Wat's with the ants?

---

Hello kind followers of our travel blog,

Firstly, no that's not a spelling mistake in the title. Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand, has many wats and temples. And also many ants. Some that made their way into my bag and onto my clothes ('ants on my pants' was the second choice of blog title). Anyhow, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The last time David posted a blog we were in Bangkok staying in China Town. The morning we were due to check-out our alarm didn't sound so we were awoken by a nice lady calling us from reception at 1.30 in the afternoon. How bad is that?? The train we intended to catch north to Ayutthaya departed at 2.30pm, giving us just enough time to shove our things into our rucksacks and leg it to the station. The tickets were 30p each and the journey took just over an hour. We sat with a nice man from Spain who we've since run into a couple of times. He commented on how good Dave's accent was (not mine though...)

We checked into the hostel just down the road from the station and were greeted by a basic but pleasant enough room with air conditioning. So far so good. We dumped our things and went for a wander, finding Wat Mahathat, which was bloody brillant. It was dark by then and we had the ruins to ourselves so with a dog for a guide (that dutily followed us) we had a little explore. See photos.

After dinner we retired to the hostel for what was possibly one of the worst sleeps in the world ever! The hostel was next to the road and Ayutthaya has it's fair share of Thai boy-racers (in both car and motorbike) and a resident animal-world band. All animals are welcome to moonlight, the louder the better. The one playing the night we were attempting sleep included mating insects, birds and monkeys (or at least it sounded like it). The mattress was even harder, would you believe, than the one I whinged about in the first hostel. Serves me right I suppose.

The next morning, after about 20 minutes sleep each, we had some breakfast and hired a tuk tuk (motorised ricksaw) for a few hours to drive us from temple to temple. We saw lots of buddhas, lots of monks and surprisingly, lots of elephants. Again - see photos. Out last stop of the day, the elephant krall, was free even, we were the only visitors there. It was really cute to see the little elephants playing but the larger ones were chained up (perhaps for their own good but I'm not so sure). All in all, an amazing place.

Last but not least, I must tell you of our ant invasion. When we first came into the room there was a steady trail of the little beasts running from the bin to the door but as our stay progressed, so did the area they coveted. Foolishy, we had left some food opened on the table so by morning that was devoured and awash with ants. But the gits has also found their way into my rucksack. On the morning of 19 November 2008 I'm sorry to report that there was something of an emmet massacre. I tried to warn them but alas, many perished in a battle that will forever be remembered as "never enter Helen's bag unlawfully".

And that was Ayutthaya. We actually enjoyed it a lot more than this blog suggests. Dave will post a message about the next place we visited call Lop Buri tomorrow. Stay tuned if you ever wondered what the world would be liked if it was goverened by monkeys.

Til then, sleep tight everyone.

Love Helen and David xxx

---

Comments

[Dave Jones]

animal-world band
Sounds like you two are having a good time but more importantly "animal-world band" Do they take requests?!