Welcome to Ayuttaya, the former capital of Thailand. We arrived this afternoon after yet another longer than expected bus trip from Kanchanaburi. It was all going well until we hit an accident outside of Supha Buri (after we had changed buses there) in which a lorry and trailer had skidded across the road and managed to block it totally but at least we got here safe and sound.

We had 3 brilliant days in Kanchanaburi. Once we had checked in after our early arrival we went to the POW graveyard, 6000 headstones to soldiers who perished at the hands of the Japanese during the construction of the Death Railway. The museum was a very humbling experience and a truely fascinating experience. That afternoon we went to the Tiger Temple and had our photos taken with grown (big big!) tigers as they lay in the afternoon sun. After that, we had the chance to get our photo taken with a tiger cub as you held him in your arms; it was brilliant.

Next day we walked out to the bridge over the River Kwai and walked across it (not all too easy when you are trying to avoid all the other tourist who just push you out of the way and almost into the river below). We then decided to rent a moped to go out to Hellfire Pass, 80km from Kanchanaburi. Hellfire Pass was cut out of the mountainside by the POWs during the construction of the Death Railway. It took 12 weeks to cut through the rock with just the most basic of tools, a hammer and chisel to form holes in which to plant the dynamite to break the rock and then cart it away but hand, hundreds of lives were lost during it's construction. We finally arrived after 2 hours of driving to find that the museum had closed. Undeterred, we went down to the pass and found ourselves there alone, everyone else was gone. It was amazing to be there imagening the torment that these POWs must have gone true. After a swift 1 and a half hours we found ourselves back in town and settled in for the night.

Next day, our last day, we went and did a Thai cooking course. It was really good fun and Trish is now an expert at Thai Green Curry, Massaman Curry and Pad Thai. We ate, or at least tried to (there was sooo much), our cooking and weren't fit to do anything else that afternoon. We left this morning and got the bus to our current home, Ayuttaya. The plan was to get the sleeper train tomorrow night to Chang Mai and we have arrived to find that it is in fact booked out so we are here for an extra day and not now going to get to Chang Mai till Friday morning at the earliest.