Ayutthaya Travel Guide

Ayutthaya was founded in 1350 and was, by the seventeenth century, one of the largest cities in the world: a river island of temples and palaces trading with the Dutch, the Portuguese, the French and the Japanese, each with their own quarter. In 1767 a Burmese army took it and burned it, and the capital moved south to what became Bangkok.

What is left is a UNESCO World Heritage site of brick towers, foundation walls and beheaded Buddhas, spread across an island the Chao Phraya wraps around. It is not a reconstruction. It is a ruin, and it is far more affecting for it.

What to see

Wat Mahathat has the image everyone knows: a sandstone Buddha head grown into the roots of a fig tree. It is roped off and it is small, and the temple around it is worth more time than the queue for the photograph.

Wat Chaiwatthanaram is the most complete and the most photographed, a Khmer-style complex on the river bank west of the island, best in the late afternoon when the brick goes orange.

Wat Phra Si Sanphet was the royal temple inside the palace grounds, and its three restored chedis are the shape most people picture when they picture Ayutthaya.

Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon, southeast of the island, has a huge reclining Buddha and a chedi you can climb, and it is a working temple rather than a ruin.

How to see it

The island is about four kilometres across and the temples are spread over all of it, so walking is not realistic in the heat. A bicycle is the classic answer and is cheap; a hired tuk-tuk for a half day is the comfortable one and costs little more.

Start at eight. Ayutthaya has almost no shade and by noon the brick radiates. Most day-trippers arrive around ten, so the first two hours are the quiet ones.

Day trip or overnight

Almost everyone comes for the day from Bangkok, and it works: ninety minutes each way by train or minivan, five or six hours on the island, home for dinner.

Staying a night is the better version and very few people do it. The temples light up after dark, the island empties completely when the coaches leave, and the night market by the river is a proper local one. If Ayutthaya is more than a box to tick, stay.

Getting there

Trains from Krung Thep Aphiwat take about an hour and a half and cost very little; minivans from Bangkok’s northern terminal are quicker and less pleasant. River cruises from Bangkok take most of a day in one direction and are a different kind of trip.

When to go

November to February, when Bangkok and the central plain are dry and the heat is manageable. April is punishing on an open site with no shade, and the rains from May to October leave the ruins green and the light better but the middle of the day unpredictable.