dad used to tell me, "failing to prepare is preparing to fail." We didn't plan a thing for when we arrived in Ayutthaya. We had no clue what types of temples we were looking at, or the story behind them. Fortunately, Matt jumped in and narrated our entire trip! I now know that sometimes made up stories about what could have happened in the temple ruins are actually more interesting (or at least what happened if it had been left up to Matt's imagination). Although we failed to prepare - thanks to Matt, the trip did not end up being a failure. My dad may need to come up with a new saying... guess he didn't account for things like trips to Ayutthaya!