.A short hop by plane & an 2 hour train ride for 35p each - air con courtesy of ceiling fans & open window - & we arrived in Ayutthya & 5 minutes later at the Bann Thai resort. This was a small complex of about 15 mainly self contained villas/bungalows set around a small lake & bounded by a canal which backed on to our villa.You would not have known that 4 months earlier the whole site was under 4 feet of water as evidenced by tide marks on trees. It was a 10 minute walk to the ferry across the river (8p each) and we wandered through the local market down to the historical site. Ayutthya was in the 14th century the capital of ,as was then, Siam which covered most of present day northern Thailand & parts of Cambodia & Laos and traded with Iran,China and later in the 16th century France,Holland& Portugal . It has many wats some of which we only scratched the surface. We visited Kanchanaburi site of the Kwai Bridge & rode the "death railway" ( they call it scenic now ?) & visited cemetery commemorating the the 17,000 servicemen of all countries who died in its construction. This number is dwarfed by the 100,000 Thai,Burmese, Malays & singaporeans who also lost their lives a chilling thought . Our last visit was to Lopburi ( a satellite city for the king of Ayutthya) for the regional museum (set in the old palace ) & very interesting , the monkey temple and a couple of Khmer style wats. Tomorrow Phnom Penh Cambodia.
