Ayutthaya

A bodhi tree grew its roots around a stone Buddha head and it has stayed there, sitting low enough that a sign asks visitors to crouch rather than stand over it. The rest of the site is brick platforms, enough to count where the towers stood.

It stands on the west bank, which means a bridge off the island. A Khmer prang in the centre is ringed by eight smaller ones, so the plan is symmetrical from above. Lights come on from the river at dusk, and people photograph it in hired traditional dress.

Three bell-shaped chedis stand in a row, each holding the ashes of a king. It was the palace chapel, so monks never lived here and there is no hall even now, and the platform between them is high enough that from the steps the three line up.

It lies southeast off the island, a fair way by bicycle. Stairs inside the big chedi open onto rice fields all round, narrow enough that people climb in single file. The reclining Buddha is wrapped in saffron cloth that worshippers renew.

The island runs about four kilometres by three, which makes a bicycle better than feet. Guesthouses and the ferry landing hire them by the day with a lock, and inside each site you leave the bike and walk.

The room of goldwork lifted from the crypt at Wat Ratchaburana is what this museum is built around. Looters got in first in 1957 and what survived was recovered afterwards. Read the labels, which set that out. One room bars cameras entirely.

A royal summer estate twenty kilometres south of the island, still used for functions. A Thai pavilion on the pond, a Chinese timber hall and a European observatory share one wall, so the styles do not match. Shorts are refused; electric carts are for hire.

In the evening a line of stalls goes up along the road east of the historical park. It serves people heading home more than visitors, so much of it is dishes and fried things bagged to take away. There is almost nowhere to sit; you walk and eat.

Thousands of Japanese lived on the south bank in the 1600s, and a small exhibition hall marks the ground. Copies of trade documents and letters hang inside, and posts by the river show where the settlement ended. Fifteen minutes by car, or come by boat.

The railway station sits east of the river, so reaching the island means a boat. The landing is a five-minute walk from the platform and the boat leaves once it fills. Trains from Bangkok take about ninety minutes, and the slow ones cost very little.

A brick reclining Buddha about 40m long lies roofless in an open field. The hall that once covered it has fallen, leaving a few pillars. An orange cloth wrapped around the figure makes it visible from far off.

A temple older than Ayutthaya's founding as capital, its gilded seated Buddha 19m tall filling the hall. Thai-Chinese worshippers come in numbers with incense and orange cloth. Sitting at a meeting of two rivers, it sees many visitors come by boat.

Built to honour two princes killed in a succession fight, its central prang still stands tall. A narrow stair inside the prang drops to an underground chamber with surviving murals. The gold found here is in the Chao Sam Phraya Museum.

Right beside Wat Phra Si Sanphet, a hall housing one of Thailand's largest bronze seated Buddhas. The hall burned when the capital fell in 1767 and had to wait until the 1950s for a new roof. Unlike most of the ruins, it costs nothing to enter.

Burmese troops used it as a base, so it survived when the capital burned. A gilded Buddha in crown and royal ornaments still sits inside the hall. Its site is north of the island over the river, an easy bicycle ride via the bridge.