inconsistent news from southeast asia

Day 6 - Leaving Bangkok

Up later than usual today and to another place for american style breakfast... i know, i know. I'll get over it but it really pains me that breakfast doesn't exist here so i pay what i have to pay for my toast and eggs. We took the boat down the Chao Phraya to the Hua Lamphong Train Station (11B). There we were met by helpful touristy folks who told us we should head to Ayutthaya instead of Lopburi. That's what we decided to do, waiting around the train station until 2 for our 3rd class train north.

The 3rd class train was quite an experience (and only 15B for an hour and a half ride). It's cramped, hot, sweaty and you've got vendors plowing up and down the aisles packed with people, selling anything you might like (mostly cold drinks, of course, but you can get a meal in a bag, too.)

The view showed us how green this country looks outside of Bangkok.

We arrived in Ayutthaya about 3:30, hiking in and settling on a very nice place for 250B (about a third what we were paying for similar accomodations in Bangkok). It's like the Sheraton or something - we even have our own bathroom.

After checking in we did a bit of wandering around the small main drag of this town, stopping for pad thai from a street vendor (the first of many vendors visited, i suspect - much cheaper and quite tasty). Drinks at the nice outdoor patio across the street from our hostel and home by 8:30 to finish me book.

Day 7 - Ayutthaya

Actually managed to sleep in till 9 this morning. Then it's off to check out the ruins - and no American breakfast. Feeling more adventurous today, we checked out the vendors for breakfast - Catherine got some bbq'd bananas of some sort and i got some totally unknown pastry thingies - possibly some sort of fried rice porridge, but very very tasty. Also got a very tasty iced thai coffee AND the ice in it didn't even make me violently ill. hooray.

The ruins here are plentiful and much more um.... ruined then what we saw around bangkok. Reminds me of Greece. We didn't see too many of the ruins, partially because it was brutally hot (the sun finally showed its face), but we saw the buddha head in the roots of a boddhi tree that is apparently the most photographed in the city, and the largest sitting buddha in thailand.

We also saw a lot of elephants, and i had vendor fried chicken for lunch - ever so tasty.

Now, i guess it's day eight and i'll have to tell you about it later. We missed the 10:30 train to Lopburi (to see it's hordes of looting monkeys - man have we ever been warned about these monkeys), so i'm here killing time till the 1:00 train while catherine needlepoints. She seems to be amusing herself so i'll get some more pictures up.

As usual, forgive the bad picture and writing quality, but time is money. And i just can't upload the pictures full sized - i'll bring the proper ones back with me.

And sorry both chapters came up at the same time - i only THOUGHT i'd published the first ones .. .arg.

Ill do better next time i swears it.