To the cave is for tourist with a goo view.

Despite 4 hours of terrible pop music on a bus with decor that was like a retirement home on acid, we arrived in Vang Vieng in good spirits. From the ‘bus station’ – a large featureless strip of tarmac in the town centre which, we later learned, was once part of a runway built by the Americans during the Vietnam war- it was only a short walk to our hotel, and we’d even arrived in time to have a spot of late lunch at a nearby restaurant. Despite the erratic driving, these short hops are so much mor refreshing.

We’d been in two minds about coming to Vang Vieng on our travels, the small town on the banks of the Nam Song river once had an infamous reputation for being a lawless party town, where revellers would come to get hammered in the riverside bars before jumping in to the river from bridges or floating over the shallow rapids in rubber tubes. The town subsequently became notorious for excessive consumption of alcohol, drug and general debauchery until a spate of drownings in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s forced the Lao government to clamp down on the worst offending establishments, tearing up much of the ad-hoc riverside bars and tube rentals and more heavily regulating the ones that remained. From what we’d read, whilst the town hadn’t completely lost its wild side, there had been a real push to gentrify the place and now it was much more geared up for sensible curmudgeons like ourselves.

What?

Well anyway, we decided on balance we would come here for a few days as it was on our way to Luang Prabang anyway, it broke that journey nicely in half and supposedly there’s some very nice scenery in the area. Upon arrival it was immediately apparent that what we’d read was largely true; the centre of the town is now dominated by hotels and restaurants catering to the toursist of Asia’s burgeoning middle class, ‘tubing’ was now organised through tour agencies rather than being an alcohol -fuelled free for all and, with the exception of ‘Gary’s Irish Bar’ just up the road from our hotel, there wasn’t much at all in the way of dedicated drinking holes. Irish bars, I suspect, are protected by some kind of international treaty, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was one in Pyongyang or Mecca.

After killing time in our hotel for a few hours restless legs took over and we decided to for a little stroll down to the river before finding somewhere for dinner. This plan lasted for a good 5 minutes before the heavens opened and, despite our hardy British rain resilience, we found ourselves ducking under the awning of a souvenir shop to get out of the downpour. Once the rain had subsided from Poseidon’s wrath to merely chucking it down, we hurriedly made our way to the first half-decent restaurant we could find where Katy made friends with a Parisian couple trying to explain to the bemused waitress that they only wanted bread and butter. The rain stopped and we made our way back to get an early night as we’d decided the following day to set off trekking up one of the nearby mountains. Evidently we learned nothing in South America

Vang Vieng sits on a flat plain a few miles wide which runs north to south between two ranges of lead grey, jungle covered kurst limestone mountains that jut dramatically out of the landscape. The terrain doesn’t have the incredible scale of the Andes, but it has its own understated beauty, and the low clouds hanging around the tops of the mountains made for a picturesque (and crucially, relatively cool) walk out from Vang Vieng. After an hour we arrived at the village of Pha Ngern from which we embarked on a 600 meter climb up through the jungle to a small viewpoint overlooking the valley and the dense jungle on the taller mountains further west. The climb took about an hour and a half over increasingly rough terrain, with the final quarter requiring clambering over rocks with the aid of ropes tied on to trees and stakes. Despite the relative coolness of the morning cloud cover and the gentle rain, the humidity was relentless and after only a few minutes of climbing we were both drowning in sweat and being swarmed by mosquitoes kept at bay only by the surprisingly effective repellent we had acquired the previous day.

The view from the top was worth the climb though, and we sat relaxed on wooden decking of the mountain top hut and made the most of the steady breeze coming across the valley. After enjoying the view, the impressive local wildlife and a can of coke from a little old lady who, rather impressively, runs a shop atop the mountain, we made the slow and arduous journey down and back to Vang Vieng for several well-deserved beers.

The combination of the heat and the terrain made for a climb as challenging as anything we did in South America and I felt even more wiped out by it than I did by climbing Salkantay. The resulting muscle ache, along with the aftereffects of one-too many beers at Gary’s Irish bar, was a write off day the next day where even making it down to the shop next door was something of a struggle.

No matter though, to make up for our lazy day we booked ourselves on to a kayaking and caving expedition the following day. Our tour company of choice was Green Discovery Tours. Despite the gentrification of Vang Vieng, the tour industry is somewhat hit-and-miss with the various companies around the town having very mixed reviews on trip advisor. Green Discovery have, by quite some way, the best reviews and, whilst a little more expensive than other companies, have a focus on ecological sustainability as well as working to support local communities and businesses.

We were picked up by our guide Bot and his driver the following day at 9am and made our way about 7 miles north to a small gravel beach on a stretch of the river opposite a steep mountainside. We didn’t pay for a private tour, but as we were the only people signed up, that’s what we got. One of the other bonuses of paying to go with a more expensive company in the off-season, I guess. The kayaks were unloaded, and Bot asked us if we’d done any Kayaking before. ‘Yes, we have’ we both confidently said, no doubt re-assuring Bot that he was in for an easy day’s kayaking down the river with two experienced Kayakers who definitely weren’t going to dunk themselves several times as a result of their inexperience…

After a brief ‘safety talk’ we placed our belongings in to a waterproof bag tied to the top of our 2-person kayak and jumped in, Katy up front and me at the back. Our first stop was just 200 meters down the river to the other side where we pulled up on a to mud bank whilst local children splashed water at us. We got out and climbed up to see the ‘Elephant Cave’, so named for a stalagmite formation that looks a bit like an elephant. Inside the cave, along with the aforementioned elephant is a buddha statue (what a surprise) and an oversized indentation of the Buddha’s foot. I asked Bot what the significance of the Buddhas foot in Buddhism is and he answered by telling me about various places in the area the Buddha is supposed to have visited. Well I tried. Google can pick up the slack later.

There isn’t much else to the cave, so we set off back to our Kayaks which, to my pleasant surprise, hadn’t been hijacked by the local children, and set off down the river. Soon we were away from all signs of human life and the steady current was taking us through the lush jungle along tranquil waters with the tops of the mountains poking in to view on either side. Yes, this is exactly what we had in mind for the day.

Around a bend in the river we came across some small rapids that we navigated with ease, following the course Bot took and avoiding the rocks and eddies. After successfully navigating the first set of rapids we were feeling bullish and confidently took on the second set, realising too late that we weren’t going fast enough to be able to steer away from a tree growing from a small outcrop right slap-bang in the middle of the river. The kayak healed over to the left and we were both unceremoniously dumped into the water. Fortunately, the river was quite shallow and refreshingly cool, so we soon go ourselves to our feet and the boat back under control whilst Bot went chasing after Katy’s oar. After having a good laugh at our own expense, we got the kayak away from the worst of the rapids and tried to get back in. The water rushing past our legs made this somewhat difficult though and we had to resort to flopping out of the water face-first on to the Kayak and then twisting over. It was terribly undignified.

