26th May, 2024 (Day 7)
Left Bangkok for Ayutthaya. Two important tips while traveling in Asia, 1) always bring cash as many rural places, do not accept cards, 2) Best to have local currency or at least cash in US or in Euros.
Along the way, we passed an old, abandoned temple that piqued our interest, so we stopped to take some pictures. Again, I struggled as my phone kept overheating. Ayutthaya used to be the old capital of the Siamese Kingdom, founded in 1350. However, it was burnt to the ground by invading Burmese army in 1767 and it never regained it’s former glory.
Eventually we arrived at Old Place resort owned by Angie. She is kind towards overlanders as her daughter too is into overlanding and does campervan travels in Europe. We planned to sleep in our vehicles within the resort’s parking grounds. Angie was kind enough to provide us for free a guest room to use the shower and its toilet.
The weekend night market by the historical park. This market only operates on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 4pm to 10pm.
27Th May (Day 8)
The weather was very hot and the temp was around 43 deg C. Since Angie has been very kind to us, the group decided to support her business by having all our meals at the resort. However, she did mention that her kitchen was not in operations and would be difficult for her. So, for lunch, I made a simple ham sandwich. In my last CJ supermarket visit, I stocked with some cold cuts and cold drinks. This is the advantage of having a fridge in my truck.
28th May (Day 9)
We made our way to Daun Pagoda Temple, some 380 km away. The drive took us about 6 hours, and we reached around 5.15pm. From the town, we had to drive up a steep hill in forested to get to the temple. Not a good idea to drive here in the dark.
I was greeted by a pack of the temple dogs. It is in Thai belief that you earn good karma by feeding stray dogs and that could be the reason why most dogs here in Thailand are friendly towards strangers.
The story of why there are many roosters statues in the temple. Whilst Ayutthaya was under Burmese rule Prince (later King) Naresuan was held captive/hostage by the Burmese in Pegu where he was involved in a cockfight with a Burmese prince. Naresuan's rooster won. The Burmese prince was humiliated by the defeat. This made Naresuan determined to fight for freedom for the Kingdom of Ayutthaya.
After a quick dinner with the rest of the group, I decided to head into town and park in a PTT as I did not feel very comfortable here. The toilets at the temple were in very bad shape and had no lights nor any water.
The rest of the group will be spending the night here and will be meeting me at 10 am at the nearest PTT. I quickly packed up and headed down towards town as I recalled the dark forest road ahead of me
Found a PTT station that was on the route for tomorrow’s drive, but around 10 pm some teenagers on motorcycle parked by my truck. This made me feel uncomfortable as I feared they might attempt a smash and grab. The PTT station had closed for the night and there was no other vehicle parked here.
I had this very important rule of never staying at a place if I feel unsafe, so I decided to re-locate to another PTT station. This place was much livelier as there were truckers sleeping here for the night which meant it should be a safe place to spend the night.