Day 9 - A train ride to an Ancient City!!

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So this morning was a bit hectic, running around packing up last minute items and checking under beds, in cupboards and behind doors for any lost items......I don't think we managed to leave too much behind! Whilst I was showering I could hear the phone ringing and when I got out Todd mentioned that Anand had called and that he was calling back. So he calls back, and says - 'Hey what happened to you? I am here at your hotel in Ayutthaya and you are not here!!' Holy fuckballs, I booked the tour for the wrong freaking date. OMG. I apologised profusely to Anand for wasting his time and the driver's time and we tried to work out what best to do. He suggested that they just come and get us now, but we had already booked train tickets. Anyway in the end (and for some extra baht to compensate for lost time), we rescheduled for the next day. Now by this time I am freaking out because we are way late to check out and get into some taxi's to the train station. So we raced downstairs to check out and to ask to use the computer at reception again to print our train tickets. This all took more time and I am now certain we are going to miss our train if there is even a skerrick of traffic......and this is Bangkok!

So we check out, print the tickets and ask the receptionist to call 2 taxis (to fit all our crap in! We have seriously overpacked, what a damn shock lol). So we jump in the 2 taxis, and we thought they knew where we were going but Todd texts me 5 minutes in saying his driver speaks zero English and doesn't know where he is going. I tell him the name of the station and send him a google map location pin to show the driver. No luck, he had no idea what Todd was talking about. Randomly, and I have NO idea how this happened after 15 minutes of driving through hectic Bangkok traffic, but all of a sudden, there was a guy knocking on the window of the taxi Kalyb and I were in......it was Todd's taxi driver asking our driver where the hell we were going. Their car was somehow directly in front of us? Still confused as to how this happened, but hey, it was lucky!

So we get to the train station with about 6 minutes to spare to find our train. We clearly looked lost and were approached by an attendant at the station who pointed vaguely in the direction of the platforms. We raced off in that direction and looked for some kind of indication as to what train was going where. We found another staff member who pointed out our platform and we dragged our bags up the crazy stairs and into the train........only to be told by the conductor on board that the bags had to go back out and to the back of the train in a different car. I was a little nervous about this but we did as we were told, and then took our seat. Woohoo! We are still winning at public transport 😊

So after we set off there were train 'waitresses' came down the aisle with some water and a little meal. We got steamed rice, chicken mince with chilli and basil and curried mackerels. Weird little meal, and none of us were real keen to try the mackerel, but the chicken was good. At one point the scary conductor who had told us off for bringing our bags on board travelled down the train checking tickets. He got to the American guy across the aisle from us and got very agitated all of a sudden 'Wrong train, wrong train!' He insisted. The guy was like, "really? Do I need to get off?" At this point we are travelling along at speed so it isn't like he can get off. The conductor walked away, then came back and again pointed to the guys ticket and said 'Wrong train!'. The dude again asked if he should get off, the conductor had very little English and there was some serious communication problems, when the Thai man seated in front of him intervened and spoke at length to the cranky conductor. He translated for the American guy, he was definitely on the wrong train and he should get off at the next stop and wait for the next train to come along. I felt so sorry for the guy, he was crazy confused and the conductor was way scary lol. Glad we got our tickets checked before we got on the train! We did however end up getting a weird guy who insisted we were in his seat (even though the train had heaps of bloody empty seats), and he got the waitress lady to move us. So Kalyb and I ended up being moved a row forward and this weird guy sat in between us and Corey and Todd. No idea what that was about, but whatever!

