captain tries to break the sound barrier on the
short journey to the palace. Unlike Ayutthaya’s
Khmer-influenced red sandstone ruins, which
have remained virtually untouched for over
250 years, the Summer Palace was renovated
in the mid-19th century by the then prince and
future king Rama V. Khun Pat tells me about
Rama V’s British governess, Anna Harriette
Leonowens, whose time working in the royal
court of Rama IV inspired a raft of books,
plays and films, including the Oscar-winning
Rodgers and Hammerstein blockbuster The
King and I, in 195 6.
“Rama V modernised the country but it
was actually his father, Rama IV, who could
see the future,” says Khun Pat, clearly proud
of his forward-thinking former monarchs, a
sentiment shared by the majority of Thais. The
government, though, is less comfortable with
Hollywood’s take on the royals, and has banned
both the 19 50s film and the 1999 remake.
Even having learned of Rama V’s
flamboyant taste in architecture, Bang Pa-In
Palace still comes as a surprise, appearing in
the shimmering heat like something pulled
from the pages of a fairytale. At the entrance,
life-sized topiary elephants dance across
manicured gardens in front of the main palace
building, a supersized Swiss chalet painted
purple and periwinkle. Elsewhere, there’s a
theatrical, red lacquer Chinese mansion,a bejewelled Thai pavilion floating in a lake
and a butter-coloured, neo-gothic monastery,
which monks are being delivered to across a
river in a cable-car.
We take a more conventional form of
transport, a minivan, onwards to the main
event: Ayutthaya, one of Southeast Asia’s
great ancient cities, on a par with Angkor Wat
in Cambodia and Borobudur in Indonesia.
Founded in 1350, it grew into a cosmopolitan
centre of commerce, and, by the middle of
the 1 8th century, it was home to more than
a million people. Despite being sacked and
looted in the years since, its glory days are still
immediately apparent in its resplendent ruins.
As we approach, they rise and swell across
a square mile of flat, baked, red earth, cut
through by the Chao Phraya River.
Exploring the Buddhist temple of Wat Yai
Chai Mongkhon, I’m dwarfed by a 20 0ft-high
stupa, which leans to one side like a melted
candle. At the Ancient Palace, I marvel at a
tryptic of delicate, tapering stupas, seemingly
trying to pierce the sun. Inside the grand Wat
Mahathat complex, I stand before a crypt that
once held relics of Lord Buddha, guarded by
dozens of decapitated statues, their knees
still blackened by 20 0-year-old soot, their
hands still folded in mudra hand gestures
symbolising compassion, contemplation
and transition.Above: Buddha head
entwined in tree roots
at Wat Mahathat, a royal
temple in the ancient
city of Ayutthaya