Today was brutal - let's just get that out there to start with. It wasn't cooler today, it was hotter.

Got up okay to have breakfast and meet my tour guide for 7am. We took a taxi to the train station and got the train to Ayutthaya, which is the ancient capital of Thailand. We were in 3rd class seats and the train was fairly old and grotty, but it was cool as we were sat by the open window and the carriage fan. The journey took an hour, so we were there by about 8.30ish.

Took a motorcycle taxi from the station to Bang Pa In Summer Palace. I now know why virtually every parent gets hysterical when their teenagers say they want a motorbike - no helmet, no safety gear and crazy traffic, needless to say I was mildly terrified!!

Anyway, the Summer Palace is pretty much everything you would expect a Summer Palace to be - lots of frivolous buildings, beautifully landscaped gardens and lakes and a wonderfully bucolic setting. Apparently it is a great favourite amongst the royal family here and I can see why. It was peaceful and some of the buildings were very beautiful and certainly worth an hour or so to wander round - though all the "taking off of shoes" was starting to get a little cumbersome.

By now the heat had started to hit and was over 30 degrees - even my guide was sweating. So, although we were supposed to take the boat over to Ayutthaya ruins, I decided we would take the tuktuk instead, as it was half an hour instead of an hour and would be cooler!

Ayutthaya is a World Heritage Site and is slap bang in the middle of a city, which I always think spoils it somewhat - it's hard to try and get some kind of shape of the historic site in your head when it's jammed up next to a market or a housing block! Still, this place is amazing.

We were supposed to spend all day here, I was scheduled for 4 temples, but the heat had ratchetted up to over 40 degrees and I was dying - I thought I was going to pass out several times. We did go to four of the temples, and considering they were built in the 1600's, they are amazing. Unfortunately, they had had serious flooding at the back end of last year, so quite large areas were roped off as unsafe, so you couldn't get to see all that perhaps you might have done. It's definitely an all day tour, the sheer size and scale of the construction is immense. It is pretty much all temples, there doesn't seem to be much of the day to day stuff that has survived. Quite a lot of the pagodas have, but as they seem to be made of solid brick, that's not too surprising.

As I was rapidly losing the will to live (and my consciousness) we got round the 4 temples in fairly short order. We were supposed to have lunch, but I wasn't even remotely interested in food - my guide took me to one of the markets and arranged a demonstration of how some Thai "fast food" is made, but I was so hot I barely took in a word she said. Eventually, at about 12.30 I asked if we could go back, because I was seriously concerned I was coming down with heatstroke - my face was so flushed you could have boiled an egg on it! We took the tuktuk to the minivan terminal at Ayutthaya, which has air conditioned vans going back to Bangkok about every 10 mins.

The journey took an hour and thankfully by the time we got back I was starting to get back to normality - certainly no more danger of passing out anyway! Taxi back to the hotel and my guide, bless her, gave me a cd with all the photos she had been taking of our tours for the last 3 days - lots of ones of the back of my head unfortunately, definitely not my best side!!! Still, there are some great photos on there, so I will upload it.

It's a real shame it was so hot today, I had hoped by leaving Bangkok early, we would escape the worst of the heat, so I would get some decent time to look at the ruins, I certainly don't feel I have done them justice.

Back in the room, took some time to cool down a bit more and get some more water on board, then a long cool shower and some sleep. Thankfully I have a small lie in tomorrow, as my flight to Hong Kong isn't until lunchtime, so at least I'm not getting up at the crack of dawn again, though I think I will pack this evening, just to be on the safe side.