A couple of days after TDEX wrapped up, a few of us drove up to Ayutthaya. Actually, a couple of us drove. The rest of us sat in the back asking: "Are we there yet?" at 30-second intervals.
The primary goal was to have lunch at a restaurant called Ton Nam that's famous for serving river prawns.
River prawns at Ton Nam restaurant, Ayutthaya
We also tried a thai dessert/ snack called roti sai mai, which is sort of like stringy cotton candy that you wrap in a thin roti. I'm not really a dessert person, but it was good, as you can see from the expression on Mean's face:
Mean enjoying roti sai mai
To work off some of the calories ingested, we spent a bit of time walking around a couple of the temples, mostly Wat Mahathat and the reclining Buddha. If you live in Bangkok or have occasion to visit Thailand, it's worth travelling to Ayutthaya to learn a little about Thai history. The first time I visited the old part of the city was over 20 years ago.
Aey and Mean at the reclining Buddha in Ayutthaya
It was a weekday during rainy season, so there weren't many other people around. This gave us the perfect opportunity to conduct extensive tests of our photo and video gear...as you can see in the two series of gif files below.
Among us, we had a Canon IXY220IS compact camera, an Olympus Pen camera, a Panasonic GF-1, a Canon 5D Mark II and a Sony CX550V handycam...so we had to put all the hi-tech hardware to good use.
It probably says a lot about us that this was what we decided to do:
Despite appearances (particularly Eric's Calvin-like grin), this was a serious camera test. Eric was running through us with the video camera set to capture slow-motion footage.
One of the clips actually turned out quite nicely. I'm sure Eric will post it once he's back home...if for nothing more than to demonstrate that there really was a (somewhat) constructive purpose to his running a slalom course in the middle of the old city of Ayutthaya.
And of course, after getting back to Bangkok, we went for more food, starting with incredibly good Som Tam Gai Yang (green papaya salad, grilled chicken, plus other stuff) and sticky rice:
Eric Cheng with sticky rice
...followed by my all-time favourite dessert, mango with sticky rice, from the vendor on the corner of Thonglor and Sukhumvit:
Fresh mangos...for mango with sticky rice!
Eating so much in one day was certainly hard work, but someone had to do it.