This morning we got up, had a great little breakfast at our hotel (Promthong Mansion – highly recommended) and headed out on our bikes for a tour. First stop: Ayutthaya train station to see about exchanging our seats on the night train to be beds on the night train. The language barrier is a bit bigger than we expected to find here, with most people speaking basic English (thank god) but few people speaking advanced English. We’re taking it in stride (C would say that I’m being forced into the stride) and doing our best. It all worked out – beds on the 9:10pm train tonight – and we were off to explore a couple wats. You can ride your bikes into the temples, which is good because the going scam is that the tuk tuk drivers drain your tires, then offer you a lift to a repair shop for $40 to fill them. (The scam in Bangkok is to tell you outside the wats that the temple is closed, will open in a couple hours, and while you wait, why don’t you take my friend’s tuk tuk to explore another area of town? The Grand Palace has a loud speaker on a loop talking about the scam, saying the temple is open and come on in.) After the wat, we stopped at our hotel’s sister – Baantebpitak – and cooled off in the midday sun by the pool.
The afternoon was a bit of a jumble – we got a little turned around in the super heat and we’re not sure we saw the wat we wanted to, so we stopped for lunch at Tony’s Place, then back to our hotel to cool off. We just finished our dinner of noodle soup at a street vendor, and are getting on the train at 9pm bound for Chiang Mai. Woohoo!