After a last pancake breakfast we took a rickshaw to the bus station, or rather we asked to be brought there. After the driver (or should I say cyclist) heard we wanted to go to Ayuthaya, he dropped us at a bus in the middle of the city. It turned out this bus was going to Suphan Buri, which was good as we had to change there to go to Ayuthaya. In contrast to our trip from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi this was a 3rd class bus. This means: all windows open, and when you get into a city they turn on the overhead fans. The trip to Ayuthaya took about 3½ hours for which we had to pay the amazing amount of 3 Euro each!
Ayuthaya served as the Siamese royal capital from 1350 to 1767 and houses some of the nicest Wats in Thailand. It is located about 86km north of Bangkok.
As we wanted a hotel with swimming pool we ended up in a very expensive one. After our reconnaissance mission through Ayuthaya we had some beers and cocktails and Inge had some time to bring her diary up-to-date. We checked our email in the hotel to find there was a message from one of the diving shops in Koh Tao, where we wanted to go. They advised us not to come since the weather was very poor. Excellent service, but it left us with a problem: what to do now? We spend most of the afternoon discussing this and reading the Lonely Planet. We decided to skip Koh Samui (way to touristy, but the closest airport to Koh Tao). Instead we would fly to Krabi. This is closer to Phang Nga (you know, vertical lime stone rocks in the sea, James Bond Island) and gave us access to very nice beaches in the vicinity there. So we called the Thai Airways office in Bangkok to reserve seats on the morning flight on Saturday. Thank god this is low season. During the high season you often have to reserve way ahead. We had dinner on a floating restaurant which had delicious fried cashew nuts. When we got back to our hotel and were ready to go to bed we heard this humming sound which never stopped. I think it were the extraction fans for the kitchen. After complaining at the reception (and seeing a lot of people who heard nothing strange at all) we were finally given another room in a different part of the hotel.