Temples and ruins and wats and trains

We left Bangkok and got a train about an hour and a half North to Ayuthaya, a former capital. Ayuthaya is famous for its ruins of temples (wats). We had a couple of days there, took a boat trip around the place looking at temples, did a walking tour around the place looking at other temples and had dinner that had great views of some temples lit up at nighttime. We pretty much saw every temple in the city, Rich loved it, I got a bit bored.



Next stop was a couple more hours north to a place called Lopburi, another former capital, also famous for it's temples, famous too for it's monkey problem! Certain parts of the city are overrun with monkeys, they live around one of the bigger ruins there and wreak havoc with the locals, stealing food from markets, outdoor eateries and the likes, pooing on car windscreens, fighting, and generally being a nuiscance. But being a buddhist nation, they won't cull the monkeys, they just put up with them as best they can......yay.....Monkeys!!

I don't think Lopburi get many tourists as I've never been looked at so much anywhere, it was a bit wierd! Our hotel was outside of town and was too expensive to eat there so on our first night we decided to walk into town for food. However, we didn't realise quite how far it was, plus it was getting late. When we'd been walking for over an hour we were only halfway and there were no tuktuks here and no cyclos would be this far out. Luckily though a motorbike pulled up and offered his 'taxi' service into town. Now, if at home, we'd never ever do this, but it's the way it's done round here plus we didn't want to walk anymore, so Rich and I jumped (yes both of us!) on the back and got a bit of a scary lift into town. Bikes are everywhere here and people just ride on them, no helmets, leathers, as many people as they can fit on and away they go!! It was fun despite being scared!!

We only had one full day in Lopburi but guess what we did? Yay, we looked at temples, not all of them though, there were too many, but all the main ones. These were slightly more interesting as there were monkeys about (yay, monkeys). We saw plenty of ruins, Rich loved it, I got a bit bored.



Next stop was Sukhothai, another former capital, can you guess what it's famous for??? Yay, ruins!! In fact, this place has an immense collection all in one area in the old town. We got a 5 hour train from Lopburi, then a short bus ride, then a 2 hour bus ride then a 30 minute tuk tuk ride to the old town, phew that was a journey and a half! Found ourselves a nice little guesthouse to stay in and settled in. Spent the evening chatting to an english guy, a french girl and the owner of the guesthouse who bought out a bottle of whisky for us all to drink, nice, although Rich and I didn't partake as we're having a couple of weeks off the beer! The owner of the guesthouse was really nice and told us he'd love to go to europe but thinks if he went in the winter he would die. We all laughed at this but he was deadly serious and so we all felt bad! He thinks he would die because of the cold. Thai people aren't used to cold. I think he must think that we live 'outside' like they do. We did explain that in winter, we don't go out much, we wrap in lots of clothes when we do, have central heating and double glazing etc. But I still don't think he got it, I think he imagined the same sort of lifestyle as thailand but in the snow!!!

So anyway, we had a full day to explore the ruins and decided to do it on a pushbike as the ruins are all enclosed in a heritage park so there's no traffic to contend with, other than other cyclists! We rented a couple of bog standard bikes for 20 baht each for the day (about 30p!!) and away we went. We looked at as many ruins as we could get to and did a fair bit of cycling too which was fun, but hard work in the heat and humidity. There were many ruins to see and Rich loved it, I got a bit bored (I'd like to point out that that is an understatement, I was bored after the first half dozen in Ayuthaya, by this point I was almost insane!!)

Happily, that was the last of our ruin trail (and even Rich admitted he was a bit ruined out!) and the next stop was Chaing Mai, right up North, we got ourselves on another overnight train to get there.