Boat museum
One of the great pleasures in visiting Ayutthaya is to see traditional Thai crafts, preserved and practised here. We went to a private boat museum, where Kanok Khaomala and his father Paithun keep examples of the wooden boats that used to be seen on the waterways in the old days.
Mr Khaomala senior started the museum when he retired as a teacher, in order to maintain the old skills of boat-building. These skills are dying out because Thailand no longer has the tropical hardwood trees used to make them.
It is a wonderful little museum; apart from the boats, there are stunning scale models of the glittering royal barges, each taking up to a year to make.
In the north-west corner of the old city, you can also visit the workshop of Ajarn Kob, a master in the art of Sak Yant, or sacred tattoos. Thais have adorned their bodies with these ancient tattoos for centuries, believing they can protect them.