Ayutthaya, Thailand

We arrived in Ayutthaya on Wednesday afternoon after a slow but uneventful train ride from Bangkok. Our guesthouse turned out to be really nice with A/C! It's also somehow hotter here than Bangkok, which is hard to believe. We hung out in the A/C for awhile before we decided to get lunch, and then go for a 1 hour temple tour. From Bangkok, we knew that seeing more than 2 would be too much, especially in this heat. So, we saw two of the best ones and then rushed back to our A/C room. Nisha took a 3 hour nap. It's that exhausting to be out in the heat. At night it was a little better, so we got a late dinner of a thai version of chicken noodle soup which is really simple and tasty and super-cheap as well. We walked to try and find the night market, but it was closing by the time we even got close. A couple from the Netherlands wanted to see the temples at night and then go to the other night market, so we decided to join them and share expenses. Unfortunately, the night market was closing by the time we got there. We chose to walk back from there, and ran into a nice bar and hung out for a bit. Ayutthaya is a really small town so there's not much to do.

The next day, we woke up late, checked out and stored our bags and got a tuk-tuk ride to the floating market. It was a fun, if still very hot, day and our tuk-tuk driver picked us up to go back to our guesthouse. Though we have no room, it is still cooler on their patio than being anywhere else, so we'll hang out till dinnertime, and then probably get a drink and dinner before we get a ride to our night bus to Sukothai. Since our internet here has been the most reliable, I decided to spend the time updating the blog. We're desperately hoping that Sukothai is cooler as we're heading north. After 2 nights in Sukothai, we will arrive in Chiang Mai, where we will do a trek through the national park (with elephants!).

Anyway, here are the photos from Ayutthaya: https://picasaweb.google.com/chaitalikapadia/Ayutthaya?authkey=Gv1sRgCN6XuIC2q4jUWw&feat=directlink

Interesting observation: In all of Asia, I have noticed that the same companies that make the beer also make the bottled water. My guess is that they already have to filter water for their beer, so they sell the water too.