Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya is Thailands old capital, about 70km north of Bangkok. I'd done some researching of the floods and found this site which mentioned that the water level had gone down about two weeks ago. So I decided to head in that direction, if the roads were cut I could always detour somewhere.

I came in along the 324 road (or 321?) and there are still lots of people camped up on the road, there's still water everywhere beside the roads too but I'm not sure if it's there normally and just higher now. There were submerged houses in places so I assume it's not always that wet.

This side road was open, but many of the smaller roads off the main highway were under about half a meter of water. 

I found this little track and decided to explore! It was muddy in parts, but I made it!

You can see on the houses where the water came up to. I guess it covered the road when it was that high too.

ROADWORKS. EVERYWHERE. Got covered in dust, and then mud after they were  spraying water.

So I'm not sure if this is normally a lake?

Lots of trees near roads had fallen over. The ground has been wet for about a month so I saw this a few more times.

People parked and camped out on the highway, there are a lot of these camps closer to Ayutthaya. Some people still running shops.

And this is why...

And just out of town the elephants are now living next to the road because their usual place is flooded. Also, they eat A LOT.

These ones with the babies were right next to the road.

And there were lots more!

In the city itself you can see the water level on all the buildings about 2 meters higher than street level. They were still cleaning up the streets but there was no water on the roads anymore.

This was on the western side. The water is very fast moving.

Across the river they are still pumping water out.

Some of the temples still have water around.

But because the tourist numbers were down I got to wander around a lot of the temples alone. They weren't charging anything to enter them either! Some where still closed however, like the one above. They had busloads of people coming to help clean up though.

And if you like temples, here are some temple photos!

Wat Ratburana

A tree must have been growing against the wall and they've pulled it down now.

Wat Sri Sanphet

Wat Mahathat 

Apparently in the high season it's very hard to get near this because of the number of tourists. I was the only one there yesterday.

Wat Sri Sanphet

I went back to Sri Sanphet because I realised my camera settings were set wrong and retook a few more photos.

And that's all for temples. Now I'm in Lobburi for the monkey feeding festival tomorrow! The town has been taken over by monkeys, right outside my window I can see 4 of them.

Some odd thing I just remembered too, is that brown shelled eggs are about 5 times the price of white eggs here because no one wants the white ones. There's another culture like that but I think they only eat the white eggs. Confusing.