Thailand : Ruins : Ayuthaya

At Ayuthaya, we stayed in a beautiful teak hostel. I spent a long time convincing myself that it was OK that it was extremely noisy and dirty - it was atmospheric. We moved on the next morning.
TONY'S PLACE was friendly and spacious, and had hilarious young girl on the desk. She pranced about doing much better impersonations (in English - and much better than my famously crap ones).
We hired bikes and wobbled to the ruins. They were mostly fairly ramshackle - tumbling brick masses resembling stupas, walls and columns. Occasionally statues and carvings still remained - worn and incomplete (usually decapitated Buddhas - I can't wait to put my head in place instead for a photo)
Wat Mongkhon Bopit still housed monks (and was therefore in much better nick) who wandered around taking photos and chatting on their mobiles, and slurping CocaCola. The temple also housed a humungus and sparkling Buddha, but these are probably more common than bread around rice-eating Ayuthaya, and we were unfazed.
Liv's favourite was Wat Phra Si Sanphet, with three striking white stupa soaring from the red earth.
Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon was my favourite, surrounded by an army of Buddhas, all individual, all in saffron robe uniforms. The area around the largest Buddha was buzzing with Thais.
Worship was vigorous and fun, with offerings (lotus, incense and flower garlands) rubbing gold leaf onto Buddha images, stick rattling, barefoot shuffling, oil burning and bashing a low gong.
It didn't seem at all taboo to talk in the temple - this added to the buzz.
We sped out of town along a highway, a huge whit spire with a gold top rising out of the horizon. We circuited around to Wat Phanan Choeng. The temple was absolutely rammed with trays of saffron fabric flocking to a priest in the centre of a crowd.
He was throwing the robes up to a group of men standing on the towering Buddha, struggling to keep up with the flood.
The worshippers suddenly crouched down and scrambled to cover their heads with the saffron cascading down from the Buddha. The fabric was then reeled around the Buddha and a fresh crowd ushered in to repeat the strange ceremony.
The temple was also crowded with stalls, the funniest selling monk offering kits - a shrink wrapped bucket containing everything for the modern monk - even a parasol.
The city surroundings and manicured lawns did attempt to sterilise the ruins, but the ruins managed to retain a mysterious air.
Clambering over the ancient monuments, trying to work out what was what and warding off brick dust attacks, we felt like esplorers!
We finished the day on a salt low, which we rectified by sitting on the floor of the 7-Eleven and eating in entirity a large bag of pea crisps. This Thai culinary delight uses peas instead of potato to make a tasty snack. Liv already has plans to import them. Investors on a postcard to...
I had a confrontation with Thai cuisine that evening, when I crunched a whole chilli, thinking it was an unusual herb (It was green and tiny and disguised among many other strange herbs...) Liv got grumpy when I started downing her beer, but looked over to see me bright red with tears streaming down my cheeks. I was reduced to instincts only and ordered mmm pineapple milkshake. When the adrenaline subsided I dropped straight to sleep.