Cicero

Cicero once said, "We learn nothing from history, except that we learn nothing from history."

I have always loved that quote because it is so true. I think the thing that makes that true is Gold! Well, maybe now it is oil.

We spent the day in the ancient Thai city of Ayutthaya. It was sacked by the Burmese in 1767 and many of the magnificent Wats were burned in order to melt down the gold in them. It was a great controversy since the Burmese were also Buddhists.

To this day the countries don't get along very well.






Our wonderful guide for the day, whose name I can not spell or pronounce, really made a great tour for us. We hired a private car which also had a driver and we didn't have to make numerous cattle calls like we would have on a bus. The price was only about $100 for the day and worth it. His english was excellent but heavily accented. He was a very devout Buddhist and made many offerings and Wais. Like most Thai men he spent several months as a monk.

He took this picture of Bobbi and I in front of a laughing Buddha. He said he couldn't tell me apart from the Buddha. I wonder what he meant? Hmmm?

These structures, even as ruins, are just mind boggling. They were made of bricks and then stuccoed. All of the Stucco is now gone, but you can imagine what it would have looked like. When on the grounds of the Wats I noticed that you could put the camera up to your eye randomly and the scene in the viewfinder was always symmetrical and balanced. Weird.

Eventually, Nature will prevail over these structures.