thurs day 90

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After stuffing my face with a huge breakfast I headed out for a full days exploring. Ayutthaya is completely surrounded by a river so easy not to get too lost. Deciding to walk for a bit in the direction of the tourist information centre, but knowing that it was a little too far to walk all the way opted for a motorbike taxi - who only charged me 20baht to complete my journey. Picking up a much better map of the city and a train timetable for the next couple of days I headed out. Walking 5 minutes and quickly passing an elephant camp seeing them chained up and ferrying tourists back and forth leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable. So heading past this I made it to wang luang ( the royal palace) which from the outside looks like a Chinese temple and on the inside houses a huge golden Buddha. Walking south from here and through a pleasant park and past a further 5-6 temples I made it to a pier from where you can do a boat ride around the city. 300 baht ( £6.00) I didn't think was too bad for an hours sunset boat ride. Being joined by an Italian couple Valentina and Alfonso we headed off on a longboat around the city. Stopping off to visit a couple more temples and waving at the locals - who are very friendly the boat ride turned out to be very pleasant. Because of the sheer number of temples in Ayutthaya it was more interesting to see the wooden houses dotted along the river banks all of varying different budgets and states of repair. When Ayutthaya was founded in 1351 and had a huge population of 1 million ( for that time - twice as many people than what lived in London) the vast majority of them living along the sides of the 140km stretch of waterways. And even though the river houses of today are probably quite different to that of in 1351 its interesting to see kind of what life may have been like for the Thai people back then. Walking past the night market on the way back to the hotel and picking up a few nibbles I made it back and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

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