Yo yo yo homies! We decided to celebrate Laura's birthday with a day trip to Ayutthaya. Having had to reschedule our trip north after our little injury, we didn't want to miss out on everything.

It was the old capital of the Siam dynasty and was just reopening after the recent floods. We learnt a lot about the history and about Buddhist monks. The wats we visited here were less like the ones we have seen so far, some were still in use but a lot were ruins from the time when it was the capital. It was moved by one of the Thai Kings when, after being invaded and overpowered too many times by the Burmese, he moved it to a more strategic position in Bangkok and they were never again invaded.

We were taken round in a minivan, the site itself is huge, and the whole city is a world heritage site, so it's the only way to get around. And e saw some of the sites, but only a handful compared to the vastness of the place. We saw the second longest reclining Buddha which was enormous, and a lot more impressive than the Bangkok one as this was out in the open so you could see the size of him. We saw where the old Kings were buried, in their cremation shrines, and you have to walk around clockwise, as anti-clockwise brings bad luck as that's the way they walk for the funeral procession.

We had a lovely Thai lunch, sat with some right weirdos who wouldn't talk to us and were American we think but with a random Eastern European accent. We made friends with an older German couple, and talked about Thailand's islands, but the conversation was a bit tricky as their English wasn't great and our German is pitiful at best.

We saw one temple still in use and saw hundreds of Buddha statues. We also saw some tourist monks taking pictures, which was funny. We spoke to the guide for a long time about Buddhism in different countries and what Buddhist monks have to do. We are becoming quite educated on world religions now!

It was a really nice day, and we're glad we got to do some of real Thailand after being in the tourist bubble of the islands. It's a shame we don't have the time for Northern Thailand that will have to be on another trip!

We got back to Khao San and went out for a huge Birthday ice cream sundae and iced coffee. Mountains of ice cream and nuts and fudge sauce, a real American ice cream parlor you could tell. Then we waddled back to the guesthouse, clearly not splashing out on anywhere nice to stay for birthday night, think of that room Leo Dio stays in at the beginning of The Beach, paper walls, lump of wood for a mattress and an open grill at the front of the room onto the corridor so we could hear everything that went on in our corridor. Eamonn next door clearly had a good night!

Had a nice Skype chat with the family before the big Birthday Indian Feast. After that we really were waddling down Khao San and we had a drink in the thick of it to celebrate both Laura's birthday and Tori and Tyler's anniversary. We rounded off the evening in typical style, with a few hands of cards. And another year over, another year older and another year closer to thirty!!!