Bangkok & The Ancient Cities

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Bangkok

After nearly 3 weeks sunning it on The Best Beaches Thailand has to offer we were back on the culture trail in the Thai Capital of Bangkok.
Not knowing what to expect (except that they were very keen on ping pong in this city from some reason??!!) I wasn't particularly looking forward to the city.
As it Turned out However Bangkok was one the best cities We have visited to date with many Galleries to visit, great Wats and Lots of Drinking and eating venues.

The Public transport was a great plus in Bangkok as we darted around using a combination of River Boats (Which a great way to travel through a city and see things), Subway and Monorail (or Skytrain as they called it) We got no where near a traffic Jam and only had to wait a minute at most for any mode of transport to arrive.

We enjoyed Seeing the grand Palace which was amazing in a bling bling kind of a way a few other wats and also walking around different areas of the city from the infamous Khao San Road to the Hubbub of China Town.
Bangkok doesn't seem to get alot of great publicity but we thought it was great!

Ayutthaya

After enjoying the Current capital of Thailand we moved onto 2 of its ancient capitals starting first with Ayutthaya. The relatively small town is set on the island completely surrounded by 3 rivers.
The whole town was scattered with ancient monuments which at night time were all lit up giving the city a completely unique, very romantic feel.

We enjoyed the night tour of the city to take in the monuments in the mooblight which was agreat experience that you should definatly try if in the area and then set off the next day on bicycles to explore more of the city and its surroundings. Although incredibly sweaty and knackered by the end of it, we had a great day exploring the ruins and temples and our own speed (which was pretty slow, but I blame Laura because I ressembled Lance Armstrong without the Lycra)

Sukhothai

Our Final stop on the capitals of Thailand trail was Sukhothai which was capital during wahat many say was Thailands Golden era.
We stayed in the new town but the Ancient capital was about 30 minutes drive away.
We enjoyed another day of cycling around this ancient city on an even hotter day this time, but thankfully this ancient city was all contained within one site and was relatively compact making the day less painful than it could have been.
The grounds of the ancient city were beautiful covered with lakes, moats, ancient walls made of brick and structures that despite the passing of nearly 700 years still look pretty amazing!

It was at tis stage of the trip that we decided to take a detour up to the Burma (Myanmar) border and briefly into Myanmar before heading north to join our original destination of Chiang Mai a week later More about that in our next blog (complete with pictures woohoo!!)

Hope all is well

Love Steve And Laura

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