Four temples and an Island

We start off today with a longer walk than usual, walking to a roti shop that is reccomended by Mum's lonely planet as a good local coffee shop, not to miss. We pass along busy roads and quiet streets, past businesses starting their day and quiet homes. We see a water monitor, near an inland lake.

It skitters off as we round the car, before we can get a good photo. We find our destination, but the lady at the cart next door signals to us that it's closed. Sad that we missed that shop, but still eager to get coffee, we find our way to the nearby "Cafe Amazon", a thai coffee chain that is a competitor to starbucks. Mum decides to get a cappuccino frappe. Dad and I follow suit, happy for something to fight the heat. The time for our hotel breakfast was running low, so we decided to catch a tuktuk back. None approach us, so we walk around 500 meters of the way back, before mum can manage to signal one, and we pile in back to our hotel.

After having a quick breakfast, we pack up our rooms and meet our group in the lobby for our day activities.

After a short group tuktuk trek, we find ourselves at the headquarters of the bike tour agency we'll be going with today. We meet Boong and Mos, our guides, collect our bikes, and head off to our first stop.

We pull our bikes in to a set of bike racks, and boong brings us together to talk about where we are. We stand in front of a reclining Buddha statue, that we're told is the 3rd largest in Thailand. It is surrounded by the ruins of the temple grounds it stood on. We're told it's ruined due to being burned in the war with Burma, now Myanmar. We explore the area a bit. We get back on our bikes and ride on. Next, we stop at an area that Boong explains used to be the royal temple, for the line of kings twice before the current line. It's also destroyed. We're told that the main buildings that still stand hold some of the ashes of those kings, but also that each king's ashes are split into 3 parts. One to be stored here previously, or now a similar place in Bangkok, one to be stored at the palace, and the last to be scattered in the river.

We get cold drinks. They are either too sweet, or in Mum's case, sugarfree. Neither of us can bare sweeteners. She drinks it anyway, to cool down. We visit a small market. I get a foldable fan to help me cool down. 

We ride on to our next stop, a temple that's still in use. Tourists and worshipers crowd around. Our guide explains the significance of the different poses of Buddha, as well as the day and colour associated with each. 

We ride to our last ruined temple, and one of the most famous parts of the town we're in, Ayotthaya. It's one of the heads, taken off one of the buddha statues that surround the area. Most statues have their heads removed, some due to looting, some due to destruction during the war. This head is under a holy tree, a relative of the Banyan.

It's a sacred site, due to the religious connotations of the location. We ride back to the headquarters. We deposit our bikes and collect some damp towels to cool off, then make the short walk to the nearby pier. Ayotthaya is surrounded on all sides by connected rivers. We board a boat and drive all the way around it, returning to the same dock.

We head off to lunch, ending our day activities. For now, I'll see you later.

Later could be in 3 days, depending on the availability of service on the coming hike. :)