- A travel guide for visiting Ayutthaya, in Thailand.
I'm Chris, this is Topher, this is Yellow Productions.
We do travel guides that are fun,
informative, entertaining.
Ayutthaya is one of the most popular day trips
from Bangkok, so we're gonna tell you in this video
everything you need to know
if you're considering visiting Ayutthaya.
So first, let's talk about why you come here.
Well, you will probably know, Thailand has a lot
of temples and you come here to visit temples.
But not like operating temples,
you come here to visit relics of temples.
Ayutthaya used to be a capital of Siam,
hundreds of years ago.
The temples have all pretty much been sacked
and ransacked and so there're six main temples
that are part of the Ayutthaya Historical Park.
But I'll show you some of the major attractions
and the sights to see, and why you come
and see these temples and talk about how to get here,
things to do, maybe even what to eat for lunch.
All right, here we go.
There are six major temples
in the Ayutthaya historic park.
Admission to each temple is 50 baht,
but you can buy a combination
of six temple ticket for 220 baht.
One of the coolest relics in Ayutthaya
is at the Wat Phra Mahathat temple.
By the way, I'm sure my Thai not so good,
you don't need to let me know, I already know.
But why is this one so cool?
Well, it's got this relic of a sandstone Buddha.
The head came off of it and it's grown around this tree.
No, the tree has grown around the Buddha,
and to take pictures with it,
you're supposed to sit so that you are lower
than the Buddha's head.
They don't let you take pictures if you're standing.
You have to be seated, which is why I'm seated
doing this video.
That's pretty cool, to think that that Buddha's head
just fell like that, to be there.
And here's all the people that are taking their pictures.
Exploring the relics of the temples in Ayutthaya
you'll come across many headless Buddhas,
many damaged Buddhas, you'll never see Buddhas like this
in actual operating temples in Thailand,
because the Thais feel that broken Buddhas are bad luck,
they bring bad luck.
But they're here because this is the ancient relic,
and this is the history, that invaders to Siam at the time
cut these open because they thought there might
have been gold inside.
It turns out not so much and so,
that's why this is what's left of them here.
Visiting the temples in Ayutthaya,
there's lots of Buddhas, sitting Buddhas, standing Buddhas,
this one's a reclining Buddha.
When you're coming to Ayutthaya,
make sure to bring some comfy shoes,
'cause you'll be doing a lot of stair climbing.
Topher and I climbed a lot of stairs.
We like to race and see who can make it to the top first.
Is it gonna be Topher?
Is it gonna be me?
It's Topher for the win!
To go in most temples in Thailand,
you need to take off your shoes.
Ayutthaya's no different.
But it's not just your shoes at the entrance to the temple,
I mean, it's to your shoes to even go up the staircase.
Bring some shoes that you remember what they look like,
because, well, you can see there's a lot of them here.
And you really want socks.
Because if you don't have socks,
your feet are gonna get really hot
going up that staircase.
All right, see you at the top.
And what's at the top?
Well, it's this.
What's inside of this?
It's a place to drop your coins
and there's a bucket at the bottom.
Almost.
But do you drop your money to make a wish,
or perhaps a good offering.
You know, walking around Ayutthaya,
I've realized I've never been to Italy,
to see the leaning tower of Pisa.
I think this is the leaning tower of Thailand,
actually a lot of these towers lean.
You can look over there, those ones are leaning too.
If you do come to Ayutthaya, make sure not to climb
on top of these things.
It's A, to protect the ruins, but B, to protect you,
because I'm not sure when that's gonna fall over.
If you're going to Bangkok,
chances are you'll be visiting the Royal Palace.
Well, this one here, this is the Ancient Royal Palace.
If you're curious what they looked like when they were new,
well here's an artist's rendering of what it looked like
when it was fully built out.
Looked kind of like this.
These ruins require maintenance.
You can see some of the workers here taking out the weeds
from the ruins; it's so humid, that yes,
weeds have grown there.
Just of note, no food or drinks in the temples.
It's punishingly hot here.
Outside you'll find a lot of vendors that'll serve
drinks and snacks, and you can get a cool, refreshing,
slightly warm coconut.
It is cooled on ice, a lot of these places are,
which makes it not completely hot, but,
the coconut juice is often about room temperature
inside the coconut.
It takes a long time to cool all the way through.
You should just know that,
if you're buying coconuts.
If you want something cold and you're guaranteed of it,
then get a smoothie.
