Days 4 and 5

Day 4 - Monday we had to change hotels as we decided to stay on longer in Bangkok but was not able to extend our stay at the hotel we were in. So after a leisurely breakfast in the freezing cold sky lounge of the old hotel we packed and moved down the road to our new hotel, which is closer to the sky train so much easier to get to Siam Square.

After getting our bags we decided to have a very chilled day and went and relaxed by the pool and read our books. Plus I really wanted to try and get a bit of colour as I look like a milk bottle out here at the moment LOL :-)

We had planned to hit the streets for some street food but we decided on Pizza instead. Was quite good as we paid about 2 pounds 50 for 2 6" pizza's drinks and salad bar. i was so full after too. We had a quick look in a shopping plaza across from the pizza place and Lee would have been proud of my Thai haggling skills, i used the old "paing pai noy" (that's a little bit expensive) and "Gor lairo gun" (this is what i offer - kinda) which worked a treat, i only managed to get a further 10 baht off the asking price but the lady wasn't going to budge originally until i pulled out the lingo guns, i shall definitely be using those again :-)

Day 5 - Today we went to Ayuttaya. We got up at 6 and went for breakfast and then took the sky train followed by the underground to get to the train station. We had to wait about 40 mins for the next train but that was OK. We got to witness a strange spectacle at bang on 8:00. All the security guards stood in front of this picture of someone in old style army regalia, it wasn't the current king so not sure who it was but anyway they did some stamping and the whole train station stood to their feet whilst the national anthem played. I need to find out what is so special about 8am, when we went to the pictures we had to stand for the national anthem and watch some nice pictures of the king on the screen before the film started but i had not seen this before!

I also had to use the squat toilet for the first time today. I so didnt miss those, especially in the station as they stunk so bad. I have been lucky so far in that the hotels we have stayed in and the shopping malls toilets are all western style. Hopefully the trend has passed further south LOL :-)

Typically the train was 40mins late so it was about 9am by the time we set off and arrived in Ayutthaya about 10:20, we were very jammy though as the air con carriage tickets were 310 baht so we went for the normal tickets at 20 baht each. when we got on the train we got on the air con carriage not knowing at the time what carriage it was. When the conductor came round he saw our tickets and only charged us an extra 20 baht each to stay where we were! Result 310 baht seat for 40 baht, cant complain at that.

Unfortunately when we arrived we had forgotten to do our home work like irresponsible tourists! (slapped wrists) and were unsure of what to do. We visited the ancient city of Sukothai last time we were here and there it was a giant park type area which we walked round and visited the temples by foot so figured it would be something similar but in Ayutthaya the ruins were actually all around the modern day city. We didn't have much money on us so we took a one hour tour on the back of a pick up truck and managed to see 2 temples which were really impressive. (pics to come soon). One had a Buddha head in beaded in a Bodhi tree and then other was just huge with so many statues of the Buddha, it made me feel very soulfully calm, yes that's sounds quite hippyish but it's true. One sad thing though was that at the temple with the Buddha head in the tree about 90% of all the Buddha statues (and there were a lot) had their heads missing, which were most likely taken when antiquities became a major trade back in the day. Boo :-(

The train journey back was a mare as we had to wait an hour for the next train back to Bangkok which was then 40 mins late as well. Billy wasn't feeling well and i felt like i was coming down with something too as i ached from head to toe and the train was so uncomfortable, there was no air con section with comfy seats this time. The seats were really hard and the air con consisted of open windows, so you can imagine how dirty we were by the time we got off!! Plus this journey was longer as it stopped at loads more stations than the one on the way! I cant say i enjoyed that bit. Luckily we stopped at a train station which i recognised to be on the underground network so we got off there and instead of taking us a further hour to get back to the hotel it took 30 mins. i was very relieved and quite chuffed with myself for remembering the station was on the underground route (que big head).

After i showered and took some paracetamol i felt a lot better. Billy still is a bit sniffly but we have a lie in tomorrow so hopefully should feel much better by the time we leave on Thursday morning. Tonight we are definitely hitting the street vendors, which I'm really looking forward to.