Sri Lanka It's Happening

April 21, 2006

On the morning of 25th of march we set off to visit Bang Pa In and Autthaya. We were supposed to get off to an early start but it didn't quite happen that way. The day was already warm when we arrived at Bang Pa In the summaer palace.

We knew even before we left Colombo that the weather becomes unbearably hot in Thailand during April and we also knew that late march is only just bearable. But we didn't really care, after all can it get much worse than in Sri Lanka's dry zone? Well the temperature certainly didn't rise much above the temperatures we have seen here, but what bothered us was the total lack of humidty. Colombo is very very humid. Even in the dry zone in Sri Lanka the humidity levels are reasonably high. During the entire stay everyone in the family had headaches in the evening caused by dehydration.

Bang Pa In certainly is a beautifull place with it's landscape gardens and gilded palaces. It's a thai palace but the architecture is distinctly European, apparently it was built by the first Thai king to visit Europe, and it's obvious that he had fallen in love with european architecture.

In the middle of the landscape gardens there lies a large pond with a school of fish. Here you get a chance to see how commercialized Thai tourism has become. Visitors feed the fish with expensive bread bought at a stall next to the pond maintained for this very purpose.

Posted by raditha at April 21, 2006 5:23 AM