Unfortunately, this kind of set the tone for the next hour or so, not helped by the fact that the kayak, now having taken a dunking, had taken on some water inside the hull and was becoming increasingly unstable. This, combined with Katy and I never having rowed a kayak together (and quickly deciding that we never would again), meant that by the time we got to lunch we’d taken another 3 undesired swimming sessions. Whilst being soaked is quite refreshing in this weather, by the time we’d got to Lunch it had lost its allure and was getting somewhat tedious. It was only now that Bot decided to tell us that this was the first time this season that they had started the Kayaking from so far up the river, and that once the rainy season is in full swing the depth of the river makes the rapids less volatile and easy to navigate through. Now he tells us. I asked Bot if anyone had ever fallen in as much as we had and he pretended not to understand the question, instead saying just that the river is quite difficult today. Diplomacy is definitely an innate talent of the Lao people.

After drying off a bit and having some lunch which Bot cooked for us on an open fire by the river, we swapped Kayaks, hoping the other kayak would have a bit more stability under two big-bottomed farangs. I know a bad tourist blames their tour operator’s equipment, but we felt vindicated when the other Kayak proved to be much more stable. This combined with the fact that we were getting a handle on how to control the kayak and communicate with each other meant that we took no more unwanted swims for the rest of the day. Hooray.

Our next stop was Mulberry Organic Farm, a small plot of land where crops and animals are farmed using traditional methods. The farm has an on-site guest house and café where we were invited to true some iced tea made with tea leaves from the farm, before continuing on our way past at least 15 bars all advertising themselves as ‘the last bar before town’ to our final stop just north of Vang Vieng.

We pulled up on the beach on the inside of a sharp left-hand bend in the river and crossed over a rickety wooden bridge being careful not to get run over by motorbikes. Once on the other side we walked up towards a cliff where we were handed a head torch and a rubber tube and helped into a narrow stream running in to a narrow cave.

Once we had all got in, we grabbed hold of a rope tethered to the wall and hauled ourselves along into the opening. Inside the space opened up into a huge stalactite and stalagmite filled cavern, the only light coming from our head torches. We continued in, past a group of Chinese tourists happily singing to themselves as they pulled themselves in the other direction and made our way to a set of steps out of the water. Here we exited our tubes and Bot set them on their way, following the course of the stream back to the entrance of the cave. We continued on foot, climbing the steps and arriving at another large open cavern before dropping back down into another part of the stream. We waded waist deep through to a second cavern, climbing up a set of steps recessed into the rock. By now there were no other tourists and we had the incredible sight of these massive natural halls all to ourselves. The weird organicness of the stalagmites, the cool, still air, the silence, and the strange crab like insects that shun our torches, it was otherworldly, and easily the next thing we had done in Laos so far. As we worked our way through the cave, we also came across some bats who fluttered around us in absolute silence.

We made out way-out of the cave and back down to the kayak for our final half-hour paddle back in to Vang Vieng where we pulled ourselves ashore and parted ways with Bot. We were thoroughly exhausted, and still not fully dried out, but all in all we had had an awesome day and that evening we slept very, very, very well.

On to Luang Prabang next.

A meeting a day keeps the security forces away

Plumbing problems temporarily overcome and with little desire to sit around doing nothing, the following day we set out to visit the COPE Visitor’s Centre, a short sweltering walk from our hotel. Having only opened to tourists in the 1990s, Laos remains a country that is still finding its feet in terms of global tourism and for this reason we entered knowing very little about its history or what we could see here. Whilst Laos’ proximity to Vietnam was certainly no secret, we were surprised to discover just how much this little country was affected by the war there. More than two million bombs were dropped on Laos during the second Indochina war, making it the most heavily bombed country per capita EVER. About 30% of these did not detonate and so the Laos countryside remains heavily peppered with unexploded ordnance. Tragically the victims are often simply going about their daily lives, cooking or farming, and will hit one of them, causing serious injuries. Children have also been known to play with them with catastrophic results. Since its founding in 1996 COPE (Cooperative Orthotic & Prosthetic Enterprise) has provided prosthetics and orthotic services to survivors of UXO related injuries, as well as other mobility related disabilities such as club foot. They do all this for free, in partnership with the Laos government as well as various international NGOs. Their visitors centre offers tourists the opportunity to learn about their excellent work, as well as getting up close to some of their older prosthetic models and giving examples of how bomb fragments and casings are repurposed into various household objects such as fences, pots and frog catchers. They also have a rather macabre gift shop featuring t-shirts with Hello Kitty and cluster bombs. We decided to opt for their homemade ice cream instead and, feeling thoroughly educated, sat outside the museum and, as is tradition, played with some of the local kittens.

Naturally, given the 30+ degree heat, we felt that walking back rather than getting a Tuk Tuk would be the best course of action. I think the locals must think we’re mad, walking around in the midday sun to save a few £. It’s the principle of the thing! It also means we have more money for beer which, when a Tuk Tuk across town is £5 and beer is ~£1 a pint, adds up to a lot of beer! The French influence in Vientiane is most clear when walking along the huge sweeping tree-lined boulevards. Coupled with the lunatic drivers, one could be forgiven for thinking you were in a Paris suburb. Passing the Presidential Palace and feeling thoroughly hot and bothered, we decided the best thing to do would be to spend the rest of the afternoon really not doing much other than sitting by the pool and reading, so that’s what we did. At least until the storm of the century rolled in. Having enjoyed a rather delicious Indian for dinner, we headed back to the hotel just as the first drops of rain began to fall. Normally rain is very welcome given the heat and we’d seen our fair share of impressive storms during our time in Cusco, however this storm was set to knock any previous delusions of impressiveness out of the park. It was relentless. We took up seats under the roof by the pool with another couple and sat and watched as lightning flashed every 2/3 seconds and thunder shook the building and the ground beneath our feet. Every time we thought it might be easing off, the rain just got heavier and heavier and the thunder and lightning grew in intensity. At one point, Dave spotted a plane flying straight over the thunder clouds which then led me to a frantic Google search regarding how safe it was for planes to be struck by lightning (it’s fine). The storm was still raging when we finally decided to turn in around an hour later. Fantastic.

