> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://easythailandvisa.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Ayutthaya Is Better Than Bangkok's Temples, and It Is a Day Trip - URL: https://easythailandvisa.com/ayutthaya-day-trip-from-bangkok/ - Published: 2026-09-15T00:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-11T05:15:03.000Z - Description: Bangkok has a Wat and a fraction of the ruins. Ayutthaya has the capital of a 400-year kingdom standing in a field, it is an hour away, and the train costs 20 baht. - Author: Somchai Jaidee - Tags: Temples & Culture, Slow Travel Two hours of temples in Bangkok is a lot of temples. Ayutthaya is the capital of a kingdom that ruled a large part of Southeast Asia for four centuries, it collapsed in 1767, and it is now a field of brick prangs and headless Buddha statues an hour south of Bangkok. It is the best single day trip from the city and almost everybody doing it badly. Last verified 15 September 2026. ## Getting there **The train from Bangkok, 20 to 50 baht, two hours.** Ordinary and rapid services from Hua Lamphong. The rapid ones are faster, the express ones are cheaper and have a slower departure. The view out of the window for the last hour is the reason to take the train over a bus, because you travel alongside the river and through the rice country north of the city. **A minivan from Mo Chit, 150 to 250 baht, 90 minutes.** Faster than the train, door to door if you book through a hotel, and the standard option for a tour group. **A tour from Bangkok, 800 to 2,500 baht.** Convenient, includes transport, a guide, lunch and often a boat back. This is the expensive way to do something that costs about 150 baht if you do it yourself. It is worth it if you want a guide and nothing else, and it is not worth it for transport. ## How long you need **Half a day for the essentials, a full day if you want to be unhurried.** The island in the river centre has the most famous ruins and the most tourists. The other three sections of the site are spread over several kilometres and a full day is the only way to see them properly. If you have four hours, stay on the island. If you have a day, rent a bicycle or a motorbike and do all of it. ## The ruins, in order of how much they are worth your time **Wat Chaiwatthanaram.** The centrepiece, a large complex of prangs around a central tower, and it is the one you have seen the photograph of. The famous angle is the row of headless Buddha statues in front of it, and the best light for that is early morning, before the tour buses. **Wat Mahathat.** The famous headless Buddha in the tree roots, which has been photographed so much that it is genuinely difficult to see past your own expectations. It is a small, beautiful temple and the root-entangled Buddha is a genuinely strange and lovely thing. The stone enclosure around the base of the tree has dozens of small, damaged, dismembered Buddhas in it, which is worth noticing and is usually ignored. **Wat Phra Ram.** A working monastery with a long, beautiful, ruined colonnade of headless Buddhas. Quieter than the main two and I think better. The scale of the destruction is more affecting here because the roof is mostly gone and you can see how long the thing was. **Bang Pa-In, the royal palace.** A few kilometres north, across a small bridge that is a view in itself. A royal residence from the 17th century, restored, with a Chinese-style hall and a Khmer-style hall at either end of the bridge. It is beautiful, it is well kept, and almost nobody visits it because it is not on the main site. **Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon.** A huge seated Buddha in a seated Buddha. Striking, a short walk from the others, and the least crowded of the significant ones. ## Go early. This is the whole tip. **Be on site by 08:00.** Coach tours from Bangkok arrive at 08:30 to 09:00, which is why the island temples feel crowded. At 08:00 you will have Wat Chaiwatthanaram essentially to yourself, in better light, in cool air, before the heat of the afternoon. The second reason to go early is the heat. Midday on the exposed brick in Ayutthaya is genuinely punishing, and the ruin sites have very little shade. ## What to eat there **The riverside restaurants at the boat pier.** Not because they are special, but because after a morning of walking on a hot site you need to sit down and eat, and the boat pier area has a good concentration of them. Prices are inflated slightly for the location and the food is ordinary Thai. **Get the boat back.** The [Chao Phraya](https://easythailandvisa.com/chao-phraya-commuter-boat-bangkok/) passenger boat runs from the pier to Bangkok and it takes about an hour and a half, costs 150 to 200 baht, and the last part of the journey passes through Bangkok at dusk with the temples lit up on the far bank. It is a better way to end the day than the train. **Or go back to the island and eat at the market.** The market by the entrance has local food at local prices and it is where the local version of the food is. ## What to wear, and one warning **You are walking on exposed brick in the tropics and the surface is white and reflective.** Closed shoes with good grip, a hat, water, and more water than you think. The brick is uneven and there are steps with no rails. **The** [**dress code**](https://easythailandvisa.com/thai-temple-dress-code-rules/) **applies.** This is a functioning religious site with [monks](https://easythailandvisa.com/talking-to-monks-in-thailand/) in residence at several of these temples, and the same rules about shoulders and knees apply. Some of the least visited ones have no sign and no enforcement and it is still expected. ## What to skip **The** [**elephant**](https://easythailandvisa.com/elephant-sanctuaries-ethics-what-to-avoid/) **camp near the ruins.** There are several near Ayutthaya and the ones that advertise photographs with tourists riding are the ones to avoid. If you want to see elephants, this is not the place and I have written about what to look for separately. **The jewellery and tailor stops.** The tour-bus version of Ayutthaya includes a couple of commission stops. If you take the train you will not have this problem, which is one of the reasons the train is better. **The market, if you have been to a good one.** The Ayutthaya market is a normal local market, which is not a criticism, it is just that it is not a destination. ## The honest version Ayutthaya is one of the great ruins of Southeast Asia and it is a genuine UNESCO site with a real history and a real tragedy in it. The 1767 destruction was deliberate, thorough, and followed by a deliberate policy of dismantling the temples for building material, which is why so much of it is a field of brick and scattered heads rather than an intact complex. That is worth understanding before you go, because it changes what you are looking at. You are not looking at a temple that fell down. You are looking at one that was taken apart on purpose and never rebuilt, and the four-hundred-year-old city it was the capital of is under an hour of train from where you slept last night. **More on this** - [Thonburi Is the Half of Bangkok That Has Not Been Sold Yet](https://easythailandvisa.com/thonburi-bangkok-the-city-on-the-other-bank/) - [Kanchanaburi and the River Kwai, Honestly](https://easythailandvisa.com/kanchanaburi-river-kwai-honestly/) - [Ten Days in a Temple Is Harder Than Ten Days of Anything](https://easythailandvisa.com/meditation-retreat-in-thailand/) - [For Nine Days, Most of Phuket Eats No Meat and Some of Them](https://easythailandvisa.com/phuket-vegetarian-festival-nine-emperor-gods/) - [Thailand Has Twenty-Five National Parks and You Should Only](https://easythailandvisa.com/thailand-national-parks-which-one-to-choose/)