After a few days in crazy hectic Bangkok we made a plan to escape for a while. Originally we were to head straight to Chiang Mai before being convinced to take a couple of stops on the way up. The first was an overnight stop in the old royal city of Ayutthaya. Essentially this is a poor mans Angkor, sorry Thailand but it’s true. So as you can probably guess it’s a city filled with temples. The beauty about them being you can quite easily cycle around the vast majority in a couple of hours. Although we’ve seen our fair share of temples already we decided to hire bikes anyway and explore the town.
After a night in Ayutthaya we headed a couple of hours north to Lop Buri, commonly known as Monkey Town. It’s not hard to see why it got this name, there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of monkeys all over the town. No place is safe from these little creatures. The locals love them and feed them so the town is now overrun with them. It’s quite a sight to see. We stayed here for just a few hours to witness this and grab a bite to eat whilst watching the opening game of the World Cup.
Fourteen hours later we arrived in Chiang Mai by the overnight train . We took it easy during the day, watching World Cup fever building in Thailand. We managed to search out a bar showing the England game with English commentary. Kick-off was 1:30am local time so it was closer to 4am by the time we got back to our hotel. Needless to say we were not impressed by the drab performance. It was quite amusing watching the game with commentary coming from Radio 5 live via the internet and the picture from whatever Thai channel was on. At no point were the 2 things in synch, often the commentary was 2-3 secs ahead of the picture. Lets hope we do better tonight! Argentina looked very good last night so Gem’s already placed her bet on them to win, where’s her loyalty honestly!
After 3 hours of sleep we departed Chiang Mai for a 2 day jungle trek. Afterall it was our wedding anniversary and I could see nothing more romantic than a night in a bamboo hut with a mozzies for company! After this Gem expressed her need for some luxury so we sought out a nice hotel with a pool for a few days of R&R. We’ve pretty much spent the last 3 days doing nothing but lying by the pool and contemplating life back in the real world. It’s hard to believe we have just shy of a week left now! Where has 6 months gone….
Well before you all start feeling sorry for us (yeh right, eh)…today we head back to Bangkok again on the overnight train. We won’t be spending any time in Bangkok though because we’re heading to Pattaya for 1 night and then on to Ko Samet. This will be our last stop before we return to Bangkok for 1 last blow out night on the town.
Pattaya is horrible, but the little island nearby is nice and only about 40 minutes away. I think its called Ko Larn.
Hey Mike,
Yes Pattaya is not the dream location of Thailand for sure. We stopped by to visit a friend nearby but our hotel was great so we just relaxed by the pool. Cheers for the tip.