We awoke the next morning to cloud cover and a noticeably cooler temperature and decided to take full advantage, heading off to Pha That Luang, oh yes folks, it’s another temple visit. After arguing with a Tuk Tuk driver (they’re a complete rip off in Vientiane) we paid £5 for the privilege of being ferried 5k up the road to the 44m golden stupa, the most important Buddhist monument in Laos. Allegedly it holds the breastbone of the Buddha, but we never got to see that. Now that I think of it, most of the sacred temples we’ve visited claim to hold some sort of Buddha bone fragment, it’s a wonder he can enjoy enlightenment when he’s missing so many bits. We paid our 10,000 Kip each (about 90p) and wandered around, contemplating whether it was indeed covered in gold leaf or just gold paint. Again, we turned to our good friend Google to find that the very top is gold leaf but the bits you can access and touch (funnily enough) are just gold paint. Still, it was definitely impressive, and I think we got our 90p worth of enjoyment out of it. A quick trot past the Laos Buddhist headquarters led us to the War Dead/Revolution Monument, a soviet style monument commemorating those who lost their lives in the Laos Civil War from 1962-1975. It was fenced off when we went with big NO ENTRY signs and not fancying spending a night in a Laos prison, we appreciated it from afar before heading to our next destination, The People’s Security Museum.

Now if someone asked you what your favourite museum was you might be inclined to answer the Natural History Museum, or perhaps the Kennedy Space Centre, or even the Tate Modern perhaps, all being impressive, well-funded, informative learning centres, with clear narratives and often opportunities for interaction and some good wholesome fun. You might think these aforementioned features are in fact CRUCIAL in delivering a good museum and I used to think that too, but I can honestly say I have never seen anything quite like the Vientiane People’s Security Museum. Arriving at the museum you are greeted with various tanks/bikes/cars outside the front which provided us with a tantalising glimpse of the things to come. We ascended the steps of the Orwellian building and were greeted by a smartly dressed Laotian chap who informed us that the museum was donation only before steering us towards the donation box where we dutifully put in what we thought was probably enough to not get us framed for drug smuggling when we eventually left the country. We then placed our bags, including our phones and the camera, into a locker and were left to our own devices to explore the 3 floors of sheer delightfulness that make up the People’s Security Museum. Given the reviews of this place on both Google and Trip Advisor, you could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps people don’t enjoy this museum, but as we progressed around and saw the quite possibly hundreds of photos of various party meetings and police meetings and community meetings and party/police meetings and police/community meetings and sometimes even party/police/community meetings, we knew they must have been joking. How could you not enjoy a museum that is 90% photos with no clear narrative or translations explaining exactly what’s going on? How could you not enjoy random basket weavings placed in the centre of a room surrounded by examples of items confiscated from various drug and smuggling rings? How could you not appreciate the pictures of baddies with signs saying “I am a baddie”, looking very apologetic and solemn that not only have they been apprehended by the glorious Vientiane Security forces but also that they now have their photo plastered onto the walls of the museum for the world to see? Sometimes we were presented with cases filled with various sizes of gun accompanied by yet more pictures of meetings and, for a real treat, cases filled with quite possibly legitimately confiscated parcels of marijuana, on display for the world to see, surrounded of course with pictures of meetings. We particularly enjoyed the case where they had makeshift “water pipes” on show, and we stopped to admire the ingenuity and resourcefulness of humankind, with of course, some more pictures of meetings. The top floor even had the air conditioning turned on. What more could you want? As we descended the marble steps lined with saluting statues, we reflected on the jolly fine job that the Laos Security Forces are doing and wished that we lived in a country that had such a fine museum as the one we had just visited. Sadly, given the highly sensitive nature of the items inside the museum, we ere unable to take any pictures but the memories will live on inside of us forever.

It was still fairly cloudy when we left, and so rather than be ripped off by the Tuk Tuks again, we decided to walk back to the hotel via Patuxai Monument, passing a structure made entirely of crockery along the way. We’re not sure what the relevance of the crockery monument was as all the signs were in Chinese or Laos, I suspect we were not the target audience. As we approached the Monument the clouds began to break so we paid our 3000 Kip each (about 30p) and climbed our way to the top to enjoy the views over the city as well as a cooling breeze. Reminiscent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the monument commemorates Laotian independence and resilience, as well as those who lost their lives during the war. The outside is a little dull and could do with a visit from a power washer, but the inside arch is magnificent, carved with intricate colourful Buddhist and Hindu designs which have been repurposed (unintentionally) as homes for the various birds flying around the place. It also provided a cool place to stop and have a rest in the shade after our descent.

We had intended to visit the MAG UXO centre as well during our time in Vientiane but sadly I picked up a bout of our good friend stomach trouble and so the rest of our time in the Laotian capital passed rather without note, apart from Dave getting bored and wandering off to a few temples on our penultimate day. Dave has also just reminded me that I have forgotten to mention the Night Market, which does deserve a small mention, if only for the animatronic dinosaurs and the odd dinosaur punk bouncy castle. Vientiane is definitely an interesting place.

Our next stop was to be Vang Vieng, an old party town about 4 hours away deep in the Laotian mountains…

No power, dubious plumbing & cheap beer.

I suppose it’s something of a cliché that travelling is a wonderful and life changing experience. ’Oh it’s amazing’, you hear people say ‘you’ll have an incredible time, I loved every minute of it’. A suspiciously high proportion of these people though appear to have smoked a little too much weed or read one too many guardian articles (or both…probably both). Truth however is that, unless these people have some perverse love of spending hours and hours in sweaty, cramped vehicles bouncing around on roads and railways of variable quality, what they really mean is that the bits in between travelling are amazing. Travelling itself is a tedious necessity that bookends the ‘incredible time’ with a lengthy intermission of boredom punctuated by occasional acute frustration.

Our last day in Chiang Mai had sadly proven to be a bit of a right-off owing to my finally succumbing to the consequences of my adventurous palate. We had intended to visit Doi Suthep, supposedly a very pleasant temple complex on the hills over-looking the city, but alas it wasn’t to be. Ah well. If there’s one thing South East Asia isn’t short of, it’s very pleasant temple complexes.

The first leg of our journey saw us off bright and early to make our way south back to Phitsonaluk, where we had booked ourselves in for a night in an unremarkable, but cheap, guest-house near the river. A meal and a sleep later we were on our way again, this time catching a bus through the mountains to Khon Kaen. We could have done Chain Mai to Khon Kaen in one go, but it was a 13hr bus ride. See any of our South America blogs to see why that wasn’t going to happen.