A neat place for lunch, it's called the Ban Wan Lava
Ayutthaya Guest House, it's a hotel
and a restaurant combined together.
They have these set meals, this is set meal number two.
1000 baht, a lot of food, this'll feed two to four people,
drinks, Thai iced tea, I love.
Now we're gonna talk about getting to Ayutthaya.
Most people visit Ayutthaya as a day trip
from Bangkok, so we'll talk about getting
to Ayutthaya from Bangkok.
Ayutthaya is approximately 80 kilometers to the north
of Bangkok, and you've got a few different options
for getting there.
First option, you can take a train.
The trains leave from Hua Lamphong station in Bangkok city
center, they leave approximately every hour.
The trains take two hours.
If you want to go in first class, they cost 330 baht,
which is about 10 bucks, or you can travel third class
for around 20 baht, that's about 50 cents.
You can also take a bus, it takes 90 minutes
from Mo Chit station, they leave approximately twice
an hour and costs about 50 Thai baht, or two US dollars.
Beware though, buses in Thailand are often
not air conditioned.
Okay so now for what I think is the best way
to get to Ayutthaya.
Simply hire a car and a driver.
That's what we did.
From the city center of Bangkok to Ayutthaya
via private car will take one hour,
a much better option and if you do this,
the car is probably air conditioned.
It cost us 5500 Thai baht, with a company called
Oriental Escape, the driver drove us to Ayutthaya,
took us around and brought us back to our hotel,
all for that price, which works out to be about
180 US dollars.
If you divide that amongst the three of us in the car,
that was $60 each for transport all day,
and it was also really nice when we were walking around
Ayutthaya to come back to an air conditioned car,
to go to the other attractions.
If you didn't get a car to take you to Ayutthaya,
and you've taken public transportation,
you'll need to get around, 'cause it's really big,
and a fun way to get around
is to take a Tuk Tuk.
Don't take the blue one, get the yellow Tuk Tuk.
You can typically negotiate a day rate,
and the Tuk Tuk driver will take you
to all the neat temples here.
And it's a lot better to ride them here in Ayutthaya
than in Bangkok, Bangkok, really busy.
But here, the streets aren't as busy,
so Tuk Tuk, you're not sucking the exhaust fumes
quite as much.
A lot of the guide books will tell you to rent a bicycle.
Everything's close around, so you can park bicycles,
and there will be a lot of bicycle parking at the temple,
but let me tell you, on a hot day like today,
I enjoy the air conditioning of a car.
And all the bikes are pretty big,
and Topher, his legs are really short.
Probably isn't able to pedal on those bicycles.
In Ayutthaya you can also feed the elephants.
50 baht, so let's get a basket.
This is on the honor system, 50 baht right here.
Let's put it in this nice, shiny, metal box.
And let's pick up a basket of delicious looking cucumbers.
Looks pretty tasty, doesn't it?
All right, follow me.
Let's go feed some elephants.
The elephants are just back here,
and maybe later we'll snack on a durian,
maybe not right now.
So we're at the elephants, there's one, two, three,
four, five, there's like six elephants.
Let's feed the first one, he looks the hungriest.
But I probably shouldn't like, take my basket too close
to him, he looks sneaky, he'll get the whole thing.
Here we go.
Look at that, ah, careful, not to get any elephant
slobber on me.
Okay, let's go feed some of those other
elephants over there.
Okay, let's feed some of these elephants.
We don't want one to get all the food.
So, here we go.
Shall we try some of those over there?
Let's try some of those over there.
This guy looks hungry.
It's amazing how forceful their, what, snout is?
Okay, here we go.
This is it.
I can feel them breathing on me.
This is the team feeding, right here.
Team feeding, one, two, all right,
that's the upper level difficulty.
Look, I know there might be a lot of animal lovers
that might say don't ride the elephants,
but I figured they're hungry,
so that's why I'm feeding them.
Look, she's hungry!
Look how well she enjoys these.
And they have to get fed.
And I paid to feed 'em.
This is almost like when we went walking a llama,
we paid to walk other people's llamas,
in Yorba Linda, California.
I love these elephants.
Can I have one?
I don't think I can.
Bye elephant.
It's empty.
Well thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did, you'll enjoy watching some of our other videos
from Bangkok, Thailand.
You'll find links in the description below,
or you can click either one of these to watch
more of those videos from Bangkok, Thailand.
Well we won't say goodbye,
because we'll see you in the next video.