Bangkok and Ayutthaya

I now have a chance to share some of the photos we took in Thailand.  We spent some time around the River Kwai, visiting the Damnoen Sadwak Floating Market  http://www.asiatravel.com/floating.html , the train track market in Samut Songkhram    http://9gag.com/gag/4848601 , and Ayutthaya - the old capital of Siam   http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/576 .  From there we took an overnight train from Nakhon Pathom to Chumphon where we took a ferry to the Thai islands in the Gulf of Thailand.  We stayed and played on Koh Tao,  Koh Samui,  Railay,  Koh Phi Phi, and briefly Phuket.  I will do some titles telling where the photos were taken.

A buddha head trapped in a tree's roots at Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya

Taking this photo out of the car window cost me.  The elephant came over running his trunk into the open window demanding money.  I gave the elephant some money and he passed it up to the driver.   

We also stopped at another historic buddhist site near Ayutthaya - photos below.  

In Thailand they like to put the yellow robes - wraps on the Buddha statues.  

The cell tower is not part of the historic stuff - right ?

There's always steps and these have not been reconstructed from the original so they are a challenge to get up and especially down.

We also went to an active buddhist temple with a twist.
I can't find the name of this temple.  Overload.

The twist is the dead monk who has been preserved sitting in his chair and kept behind glass.  Evidently a popular monk that they just couldn't let go.  

Railroad track Market

We went to a town that had a market that had been there a long time when the railroad wanted to put a track through the market.  The market folk refused to move because they had always been there.  So now 50 years +- later the railroad uses the track and the market is still there but set up so that everything can be pulled back from the train or is low enough to be cleared by the train.

Floating Market 

There was a floating market where we paid for a boat to take us around thinking it would be a lot of fruits and vegetables, but it was a series of vendors selling tourist stuff.  

This is what the floating market was.  Being paddled up against a shop that was not floating with a shop keeper who hooks the boat in and holds you until you buy something or refuse 10 times.  We would not choose to do this again.

Our driver/paddler

Orchid and Lotus Farm Visit

We hired a small long tail boat driven by a gentle old man who took us up some very small canals to small boat landings where we visited flower farms.  He gave Susan a beautiful lotus flower and helped our guide select some orchids for her home.  Really nice small tour.

He has just handed the lotus to Susan

A fisherman along the canal ready to throw his net perched on the small board off the bow of his boat.

River Kwai

We visited the River Kwai site where during WWII the Japanese built a railroad from Thailand into Burma using POW and slave labor in brutal conditions.  Thousands died with no individual grave sites so there are large memorials with headstones commemorating their loss.  

The current rail bridge near the location of the original wooden bridge.  Nothing of the original bridge remains.

This memorial had mostly British, and Dutch memorials.

A really nice guest house and restaurant for the night.  A short walk to the restaurant passing a Thai boxing gym that was interesting but we didn't take any photos of the gym.

Our local guest house had the concrete sculpture of water buffalo wading in the yard as if they were in a river.  

 Waterfalls National Park

There was a National Park that had cascading water falls that we hiked up to six levels of different falls.  Beautiful water and a lot of swimmers.  Really hard hiking because of the heat and humidity we should have just gone swimming.