Ayutthaya
May 6th - May 7th (Day 63 - 64)

Hey there,

Another 5 hours on a bus and we get to Ayutthaya. The bus we were on was heading to Bangkok as its final destination so we were dropped off in the middle of the highway just outside of Ayutthaya. Chris described it as being dropped off in the middle of the M25, the only difference being the traffic was moving on this highway which made crossing slightly dangerous! We hopped in to a waiting taxi and arrived in Ayutthaya 20 mins later feeling completely ripped off by the taxi man. We didn't see the point in bargaining since there was no choice in the matter, we were in the middle of nowhere.

We stayed at a lovely old teak house not far from all the historical sites. On our first evening we decided to take a tuk tuk tour of some of the sites that were further out of town which wouldn't be walkable the following day. The tour was pretty good but we spent most of our time watching an awesome lightening storm in the distance, it was really atmospheric. The only downside of the tour was visiting an elephant camp and witnessing some poor treatment to the elephants, Tina was less than happy with this.

The following day we walked around the ruins of the temples in the main area, some of the ruins were very impressive, especially the scale of some of the temples..... but after seeing temples in Luang Prabang, Chaing Mai and Sukhothai we had finally hit the temple wall! For the next week or so I think we will try and find some non temple based tourist attractions.

Tomorrow we are heading to Kanchanaburi and the river Kwai. I am sure it the experience there will be different amd sombre due to it's WWII history.

Much Love
xxx