Khon Kaen is Thailand’s 4^th largest city and lies about 3 hrs drive south of the Lao border. It’s railway connection to Bangkok and road connections to the centre and west of the country makes it something of a hub for the east of Thailand and for traffic heading north to Vientiane or east inn the direction of Vietnam. It also has a surprisingly large expat community as well as some tourist attractions in its own right, so we decided to stay for a few days and use up the rest of our Visas.

We booked ourselves in to the ‘Khon Kaen Residence’ a relatively new hotel a little way out from the centre right next to a large, scary looking prison. This proved something of an issue as, like something out of ‘The Great Escape’, the prison’s PA system would pipe-up about 7am every morning admonishing the inmates for…god knows what, being a disappointment to the King maybe? It seems that whoever was operating this PA system was very dedicated to their job of telling other people how naughty they are and how benevolent the state is as this went on all throughout the day until about 8pm (at time of writing were in Laos, so I feel we can push the envelope a little more)

The hotel also turned out to be in something of a tourist blackspot, a fact that wasn’t apparent to us at time of booking. There were no restaurants, shops, other hotels or even tuk-tuks waiting to bother us within a good mile or so in every direction, so we ended up having to call a grab taxi every time we wanted to go anywhere (yay more travelling). Having spent 2 days pretty much constantly on the move our motivation to do anything on the first day in Khon Kaen was very low. We instead made bookings for Vientiane and double checked that we had everything we needed for crossing the border into Laos. In aid of this, I went for a little excursion to a Bureau de Change to swap some of our Baht for USD. Laos tourist visas can be paid for either with 35USD, 1500THB or an unspecified amount of Lao Kip. At time of writing, 1500THB is closer to 50USD so even with the small commission for exchanging Baht, you still get a much better rate paying in dollars.

Remember earlier when I mentioned ‘acute frustration’? Well let’s just say we’ll be re-visiting the subjects of US Dollars and Lao Visas in the near future.

So anyway, the following day (our last full day in Thailand☹) we decided to make up for our rather lackadaisical day the day before and head out to see some sights. Our first stop was Wat Thung Setthi, a much more modern Buddhist Temple completed in 2012. This temple is rather unique amongst those in Thailand, both in terms of its design as well as its use of imagery and iconography to convey its message and meaning. Architecturally, the building is predominantly white, but with a rounded golden stupa highlighted with turquoise decorations. The central stupa is surrounded by two tiers of walkways, the lower of which is quite broad and features mosaics of the Hellenistic zodiac and small statuettes of buddhas, lions and dragons each carefully inlayed with thin rectangular shards of mirrored glass. In each of the 4 corners are smaller stupas separated from the walkway by a triangular pond with steppingstones leading across it. The upper walkway is overhung by the roof of the main stupa and features a large mosaic mounted on the wall explaining that this site is believed to be a gateway between this world, the heavens above and the underworld below.

Whilst Katy made friends with the local dgs, I went to chck out the central stupa, a tall octagonal building with a single, marble floored room inside. The large wooden door leading into the space is engraved with the symbols of the Chinese zodiac and opposite a large obsidian-black Buddha with gold accessories sits atop a marble altar. On the sets of 3 windows to either side of the Buddha are intricate etchings depicting the three poisons of the Buddhist belief system, those being; Greed, Aversion (Anger or Hatred) and Ignorance. The etchings make use of both traditional and modern iconography to illustrate these ideas, with the designs including characters from Star Wars, numerous Disney franchises and even Walter White.

Accessible via a small staircase just outside the main stupa is a large room which sits directly underneath it. In here is a stone pillar surrounded by statues of dragons in the centre and a series of 4 massive murals along the outer walls. Unlike many of the other temples we have visited in Thailand, what is striking about this temple is that it has been built with the knowledge that it is going to attract numerous foreigners and non-Buddhists. As such the descriptions of the artwork and explanations of the iconography are all in Thai, English and Chinese and the iconography is much more explicit and accessible to somebody not already familiar with Buddhist teachings. To do this whilst not cheapening the beliefs or making the site seem like a tourist attraction first and a religious site second is impressive, and as we left we both agreed that this was probably the best of the temples we’d seen in Thailand.

We couldn’t leave Wat Thung Setthi just yet, though, first we had to go to hell! A short walk over the land-bridge from the temple and down past the Monks dorms is a small park set aside to depict Naraka, the Buddhist interpretation of hell. Here there are absurd and larger than life fibreglass and concrete statue of sinners who have accumulated too much bad karma in their lives being tortured in manners most befitting their indiscretions. There are seven sins in Buddhism (sound familiar) and there are seven groups of statues being tortured in various different ways depicting the fate that waits sinners in the afterlife; liars get their tongues pulled out, thieves get their hands smashed with clubs and sexual deviants get…well anyway you can look at the pictures for yourselves.

Following our education on what may or may not be awaiting Katy and I in the next life (no comment) we headed back in to Kohn Kaen and went for a walk around Kaen Nakhon, a large semi-artificial lake (semi as in it’s only there during the rainy season, during the dry season it routinely needs topping up) just south of the city centre which has a number of large model dinosaurs on its banks. As you do.

For our last night in Thailand we thought we’d push the boat out and go somewhere a bit special for dinner, as we had loved the food here so much and as it was the last chance we’d have to have Thai food until we returned in October , we went for Pizza. Over a surprisingly good pizza and a few beers we took stock of out time in Thailand. It’s really easy to see why so many tourists visit this country every year, it’s big without being too big, the people are friendly without being overly friendly, it’s cheap, it’s easy to get around (for the most part) and the culture is incredibly alive. In the west, there is a real tension between the past and the future, yet here Thailand seems much more at ease with the strains of the globalising world, incorporating modernity into the existing culture without losing its sense of uniqueness. No doubt if you lived here for any length of time you’d begin to see the issues and divisions in the society and the things that don’t work would become more apparent and grate on you more, but for the month we have been here Thailand has been wonderful and we’ve wound up both loving the country more than we expected to.

Onwards to Laos then.

So, despite our previous experiences with the trains we wound up using them one last time to get to Nong Khai, the Thai town which sits on the border. Getting to Nong Khai from Khon Kaen by bus proved surprisingly complicated and as the railway station in Nong Khai is right by the border control point it was the most logical choice. Fortunately this worked out fine as the train was running a mere 15 minutes late and the journey up to Nong Khai was only about two and a half hours, over an hour quicker than the bus would have been.

