North my friends, to temples, ruined cities and elephants

Hello again,

We are currently lost in Chang Mai which is the former capital of Thailand and home to many trekking companies catering to backpackers and other tourists.

Our route north took us once again through Bangkok where a night on the notorious Koh San Road ended in us meeting some Irish chaps who had spent the last 18 months as illegal immigrants in Perth!

We traded stories of customs officers, beard growth and Bangkok traffic for a couple of hours, tried out what appeared to be hand rolled burmese cigars from a street vendor and Debbie sheparded me home a little after midnight with promises to e-mail ringing in our ears... Here our versions of the night differ... Debbie claims I woke up around 3am and stood on a chair in the corner of the room and dropped my shorts... when questioned as to what the hell I thought I was doing I apparently replied 'I'm going for a pee, what does it look like?!' Debs then claims she shouted loudly enough to ensure I removed myself to the bathroom...

Now I will leave it up to you to decide if this is a true story as I don't remember a thing of this and put it down to an overactive imagination, possibly cheese before bedtime rather than my failure to adjust to the 1 litre bottles of beer we had been enjoying earlier in the evening. It had been a good night and it was good to meet some new people following the lovely but strangely empty islands.

In the morning we dodged the cries of 'Where you go?' from the herd of tuk tuk drivers and battled our way to the train station to begin our slow trip north. For the princely sum of 15 baht each (a little more than 25p) we got a train to Ayuthaya which was about 1.5 hours away and a former capital of Thailand.

On arrival in Ayuthaya our previous good fortune deserted us...(see photos of previous accommodation that Debbie has posted on facebook) we found a cheap place near the train station with a friendly chap standing outside welcoming us in, the room was basic but seemed ok... it was only later that we noticed that the walls were made of reed mats and didn't reach the ceiling and the toilet in the shared bathroom had no lid or manual flush, but on the upside there was hot water...

We could hear everything from the rooms next door and their light was shared with us as well! When the chap next door fell asleep with the light and a portable DVD player left on, and started to snore loudly we realised that we were in for a long night... still it was cheap and we weren't going to be there long! Fortunately the chap woke up around 1am and turned his light off... Debbie had managed to drift off but I had lain awake idly wondering if it would be weird to go and wake the guy up, or if I could risk knocking on the wall without punching through it, and indeed if that might not be a reasonable tactic as well... I really was tired in my defence and the only reason I didn't go and knock was that it had been going on for a few hours and it felt like it was now too late to complain... how English is that?

The ruins of Ayuthaya are best explored by bike and are famous for the overgrown buddha surrounded by tree roots, we managed to see this, and the most celebrated of the ruins before we were hit by a double whammy of traveller complaints. Debbie began to feel unwell, and my bike developed a puncture whilst we were 3k from our guesthouse and during the hottest part of the day :( we managed to limp back home with the help of a motorbike mechanic who helped to re-inflate my tire but after the hot sweaty journey back we didn't feel like venturing out again and so the rest of Ayuthaya would have to be missed, we weren't going to endure another night at the guesthouse and we had an appointment further north with another ruined capital city that was supposed to be better preserved in any case, we packed our bags without shedding too many tears, noted the chewing gum pushced into the wall cracks and departed for the train station.

The rest of our trip north will have to wait for next time as we have to go and explore Chiang Mai! No sign of temple fatigue yet but it will set in eventually I'm sure... photos of temples and Buhhda will surely replace sunsets as our new photo-obsession. We are off to Laos in a couple of nights having extended our stay here on the basis that there is a big festival that starts today. If people want to see photos then check out Debbie's albums on facebook or look at 'photo's of ben' on my profile and you'll get access to the albums. We tried to post albums on here but we can't seem to do it.

Bye for now.