Travelled to Ayuthaya (the old capital of Thailand) to pick up a rice barge cruising the Chao Phraya river for a few days. Our barge was great, plenty of room to relax and enjoy the view, with all meals cooked for us on board, although the 12 of us did all have to sleep in the same room - cosy huh?!

As we journeyed down the river we stopped off for a couple of cycle rides through the local countryside. We peddled through many villages, visited a small brick making factory, saw an elephant sanctuary where the elephants were painting (!), played football with children in a local school (2-1 to the tourists!) and then spent some time just relaxing on the sundeck of the boat where we also saw wild elephants just along the river bank.

The next morning we had an early start to allow us to watch the monks come to a village to collect their daily offerings. The villagers provide them with food for their one meal they are allowed each day. We were invited to take part and I was able to give them some vegetable curry!

A fairly lengthy cycle ride followed, about 3 hours in scorching heat, but we covered some ground seeing a weapons factory (no health and safety issues here with people working on lathes and open fire ovens wearing flip flops!) and a sweet factory with the yummiest peanut candy. We also went to another school to see the children, where there was a replica temple of Ankor Wat (in Cambodia). We ended up playing another game of football but this time the heat was too much. We couldn't even beat a group of 14/15 yr old school girls, although we didn't lose either - it ended a draw...But there was no rest, back on the bikes to get back to the boat. Once there I think I drank about 3 litres of water to try and recover from the morning's exertions...

After lunch we left the barge and had a few hours to explore the city of Ayuthaya. It's a temple lovers paradise and has now been declared a world heritage site. We managed to see three of them - Wat Phanancheong with the largest sitting buddah in Thailand and also the largest number of catfish I've ever seen in one place. I was even convinced to feed them, which basically involved hanging a bread roll over the surface of the water while these huge wierd looking fish sucked on it..! We also went to Wat Yai and saw the sunset over Wat Mahathat.