Khon Kaen station was recently upgraded and has only been open a few weeks now. The new station is absolutely gigantic, seemingly way bigger than the city warrants and build over two levels with the freigh line on the ground level and the passanger platforms 20 meters up in the air. Later research would reveal that Khon Kaen sits on the planned route for the Chinese led Trans-South-East Asian Railway network which plans to connect China with Singapore via Bangkok, Vientiane and Hanoi (yes that’s right, I’m the sort of sad person that would notice when a train station is too large for the town it serves and look it up several hours later). Chinese money in Southeast Asia is very noticeable, as it was in South America, and the bulk of it is going into property and infrastructure. Changing winds…

Once we got to Nong Khai it was only a short walk up to the border check point for the Thai-Lao friendship bridge, which would take us across the Mekong River in to Laos. After getting our exit stamp we waited (technically in no country) for the bus to take us across the bridge. You can walk it but it’s almost 2km to the other side and it was now about 12:30, otherwise known as sweaty o’clock. On the other side the road bears round to the left where a pair of criss-crossing chicanes swaps the traffic (with the help of lights I might add) on to the right (wrong) side of the road. Shortly past this point is Lao immigration where we jumped off the bus and were immediately surrounded by taxi and tuk-tuk drivers offering us rides to Vientiane. We hadn’t even got our visas yet but that didn’t seem to matter to them. Part of me wanted to take them up and see if they would actually wait around only for us to get refused entry, but I didn’t want to tempt fate.

We went up to the window for Visa papers and were each handed (or rather, were slung) a pile of forms to fill in. By now sweaty o’clock was in full swing and in the blazing heat we both attempted to concentrate on filling in vague, confusing forms without dripping on them, hoping that we had correctly interpreted the questions it was asking us about residence (In Laos? In Thailand? In England? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?!?). Forms filled in we went back to the window and handed them over along with our passports, our passport photos that we had diligently brought with and the 70USD. Within seconds the friendly, helpful and smiling immigration officer was throwing the dollars back at us for being too old or beaten up or for having the tiniest of imperfections. Of the around 130USD we had on only about 10 met his exacting standard so we ended up absolutely stuck. I tried to ask how else we could pay, but he decided he’d had enough of us he told us to go to the next window over and shut his in our faces, our passports and the sole, acceptable 10USD note still in his possession

The officer in the next window was a tad more helpful and said we could combine dollars and Baht if we wanted to, but after my lengthy escapade to an exchange in Kohn Kaen for the SOLE REASON of getting dollars to pay for the visa, we now no longer had enough Baht left. The officer then told us to get the money changed for ‘better’ dollars at the exchange around the corner, however they also wouldn’t accept notes that weren’t hermetically sealed and plated in gold. By this point I was getting very worked up but Katy helpfully pointed out that this was all going to make an excellent blog post, so it wasn’t all bad. Eventually we had to make use of the over-priced ATM “recommended” to us by the customs officer who most definitely was not getting any kick-backs from the ATM provider to withdrawer some Kip to make the payment.

About half an hour after starting the process and (once I’d worked it all out later taking into account withdrawal commissions and exchange rate differences) paying about £15 more than we had anticipated, we finally got our visas. We agreed a price for a taxi from a nice man who had been hanging around whilst we trying to get everything sorted, helpfully smiling and pointing us in the direction of the different windows, the exchange booth and the ATM machine. As we set off the heavens opened and so our first experience of Lao was trying to make out the road in front of us in monsoon conditions.

We made it to Vientiane about 20 minutes later and got dropped off around the corner from our hotel, arriving to find that the heavy rain had taken out the power and preventing them from taking card payments, instead we had to use the rest of our recently withdrawn Lao Kip. Katy withdrew 2,000,000K and we’d spent it all in the space of about 30 minutes. I don’t think we’ve ever spent two million of anything on anything before, so that’s something. For the record, 2 million Kip is about £180, but it’s not quite as impressive when you put it like that.

Thoroughly exhausted we crashed out on the bed and after about 20 minutes or so the power came back on so we could finally get some precious, precious internet. It also came to our attention that the toilet fills constantly, and the drainpipe was disconnected from the sink meaning that the bathroom floor floods every time you run the tap. After a quick plumbing adventure wherein I fixed the sink but made the toilet worse and I pretended I hadn’t touched it, we headed out for a well-deserved beer for the princely sum of 90p. No power, questionable plumbing & cheap beer. Yep, this is the southeast Asia I was expecting.

Chiang Mai

So far, our route planning for South East Asia has been considerably less structured than South America. We sort of have an idea of where we’re going but if somewhere looks interesting along the way then we’ll stop there for a bit (see Ayutthaya and Sukhothai). Having had quite our fill of the trains (we were starting to understand why the locals avoid them), we decided to take the ~6-hour journey north to Chiang Mai on the bus. We took our seats at the back and as the tour company had helpfully decided to remove the seats in front of us for some unknown reason, we were rewarded with ample leg room, something severely lacking in other parts of Thailand. As we neared the city, we twisted through the mountains and the jungle stretched for miles like a lush green carpet, peppered with “Attention: Elephants” signs. All in all, it wasn’t too horrendous and as Dave has previously mentioned, the Thai people seem to be more than capable of driving coaches around corners without causing the passengers onboard to fear for their lives. As with all the others we’ve encountered so far, Chiang Mai bus station is a practical but tired building, offering just enough free WiFi for us to be able to order a Grab (like Uber) and head to our hotel in the Old Town.

The Old City is a 1.5km square and was once surrounded by moats and walls to protect it. Some of the old walls still stand (although refurbished) at various entrance points but the majority were destroyed centuries ago. Still, there’s something about Chiang Mai that makes you never want to leave. Having said that, our first night here we weren’t sure we’d made the right decision, walking out to get some dinner we were confronted by what I’m told the kids call “banging tunes” and people trying to get us to come into their club. Pah! Don’t they know Dave and I are at least 65 on the inside?! It must be hard at this time of year to turn a profit, most of the bars we walked past were dead and in our week here we were rarely joined in restaurants by more than one other occupied table. Once we got past the “phat beats”, we were pleasantly surprised to find a street full of bars and restaurants far more suited to our curmudgeonly ways. Things are a lot more chilled out here, the whole city feels like everyone has just got out of a nice long bubble bath. We quickly tuned into the laid-back feel of the place and spent most of Sunday not really doing much at all. In the evening however we went to our first proper night market. All of Ratchadamnoen Road, running through the centre of the Old City, is closed off to vehicles and is chock-a-block with street stalls, musicians, monks, tourists, locals, food vendors, textiles, souvenirs, anything you could possibly imagine. Squeezing our way through the crowd, we were totally overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells, spotting everything from edible bugs to cheesy chips to tuk-tuk models made out of old beer cans. We also quickly discovered that one of the perks of being ‘not from round these parts’ is that even in a tight crowd, you can see over the heads of mostly everyone else, making for a much less claustrophobic and enjoyable experience. After wandering for a while, Dave, as is quickly becoming tradition, found another middle-aged woman to chat up and managed to find some shorts in his size, employing his flirtation skills to acquire a discount, and I found a bag. We spent a princely sum of around £12.50 in total – a real splurge.

