Woke up early this morning, very cold night on the hardest bed I have ever slept on. I am convinced it was not a mattress but blocks.... it is lent after all!!! Had our breakfast, included in the room, fruit salad and scrambled eggs, served seperatly. I went over to the main house and went online to check for news and I got it.... good news too. I hope she doesnt mind me telling the travel blogging world buy my sister had her first baby, my first nephew. Rory is his name. Congratulations Niamh and Colin....

The hostel lady dropped us into town (free of charge, sound) and we went and rented some bikes for the day. The bikes were a bit too gangster for my liking, but we got used to them. They were almost like choppers (not helicopters no). Off we went anyway round the ruins. There are three national park designated areas.... right beside each other of course. The first, and biggest, is the old walled city and contains the most and best ruins. The ruins are unbelievable, and the place even more so. It is an awkward place to get to, so it isnt crowded at all. Apart from two groups of tourists on bikes there were only scatterings of cyclists moving around the park at the same time as us, so at times, it was just us and the ancients....

We cycled from temple to temple within the main gates until about 11. There is to much to see, and even though most of the temples were built over 700 years ago, and probably in ruin for at least half of that, there is still a remarkble amount of detail in them. There are temples with large buddha statues and elephant statues and its all set in a forested park with moats and ponds surrounding some of the temples. Photos would be better equiped to describe it, I have been out in the sun all day so my writing brain is cooked a bit, just a bit. We decided to leave the park and on the way we came across a statue for the king and a big bell that you can ring or bong. It says you get a blessing if you ring it, so I dedicated it to little Rory who is a blessing in himself... some day he can come and ring it himself eh (I took a photo of it so he will recognise it). Back to the town area where we got some coffee and a snack at 11 anyway, and then headed over to another section of the town. This had two temples and we had to pay seperately to see these, not really worth it to be honest... when we had seen all the other ones that is. We popped back towards the town area and went to the Museum, another 150 baht and again not really worth it. Each of the parks is 100 baht each and 20 baht for the bike, the bikes dont have any money so we have to pay for them. The bikes cost 100 baht for the day to rent. 1 euro is about 40 baht....

After some lunch we went out to the outskirts of town for the last area of temples. We had read/heard that there is a statue of a buddha with big hands that is supposedly famous so we said we would get a look at that, 5km way, and head back to town to get online to ring home.... I will get the photos up soon, they are amazing I think....