Rebecca, a friend of a friend from camp, invited me to go with her to the temples and floating market in Ayutthaya. Two gals she met from the school she was working at organized an entire day for us, Pom and Penun, two of the absolute sweetest ladies. They were so sassy and spunky and made it such a fun day for us all!

Rebekah and I like to call this the lampshade hat!

Ayutthaya is about two hours north of Bangkok. We hired a driver and he took us around all day, in a huge 10 passenger comfy van. Our first stop was the Bang Pa-In Palace.

This palace is known as the summer palace. The original complex was constructed in 1632 but after the Burmese raids it was left abandoned. Most of the current buildings were built between 1872 and 1889. Now… lets be honest, that info definitely came straight from Google.

The day of the trip I actually had no idea where we were headed, all I knew is that I was going to see elephants so… why not?! Below are some photos from the Bang Pa-In Palace.

Using an umbrella with no rain. Thai style.

After the palace we went to a temple. Not sure of the name of it, so I cant give you any fun facts from Google. It was, of course, beautiful and full of culture. There were Buddha statues surrounding the main part of the temple, and 2 huge statues at the entrance. One of my favorite parts of this temple was that the original stairs were still in tact. The bricks of the stairs were concave from all of the feet that walked up and down over the years. It was so neat, but also terrifying to walk down.

We stopped for lunch at a place that I once again don’t know the name of. It was right along the river and we actually sat of a boat that was floating in the water. There was a bridge, maybe not the safest bridge in the world, connecting the main seating area to the boat seating area. I definitely tip-toed across quickly while mildly panicking. I’ve tried a lot of different foods while being here but I still cant put seafood on my “like” list. I did try a huge shrimp, which was the restaurants specialty. One bite was enough for me.

Next, we were off to the floating market. ELEPHANT TIME!

First thing we did was get in a boat and floated around to see the entire market. The boat was quite wobbly and the water was quite gross so I sat down and didn’t move one single inch the entire way.

After we got off the boat we then walked around the market. It was in the shape of a big oval with an island stage in the middle. Little did we know…. we were going to get to see a reenactment of the fights between and the Thai and Burmese people on the stage before we left.

The market was full of local shops, sweet snacks, interesting foods, good people watching, elephants, and an interesting show to end our day.

I’m sure my face was quite hilarious throughout the show.

Things kept happening out of nowhere, there was random screaming, gun shots, and fighting. People yelling at each other, girls fighting girls, guys fighting girls, people getting shoved in the water, canoes shooting canons at each other. This was all happening in a different language so it made it even more difficult to keep up with what was happening. It was interesting and bizarre all at once. Then I turn around to leave and this woman is behind me…..

Yup, done.

Great day with sweet friends in Ayutthaya.