Chiang Mai mentality thoroughly absorbed, and given that we’d pretty much been going non-stop since Bangkok, we decided to take a much more relaxed approach to the city, enjoying a late breakfast before heading down to Nong Buak Hard park, Kindles in hand, ready for a long hard day of not doing very much at all. It’s really exhausting all this travelling business you know. We also found that all the local museums are closed on a Monday, so we had to find something to pass the time! Located in the South West corner of the Old City, it’s quite a small park, with palm trees, fountains, fishponds and lots of tiny little black flies that get in your face, hover around your legs and make it difficult to read. I think at last count Dave had killed 82 (don’t tell the Buddhists). Tired of swatting, we headed off out of the park, stopping momentarily to buy some fish food and feed the fish (and also maybe the pigeons), before pausing for a nice cold drink in a café inhabited by various different cats who came and went as they pleased, totally non-plussed by the farangs trying to fuss over them. Once again, we were the only people in said café, which was fine by us, we didn’t come all this way to MEET people for heavens sake.

In general, our time in Chiang Mai was considerably less action packed than our previous excursions into various Thai towns and cities. This boiled down to the fact that most of the things to do are temples and we are desperately attempting to avoid #toomanytemplessyndrome. In light of this, we spent most of the following day trotting around Chiang Mai’s 3 historical museums which are largely overlapping and don’t really have that much cohesion to them – it was just like being back in Cusco! We did learn about ancient Lanna culture though and the museums were good when taken as a whole; besides, aside from the overuse of the word “auspicious”, they had air conditioning, so who are we to complain. They also offered us plenty of opportunities to view our most favourite of cultural displays – textiles! Just when we thought it couldn’t get more exciting than the 9000 displays we saw in South America, we were treated to a rip-roaring adventure into the world of ancient Thai skirts. Our fave.

Having ascertained that we found the ancient ruins/temples much more interesting than the new ones (especially as they seemed less fussed about offensive shoulders in the older ruins), we decided to pop along to Wat Chedi Luang. Built some time between 1385 and 1402, the peak measured 80 metres from its base but was partially destroyed by an earthquake is 1545, leaving it at around half of its original height. It’s still incredibly impressive and once housed the Emerald Buddha, one of Thailand’s most sacred religious relics. We also happened to turn up half way through Inthakin festival so the place was buzzing with monks and people coming to pay respects, it also meant that entrance was free – woohoo! There seems to be a festival or holiday every five minutes here in Thailand and we were beginning to understand perhaps why the French had decided this was a part of the world they wanted to get involved with, just think how many days off they could have! Inthakin is a festival unique to Chiang Mai and is a chance for citizens to offer tributes to the guardians of the city, focusing on the City Pillar, previously used in the construction of the ancient city. As we wandered around the ruins, we were totally enthralled with the celebrations, with various donation points dotted around the Wat, offering visitors a chance to donate to their birth year animal (Dave’s the tiger, I’m the chicken, boo.). Animal statues and buddhas were covered in flowers and we also observed people sending water up to the top of the Wat and pouring it onto the ruins. As we sat in the shade and enjoyed the cool breeze, a group of school children walked past and a few of them eagerly said “hello!” and waved at us, before one plucky lad decided he was going to get a high five from the two very white chunky people sitting under the tree. Before we knew it, he’d started a stampede, and Dave and I were inundated with pre-pubescent children eager to slap their hand against ours and offer us a hello. It was absolutely charming. If there’s one thing we’ve noticed here in Thailand it’s that people are a. incredibly eager to practice their English with you and b. always happy to help, even if it means they have to resort to charades.

In the afternoon, I had somehow managed to convince Dave that a trip to the cinema to see Godzilla: King of the Monsters, was in order (I still owe him for Mary Poppins Returns), so we headed off to the Central Festival Mall, located a few miles outside of the Old City. The Central Festival Mall is a bit like Lakeside, if Lakeside was 3 times as pleasant, had 1/3 of the people, and had an ice-skating rink in it. It also had a Marks & Spencer so we spent a few minutes mooching around their food hall, delighted to find Percy Pigs, Custard Creams and red onion chutney, before deciding that perhaps we could settle in Thailand after all. Thailand has very strict Lèse-majesté rules, which basically means that any negative comments regarding the monarchy can get you locked up. Tourists have often fallen foul of this law, even for blogs written outside of Thailand, therefore I shall simply say that having to stand for the national anthem and a short video praising the King before the film started was certainly an experience I will never forget and truly a great honour. Should anyone wish to find out just how stellar a chap the new King is, they need only Google him. Moving swiftly on then…

bty

Apart from a trip to a slightly more disappointing night market where we acquired two fantastic beer coolers which seem to be all the rage here, the rest of our time in Chiang Mai passed relatively uneventfully. We did find some rather lovely kittens next to our hotel and as such I now carry a small supply of cat treats wherever I go but it was nice to have a bit of down time. The city’s relaxing vibe seems to seep from every crevice, and I think we probably could have spent several weeks drinking and reading in bars without noticing how quickly the time was passing. But, we didn’t spend all this time saving to drink ourselves into a stupor (well, at least not every night) so onwards to Laos we headed…

What? What wat!

Our trip to Sukhothai was somewhat more straightforward than the one to Ayutthaya, consisting of a train to Phitsonaluk and then an hour’s bus ride to Sukhothai. Owing to the timetable, the only train that both left Ayutthaya and arrived at Phitsonaluk at remotely reasonable times of day was an express train (that joke is funny in both Thai and English) costing us the relatively extortionate price of £22. After arriving in Phitsonaluk only 40 minutes later than scheduled, we got a tuk-tuk to the bus station and bought our tickets for the bus to Sukhothai, which turned out to be a minivan that doubled as a rapid postal service.

