22nd January 2009

Kanchanaburi was not an easy place to move on from. Ayutthaya was only 100km away, but using the local bus services we were faced with a 7 hour journey on ordinary buses. This did not appeal to us, so we decided on our own route, 3 hours to Bangkok then change bus stations and catch another bus for only a one and a half hour journey. All in all the journey was straight forward, the only sticking point was the journey between bus stations in Bangkok. You would think getting from the southern to the northern terminal would be fairly straight forward but we did not want to get hit with a 500 Baht cab fare. So we hunted down a minibus transfer which involved asking 3 different people, walking around aimlessly and eventually not getting ripped off by the ticket seller who was maintaining that we needed 3 tickets rather than 2.

We arrived in Ayutthaya, which was the old Capital of Thailand before Bangkok, around lunchtime and made our way to our guest house for the night. Unfortunately somebody had impersonated Adam and stolen our A/C room, luckily for us they had a fan room available which was just as comfortable. We were staying in a place called Baan Lotus Guest House, which was in the style of a typical Thai teak house with a large lotus pond in the garden.

We arrived just in time to arrange a night time tour, taking in all the historical temples of the city. At 4:15pm we jumped on a tuk tuk with 3 other westerners. Over the 3 hour trip we were taken to all the major temples which were beautifully lit up in the night time, although the mosquito's seemed to have joined us somewhere along the way! We also visited the local elephant camp where we got up close and personal to some baby elephants and avoided being trampled by the bigger ones that were being ridden by 5 year old children! The tour ended with a visit to the night market where we had a nice meal by the river and the company of an American girl that we had met on the tour. We spent the remainder of the evening with a cold beer in our hands, sitting on the decking overlooking the lotus pond.

Ayutthaya was a nice sleepy town with much history and many temples. We reckon we managed to see pretty much all the best points on our tour and really only one night was needed here.

Another bright and early start is needed as we are off to Sukhothai in the morning.