Back to Ayutthaya

After our little trip to Kanchanaburi, we stayed in Ayutthaya for a couple of days. Not really by choice, but because all the transport going up to Chiang Mai was completely full!

There's a big flower expo going on there in honour of the king, so lots of Thai people are also going to Chiang Mai, in addition to the normal hordes of tourists. We ended up deciding to go by VIP Bus - you like the sound of that? - and travel overnight, so we would arrive in Chiang Mai in the morning of the next day.

The bus looked quite good, we were assured it had air-con, a loo and long seats, perfect for foreigners... what we didn't know was that the bus was coming from Bangkok, so it would already be full by the time it got to us...

Anyway, we were chuffed we got on it, as we had heard that the previous day, they had to throw people off because of overbooking. This also meant that we got stuck with the worst seats on the bus. Phil and I got to sit together which was really good! But my seat was broken, so the seat bit would slide forward and backward with every movement of the bus. Also the loo was broken and we sat on top of it which meant there was a massive bump and we had even less legroom than everyone else. I was pleased to be so short, but I still spent most of the time in a kind of foetal curl.

Oh yeah, we stayed like that for about 11 hours. I tell you, by the time we got to Chiang Mai, the bus was filled with zombies. Because the loo was broken, we had a couple of breaks which was good. But really it was fantastic, because we only had one driver and everytime we took at break he went and had a nap. I was very happy he was having naps, because this meant he wasn't going to fall asleep while driving through some windy roads in the mountains!

Once in Chiang Mai, we got ferried to a guest house, where we sat through a spiel of trying to get as many people as possible to a)stay in that guest house and b)sign up for a three day trek in the jungle. By that point lots of people just gave up and signed whatever was put in front of them! We were tempted too, all I wanted was to go to sleep - but thank God, we managed to escape.

We set off to find our room, but once there, we found out the place was full. But instead, we found this lovely little place in a traditional teak house run by this little chinese looking man. So lucky! We have our own bathroom and it's all clean and the room is big and though it's just a mattress on the floor - hey, what more do you need? I went to sleep straight away!