Got up very early and had breakfast amidst a whole group of Dutch people doing an organised tour through Thailand. As the Ayuthaya ruins are quite spread out it is easiest to rent bicycles and take your time. First we visited Wat Phra Mahathat where there is a Buddha face which is encompassed in a tree (or rather, the tree grew around the face). It took us a while to find it, but in the end we did. Next was the Wat Phra Si Sanphet. You have to pay attention to cycling there as they tend to drive on the left but only if there are no holes in the tarmac on that side of the road… They try to get as much money out of you as you can, so you have to pay for each ruin separately. We ran into a couple of Dutch people and swapped ticked, we got their Wat Phra Si Sanphet tickets and we gave them our Wat Phra Mahathat tickets, nobody checks them anyway. The Wat Phra Si Sanphet has 3 almost intact towers (see pictures), very beautiful. Next to it is the new Wat Mangkhon Bophit, which houses the tallest sitting Buddha. The next Wat was on the other side of the river and is called Wat Na Phra Mane and is more or less in original state. By that time it was getting very warm so we went back to the hotel, hit the swimming pool, stayed there a while and had lunch and drinks at Tony’s place around the corner. We checked the email again, lost connection, helped them getting their server up again and send the email we had prepared. We went back to Tony’s place for more drinks and it started poring down with rain as you can see on the video in high, medium or low quality.

After the rain stopped it had cooled down a bit so we set out to see the last Wat: Wat Phanon Choeng. It is also across the river and houses 3 Buddha’s, each 3 meter high, one of which is made of gold. They had only been discovered recently to be made of gold. After being made they had covered them in plaster so as not to stand out and attract attention. We took a bicycle ferry back across the river and made our way back to the hotel in heavy traffic. Sometimes you just have to take your right of way, otherwise you never get there. With Michel up front and Inge following right behind we made it safely home and celebrated with more drinks at Tony’s. We invited an American guy Nate to join us for dinner at the small restaurant Malakor, which looks straight at Wat Ratburana which is lit very beautiful at night. The restaurant even had (maybe it bit loud) live music. After a night cap at Tony’s we went back to the Hotel.