No matter though, we got to Sukhothai in good time and after another quick tuk-tuk ride we made it to our home for the next 2 nights, TR guesthouse. Sukhothai is split in to 2 towns, the new town where we were staying is on the banks of the Yom river, whist the old town is about 10 miles to the west. As we had been very good and as we had been in Thailand for over two weeks without having one, we went for a pizza that evening at a very reputable pizza place just around the corner. Like so much of Thailand outside of Bangkok, we had the restaurant to ourselves. It’s amazing just how ‘off’ the off-season is here, unlike in South America where things were, say, about a third to a half as busy as they would have been in the high season, in Thailand it’s absolutely dead. A couple of times now we’ve been the only people staying in guesthouses or walked past rows of restaurants all with no customers. Makes you feel for the business owners here. No doubt they rake it in during the high season but balancing such an erratic cash-flow must be difficult.

After a good night’s sleep in a HUUUGE bed we set off early to get the bus to the ruins in the old town. The bus was essentially a giant tuk-tuk made from a converted truck, ‘bus’ is seemingly a very loose term in Thai. After about 20 minutes we arrived in the old town and were dropped off by the ticket office for the historical park. Unlike in Ayutthaya where the temples and the town were mixed up with each site having its own entry gates and fees, Sukhothai old town is dominated by the central Historical Park with a single-entry fee. Again, owing to the off season the park was nearly deserted and the lack of vehicular traffic made for a much quieter and thoroughly enjoyable few hours as we explored the ruins hardly seeing a single other person.

Sukhothai, which means ‘dawn of happiness’, was the capital of the first independent Thai Kingdom, creatively named the Sukhothai Kingdom. The city was founded as the capital in the early 1200’s after the Khmer empire which had used the town as a small outpost, went into decline and withdrew from the region. Sukhothai served as the capital for around 140 years until it was superseded by Ayutthaya. The runs today have been partially restored and are a UNESCO world heritage site.

We started by walking around Wat Maha That which, like its namesake in Ayutthaya, is the largest and most important of the temple ruins. Owing partly to its considerably less violent demise as well as the more extensive restoration work, the ruins in Sukhothai are generally in better condition than those in Ayutthaya, most notably in the form of the myriad sizeable Buddha statues around the site which still have their heads.

We worked our way steadily down to Wat Si Sawai, a 3-pronged Khmer style temple in the south of the complex and then north through numerous smaller ruins up to a Wat Sa-si, a huge stupa in the middle of a large artificial lake. After that we were suitably templed out, so we made our way out of the park and across the street for a late lunch, arriving just in time to avoid an epic downpour. We made our way back to the new town on the ‘bus’ and relaxed in the hostel for a few hours before heading out for Dinner at the wonderfully named ‘Poo Restaurant’. ‘Poo’ is the Thai word for Crab, tough normally it is written ‘Phu’. There’s a lot of English usage in Thailand where it is genuinely hard to decide if the author was accidently amusing or deliberately so. We decided in this instance it was probably deliberate.

And that’s about it. Hmm. That was short.

We’re off to Chiang Mai next, but Katy can tell you about that.

Delays due to trains on the line.

Back when we first arrived in Thailand and started making plans on where to go and what to see (yes, that is the order we do things in) we established pretty quickly that at some point we would head to Chiang Mai, the largest city in the north of the country and the major hub for tourists visiting the region. During one of my stupidly early morning awakenings, as established in a prior blog, I’d taken the time to look into getting from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and found that there were 3 options. Flying, a 12-hour bus ride or a 15-hour train ride. Flying with Katy is, unless there really is no alternative, not an option, and after our experience with South America we were determined to avoid long-haul bus journeys wherever possible. That being said, much of Thailand is essentially a giant river delta so it’s largely pancake-flat and therefore has lots of nice long straight roads. Also, the driving here is considerably less manic (maybe because, like all civilized countries, they drive on the left), which all told makes for a damn sight more comfortable a prospect than being driven around winding mountain roads by lunatics with a death wish.

So that left trains, and whilst our journey to Kanchanaburi had been a pleasant experience, the thought of spending 15 hours in such conditions (assuming that the train runs on time… not that this is foreshadowing in any way…) was not a particularly appealing at all. Night trains are also an option, considerably more expensive than the day trains (not prohibitively, prices start around £20 each) but they came with a fully flat bed compartment and you can upgrade to a cabin with a double bed if you so desire.

Whilst researching all of this though, I was looking at other places to go in Thailand, places we could potentially use to break up the journey a bit. Thailand, in no small part due to its favourable geography, is a pretty populous country. With 69,000,000 people it is one place up from the UK on a list of countries by population (fine, I’ll close the Wikipedia tab) and so, unlike South America, you don’t get vast swathes of countryside with nothing in it for hours at a time. Fortunately for our ever-evolving seat-of-our-pants travel plans, the railway line from Bangkok to Chiang Mai is brimming with towns and cities, several of which offer great tourist sights to see and an opportunity to break up the journey. With 6 months still ahead of us in our travels we had time to spare so decided to make stops along the way in Ayutthaya and Sukhothai, both cities built around the ruins of former Thai capitals*.

*So far, dear reader, I’ve written 458 words and am only now getting to the part where I actually tell you about what we did. Before coming out to Asia my Dad gave us the advice that we should be briefer with our blogs, writing little and often. I genuinely tried to stick to that advice at first but after just two weeks old habits have crept back in. Ah well, I’ve gone 32 years not listening to my Dad’s advice, I was hardly going to start now.

After waking up at the crack of dawn, we checked out of our hostel and begrudgingly trudged our way up to Kanchanaburi Station for the 7:20 train back to Bangkok, having packed the night before so as to allow ourselves a precious extra few minutes in bed (our forward planning may not go that far forward but will always stretch far enough to account for Katy Boyce and sleep). We got back to Bangkok around 11:30 and took a taxi across the city to Hua Lamphong Station, the city’s main railway station and hub for trains to the north and east of the country. We killed some time in a coffee shop and acquired our tickets for the journey to Ayutthaya for the princely sum of 30THB (about 75p). That’s 75p for both of us! 75p. Yeah, I’m looking at you National Rail! Sure, the trains aren’t in great condition, they’re slow and the tracks are pretty bumpy, but hell, for 75p to travel 50 miles you could strap me to a wooden plank bolted on to a set of wheels and I’d still be happy.

