Given the limited amount of time in Thailand, we elected to tour historical rather than modern city. The other thing that played into the decision was the discovery that the port is over two hours drive from Bangkok. Having learned from the traffic the other day, I elected for a ship arranged tour rather than take a chance on being stranded secondary to not making it back in time for the ship departure.

As always – click on the thumbnails if you want to view a larger version.
Our first stop for the day was the Bang Pa-In Palace which included newer buildings, older traditional decorations and temples plus an extensive topiary garden.

The next set of pictures comes from Watyaichainomgkhol (Temple) and include a number of Buddah’s as well as what remains of the Ordination Hall.

We finished the day at Ayutthaya. This historic area is on the World Heritage list. We hiked all over the grounds seeing everything from the Buddah in the tree to viewing both buildings/temples under reconstruction (with the scaffolding reminding me of a couple of computer games – don’t ask), broken statues and archeological excavation sites. The remains of several other temples (Watts) are on adjacent grounds.

I returned to the ship with more than enough photos….