The Bridge over the River Aiiii!

Day 31 - Ayutthaya

There's a couple of day trips you can do via train from Ayutthaya. I decide to visit Bang Pa-in and its royal palace where the king gets up to god knows what. Ayutthaya is made into an island by rivers on all sides. The train station lies over the River Pasak to the east. Google Maps directs me to walk over a formidable-looking bridge to get there. I think I must have taken a wrong turning because when I arrive at the bridge there is no obvious pedestrian route only a monstrous six-lane highway. Undeterred I decide that the metre-wide hard shoulder is a sufficiently safe route to walk along provided none of the traffic steaming along at 100km/h does something unsafe like hitting me. Confidence in my decision begins to wane as I reach the halfway point but I've gone too far to go back. Salvation arrives in the form of a guy on a scooter who pulls over, asks where I'm going and tells me to get on the back. Since discretion is the better part of valour I comply. He takes me to the station and won't accept a baht for his inconvenience. My knight in shiny Armani. I could have afforded to compensate him as the 25 minute train journey is a mere seven pence. In 'Ordered South' Robert Louis Stevenson writes Herein, I think, is the chief attraction of railway travel. The speed is so easy, and the train disturbs so little the scenes through which it takes us, that our heart becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the country; and while the body is being borne forward in the flying chain of carriages, the thoughts alight, as the humour moves them, at unfrequented stations. Summarises my feelings exactly. He never wrote anything about minivans so I assume we're on the same page there too. The palace is neat, ordered, empty. I call it a palace but it's actually a curious collection of buildings of diverse architectural styles. A Thai-style pavilion abuts a Chinese hall, while a mansion in turn-of-the-century European design stands against a brightly painted lighthouse and a colonial-style museum. There is also a Buddhist temple that looks like a gothic church accessed by a monk-operated cablecar to round things off.

There's really nothing else to do in Bang Pa-in though I did get called a 'farang' (foreigner) for the first time while wandering down some back streets which made me happy. Returning to Ayutthaya I manage to dodge the 7p fare, success. There is an attempt to visit a temple for sunset but it's down a narrow dirt path guarded by two dogs. The dogs here are a boisterous lot compared to the sonambulent hounds of Bangkok or Ko Samet. They regularly rouse themselves to bark at me as I walk past, especially after dark. It's only territorial barking and I can usually walk around them but without that option down the path in the gloom I think better of it. On the way back to the hostel I notice another two dogs sat in an enclosed yard. One immediately stands and begins barking and then looks over at his companion who has remained quietly prone.
Jeff: "Come on Tim it's bark time, 'ruff ruff' like we practised."
Tim: "It's always 'bark time' with you, when's 'lie down time' or 'lick our balls time'?"
Jeff: "It's a tourist!"
Tim: "What have you got against them anyway?"
Jeff: "They come over here thinking they own the place, pissing on our walls, standing on our, you know, wats. What have the tourists ever done for us?"
Tim: "Aqueducts."
Jeff: "Oh fuck off, don't start quoting Monty Python again."

That is the last imagined dog dialogue I'll do, promise. The bridge approaches, well, I approach, the bridge hasn't moved since the morning. It's hot tarmac spreads wide in front of me. I've caught rush hour again and the traffic is constant. Traffic which contains, after ten minutes of close observation, no tuk-tuks. After another 20 minutes stood forlornly at a bus stop I begin to trudge towards the small strip of road on which I shall be inevitably squashed. As I am doing so an old Thai man on a pushbike stops alongside me and asks where I am going in broken English. I point to the bridge, he motions for me to get on the back. At this point, with this bridge, I just go with it. After ten metres of negligible progress and with the bike veering wildly from side to side he stops. "You heavy!". I can't deny that. He could be twice my age and half my weight. I get off and he indicates that we should switch places. So now I am riding this Thai pensioner's bike with him on the back towards the bridge of death. It works better than the previous configuration but he has the bike in such a high gear that even I struggle to propel it. It's a rusty old machine though and I don't dare change down lest it fall apart. A sudden fear hits me that he intends for us to go over the bridge on this thing. There is some dignity in dying on your feet but like this? Plus I'd have another death on my soon-to-be extinguished conscience. At the last moment before we commit to the road an arm reaches from behind me and points to a parallel road running alongside the bridge. Another 30 metres and a set of stairs appears that leads up to a segregated walkway and safety. What a fine chap. I laugh all the rest of the way home.
Confident now in my mastery of the bridge/the likelihood of Thais to save me from myself I take another train the next day. I'm on the express train to Lopburi which is 34 times as expensive as the standard one and 48 times as expensive as yesterday's. 23 pence per minute, 1 pence per minute and 0.3 pence per minute. The ticket inspector comes around but doesn't check mine for some reason. Maybe he things tourists don't fare dodge. My crime of the day before remains undiscovered. On arrival I walk to the first temple, pay the entry and am issued with a monkey-beating stick. It is soon clear why as they leap onto me as soon as my back is turned. They're arseholes but amusing to watch. They steal and scream and shag, occasionally all three at the same time.

After hiring another scooter I drive out to a temple on a mountain. Nagas (human/serpent spirits) flank steep steps up to the temple. The area is deserted apart from a guy wearing army fatigues and swinging in a hammock. He seems amused by my intention to go up in the heat of the day, mad dogs and Englishmen. On my way down he meets me halfway and gives me a bottle of water and a knowing smile. I wasn't sweating, you were sweating.

A street market had sprung up in front of the scooter hire shop. I circle the block a few times trying to find an unclogged road. Eventually I have no resort but to drive down the narrow lanes formed by the stalls. Like some video game everytime I spot a route to the shop a handcart or other vehicle comes out of nowhere to block it. But scooters are pedestrians here and after multiple reversals and re-routes the market traders shepherd me through the throngs. Quite enough monkeying around for one day.