Thailand - Day 5 - Ayutthaya

Jamie and I awoke early because we had a train to catch at 8:20 am. We checked out of our little hostel of Suk 11 (great place for anyone going by the way), and took a taxi to the train station. The frustrating thing about Bangkok is the tuk tuk and taxi drivers who are just downright rude when they do not get to rip you off. The other day, we had a taxi driver want 200 baht to take us across town to our hostel. This morning, another taxi driver wanted 200 baht to take us not even half of the way to the train station. Of course, they claim that the afternoon traffic would make the price that much if they ran the meter, but when we waited patiently for one that would run the meter, we only paid 82 the first time and 96 the second time. Grr...

The train station was bustling and we we quickly found our train and was off on the 1.5 hour trip to Ayutthaya. Because this was a spur of the moment decision, Jamie and I had done little research on this area and thus didn't know what to expect. We read where you can rent a bike all day for 30 baht and follow the map they give you to all of the places. After we exited the train, we stored our luggage for the day at the station, found the little bike stand, and off we went. The coolest thing about the bicycles was taking them across the ferry into the town. The ferry ride was 4 baht per person, but 5 if you had a bike. It was amazingly easy and we even had the locals help us out with getting the bikes on and off the small little boat.

The rest of the day was spent visiting some temples. It was a bit frustrating because you had to pay 50 baht per person to get into the temples. I will add the titles to the temples later but the photos will be in Thailand - Day 5 - Ayutthaya folder. This whole day reminded us of Cambodia's Angkor Wat because of the style of architecture and the temple formations. Actually, some of the architecture is Khmer style. After a long day of riding around, we had to wait about 2.5 hours until our overnight train ride. We found this cool little guesthouse restaurant called "Mint's Guesthouse." The owner was very funny, the food was delicious, and we definately recommend it to anyone who needs to kill a few hours before their train ride. He more or less makes a living from tourist waiting for a train ride in Ayutthaya to/from Bangkok/Chiang Mai.

Our train was an hour late, but we finally boarded at 9:20 and were off on on a supposedly 10 hour plane ride to Chaing Mai. The sleeper cars were booked, so we had to settle for an AC seat. Read about Thailand - Day 6 - Chaing Mai to find out how our train ride went.