Are You Tired...or Ayutthaya?

It was already getting dark as we arrived in Ayutthaya but we arrived on time at 6:30pm. A short ferry trip across the river got us close to our hostel which we found thanks to two local girls passing on a moped who stopped as we were obviously lost tourists. We checked into the hostel and went straight back out for food at a nearby night market. It was winding down by the time we got there but managed to find a place busy enough for us not to have to worry about the freshness of the food being served. Back in the hostel, things were extremely quiet with just ourselves and one German guy, Alex, sharing our six bed dorm. There was an instant stark contrast with the madness of Bangkok. Just a note on the beds too, they were ridiculously hard and almost impossible to sleep on.

On Monday morning Eleanor, Alex, and I hired bikes from the hostel and set about exploring the temples. As there are so many we settled on two and headed across the river out of town. It was a nice change to be on the bikes and have a cool breeze to help keep the extreme heat at bay. We quickly noticed that many of the houses beside the lake were flooded and later learned that a man had drown in his home the previous weekend; apparently the flood was as a result of water being released from a nearby dam. We headed back to the food market that evening, this time earlier in hope of having more of a choice. We picked up another German from the hostel enroute and also bumped into a Dutch couple we'd met the night previous on the ferry over. On our way back we grabbed desert in the form of banana and chocolate chip waffles freshly made as we waited. Back at the hostel there were a few new faces including a girl from Cork living in London over on a short holiday; incredibly, my friend aside, she was the first Irish person I had met since arriving.

Tuesday was my last day in Ayutthaya and also my last day traveling with Eleanor as she was traveling East to go hiking and camping in a national park in the hope of seeing wild elephants. I was getting the overnight train north to Chiang Mai that evening at 7:45pm and was hoping just to relax and do some planning for most of the day. I had just enough time to get food, and waffles, at the night market before leaving for the train station. I got to the station a good hour early as the ferry over finished at 7pm. As I was waiting it was abundantly clear that mosquitoes were becoming an issue now that I was out of the city. They're pretty harmless in Thailand, just an annoyance, but more repellent spray is top of my wish list when I arrive in Chiang Mai. The train was 10 minutes late arriving from Bangkok but I was told to expect this as delays are extremely common. Once it arrived I was ushered to my bed for the night, very happy to be back in an air conditioned space.Read more