The train ride was quicker than I expected, it was 90 minutes but it went really fast, with quite a bit of travel through some of the poorer parts of Bangkok. Kinda reminiscent of Slumdog Millionaire, all the tin shed houses built right alongside each other along the canals. After passing through this area we chugged along into the countryside, through rice paddies and farm lands until before we knew it we were pulling in to Ayutthaya Station and the scary conductor came to kick us off his train! We got off, collected our bags, and set off to find some transportation to our hotel. We were an easy mark for the tuk-tuk mafia out front and the organiser of the chaos descended upon us and our ten tonnes of luggage and asked where we were going. I tried to pronounce our hotel name and clearly got it woef ully wrong because he looked blankly at me. So I showed him the hotel on the map and he said the name in a way that didn't even resemble what I was saying, said 180 baht and I was not in the mood to argue. We squeezed all 4 suitcases, 4 people and all our backpacks into the tuk tuk, which was a larger variety than the one we rode in Bangkok, but just as mad! It was like a little ute with railings and a roof over the tray. It was full madness coming through the traffic again and I held on for dear life. Really wish we could have gotten a good pic of us all squished in there. Anyway, it was only a short ride to our hotel thank god, and we made it in one piece. We managed to check in and headed up the stairs to our rooms. The Silp-Pa Phra Nakhon hotel is really funky, it's small, and full of stuff and artifacts, kind of like a museum! We did however have to drag our cases up the steep flight of stairs which was a mission. Once we dropped our bags in we decided to go to the little onsite cafe for a beer. This was weird, it was like going into the owners kitchen! The kitchen didn't really look open for business so we decided to go exploring to find something to eat. It is hot as balls in Ayutthaya, felt way hotter than Bangkok, humid and still, with no breeze. It was also clear that we are not in Kansas any more Toto. In Bangkok most signs were in both Thai and English.....not here! No English words to be seen, and no dummy proof pictures of the food in the menus either. We walked past heaps of street food stalls and a gorgeous little fruit market selling all kinds of things I had never seen before, but it was so freaking hot we really wanted to find someplace inside with air-conditioning. This turned out to be a bit of a mission to find! When we finally did find a place, it was an ice-cream parlour! Oh well, fuck it, we're on holidays and it's a million degrees, who says we can't have ice-cream for lunch! It was actually the weirdest ice-cream I've ever had. I had a brownie sundae, Todd had a strawberry cheesecake sundae and Corey had waffles and ice-cream with strawberries. The ice-cream was more like shaved ice, it was 'dry' for lack of a better description, almost powdery, so hard to explain, and it didn't have a lot of flavour to it, but it came topped with brownies and goodness and a funky sauce to drizzle over yourself. Kinda caramely without being caramel lol. It was tasty as anyway. We scarfed it down and felt much refreshed and cooled down, ready for the trek back to the hotel. The walk itself was really interesting, all the little food stalls and open air shops. The light posts are ornately decorated with gold elephants or fish or other animals and there are frequent elaborate pictures in golden frames of the King and offerings to the gods in little shrine things that are on practically every property. So the walk around this place was really cool.

We got back to the hotel and were hot as balls again, and pretty tired from travelling so we had some quiet time in the afternoon. Todd had a nap and I just chilled and watched some tv from our harddrive on the laptop. No English TV channels at this place! Corey tried to watch Cartoon Network in Thai but it did his head in after a while!

When evening arrived we decided to venture out for dinner. We asked reception to call us a tuk-tuk, said a quick prayer and knocked on the lucky wood then jumped in! Again, the restaurant we went to wasn't too far away thank goodness, so we didn't spend long in the crazy vehicle. We went to the Seven Seas restaurant, which is right on the river and were welcomed by yet more friendly Thai people. Our Thai greetings are getting better and we always get a great big smile when we use the few words we know.

The food was fabulous, Corey is continuing to sample every spaghetti bolognese that he can find, which is ok, but is driving Kalyb crazy because he won't try the Thai food. I am just glad we have been able to find food he will eat! There has been spaghetti almost everywhere haha. We also had some really yummy cocktails, had myself a couple of Mai Thais and Todd had a flaming something or other.

I had been feeling a bit fluey all day with a sore throat and headache so we headed back to the room early and I went to bed for a good sleep! We had our tour of the ruins the next day and were being picked up at 8am! No way was a flu keeping me from this one 😊

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