Our train was quite a bit busier than the one from Kanchanaburi and we happened to end up in a carriage with several other farangs (Thai word equivalent to ‘gringo’) who got very unsettled when the section of the train we were on suddenly detached from the rest of the train and was briefly shunted on to a different platform before being put back on the same platform again. Soon enough though we departed (from the correct platform), working our way through the suburbs of northern Bangkok, stopping frequently at the numerous stations lining the route, and equally as frequently between stations for no apparent reason (So far, so National Rail). Pretty quickly the train began building up a delay, but that was OK, we had read that the trains usually departed on time but would often begin running late en-route and so we had left ourselves plenty of time for such eventualities. Arriving at your final destination at the scheduled time on a Thai train, it seems, happens about as frequently as there being a winner on Takeshis castle.

After a particularly lengthy stop at a station near the old airport, word came down that the train had broken down and that we needed to get off and wait for another one. This meant jumping down on to the neighbouring tracks and waiting at the platform opposite. We only knew of this because one of the Farangs on our train spoke enough Thai to get the gist of the announcement being made from the tannoy. Otherwise, who knows where we would have ended up!

During our time in Bangkok and Kanchanaburi, many of the Thais we had got chatting to had asked us about our travel plans. When we told them we were planning to get trains, without fail they would say ‘you know there’s a bus you can get?’ We’d tell them we knew that, but that we liked trains, plus they are generally quite a bit cheaper than the buses, so as arrogant know-it-all westerners we decided to stick to our plans. They were always too polite to push the issue, but there was always a subtle look of ‘well, it’s your funeral’ on their faces. I guess this was why; the trains breakdown, nobody tells you what’s happening, you’re required to jump on to active railway lines and the delays are so frequent and so large that each station has a dedicated screen just for telling you the delay times.

Still better value than National Rail.

Along came our replacement train (or rather, just the next train coming along that was heading to Ayutthaya) and we crammed ourselves on, arriving in Ayutthaya just over an hour and a half behind schedule where we were met by Mr Vann (who picked us up in his van, his joke, not mine), the owner of the hostel we would be staying at for the next two nights. After a short ride we arrived and Mr Vann sat us down in the attached coffee shop for a spirited, enthusiastic and somewhat lengthy guide to all of the historical sites in the city. After this he showed us to our room where he proceeded to show us how the shower works, where the sink is, where the light switches are, how the TV works, were the holster for the air condition controller is, how the door works, how the curtains work and so on and so on. Having been travelling all day, our typical British patience for and politeness towards a very nice man who is trying very hard to be helpful and hospitable was wearing a little thin, and the frequency of our ‘thank yous’ and ‘khop-khuns’, intonated with a ‘we’re fine, bugger off’ tone, was increasing exponentially but unsurprisingly being lost in translation. I don’t want to be unfair here, Mr Vann and his wife are absolutely lovely people and clearly very passionate about their business and their home city and he was, after all, kind enough to wait around at the train station for over an hour until we arrived.

We headed out for dinner and a well-deserved beer in a restaurant around the corner where we could watch the sun set over the ruins of a sizeable stupa before retiring for the night, intending to get up and out exploring temples before the sun overpowered us.

The following day we made an early start (by our standards) and got out of the door shortly before 9:30am. After a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast (yeah that weaning us off of western breakfasts thing is still coming along quite slowly) we headed over to the large temple complex in the heart of the city. Ayutthaya was founded in 1350 and was the capital of the Ayutthaya Kingdom (the second Siamese kingdom after Sukhothai) until it was sacked by the Burmese army at the end of the Siamese-Burmese war in 1767.

The ruins today are preserved largely as they were when the city fell, whilst work is done to ensure the ruins do not deteriorate further, no restoration work has been carried out and so the ruins strike a fascinating contrast to the modern wats, temples and palaces in Bangkok. Thai architecture has not changed dramatically from the Ayutthaya period to today, so even seeing the ruins without the roofs, plasterwork, fittings and decorations it wasn’t too hard trying to imagine what the place would have looked like in it’s hey-day. What’s left today are columns, stupas and raised platforms built from millions of thin red and brown bricks held together with thick layers of mortar. Around the towers of brickwork can be found many hundreds of Buddhas, near all of which have been decapitated or completely destroyed.

During the height of Ayutthaya’s power, it was home to almost a million people and its very open attitude to foreigners and trade had made it internationally renowned and incredibly wealthy. One of the many ways that the Kings stored their wealth was by having the cities’ gold melted down and placed inside the head of the Buddha statues around the temples and palaces in the city centre. When the Burmese sacked the city, they decapitated and destroyed the Buddha statues in order to retrieve the gold from them.

After spending a little while walking through the grounds of Wat Maha That, the largest single structure in the complex, we headed further into the temple complex along a long path between several small lakes, flanked sporadically with trees and small temple ruins and walls. Large bodies of water are often incorporated into the construction of temples and palaces as, according to Buddhist belief, water is a purifying substance, so surrounding holy sites with bodies of water helps to maintain their sanctity (Stagnant water and the associated swarms of mosquitos apparently are not a threat to said sanctity). At the far end of the path we crossed a small bridge and joined a pathway around another large temple ruin before succumbing to the intensity of the early afternoon sun and ducking under the awning of a small outbuilding.

After sweating and the replenishing a gallon of water each and with a little more cloud cover rolling in, we proceeded up to Wat Phra Si Samphet, a long, thin temple complex cantered on a trio of 3 massive stupas with their thick, grey plaster layer still largely intact. Around the central 3 stupas are numerous small stupas, temples, columns and statues, all of which have a notable lean towards the centre of the site. This isn’t intentional, but the soft soil has subsided over the years under the massive weight of the 3 central stupas and thus the surrounding structures have begun to lean in.

Despite the forecast of cloud and the possibility of rain, the sun was unrelenting so after Wat Phra Si Samphet we gave up on walking to any of the other sites, most of which were considerably further out and headed back to our nearby hostel to bask in the glory of air conditioning. After a few hours of cooling we headed out again to the nigh market a few streets down, unlike some of the night markets which are heavily touristy, the one in Ayutthaya is a bit more bare-bones and authentic. A single run of food stalls and clothes sellers occupies one side of the street whilst the traffic still runs as normal on the other side. We walked down and back up taking in the sights, smells, sounds and leisurely chaos of the market, Katy even plucked up the courage to try a tuna ball and a cheese ball from one of the venders; our first foray into genuine Thai street food.

We had dinner up the road at another restaurant which clearly wasn’t expecting any customers that evening and had to frantically jump in to action when we strolled in (It was, of course, delicious, and cheap, we’ve established there is a roughly inverse correlation between the cost of food and its quality here) and we set off back to our hostel bellies full and happy with our days exploring of Ayutthaya.

Off to Sukothai next.