Thailand Annotated....Stop 2: Ayuthaya

Getting the bus out of Bangkok wasn't all that hard as it turned out. I was a little worried, given what I know of American bus stations, that this would be a bad idea. But, the people at the station were very helpful pointing out which bus we should get on. The drive was only an hour and a half and the first thing we did was find a hotel. After that we set out to get lunch and see the ruins. Here are some pictures of the ruins:

One of the things the guidebooks warned us about was the dogpacks. Apparently it was very common for the dogs of the area to turn into packs and attack poor stupid tourists like myself.

And there were a lot of dogs around the city, lying on the side walk, lying in the gutters, lying just about anywhere, really. But at the ruins we saw a mother and her pup. It was kind of nice to see something alive and moving around the ruins. (Something other than tourists.)

Ayuthaya was also the first place we tried to visit the nightmarket. This one was maybe a half-mile from our hotel. So we walked through the streets trying to avoid the dogs that would soon rouse themselves to take over the city and made our way here. Okay, so I'm something of a picky eater. I don't like seafood so much and I'm more than a little shy about trying food whose meat I can't quite identify, but I have to say the nightmarkets are the best. The food is super-cheap and super good. I think we ate a couple different meats served on sticks and it was definitely here that we tried the crepe-like banana thing, that I still haven't found a recipe for. (Note. This is different from the banana fritters which we fell in love with toward the end of the trip, but still so good. And yes, I did gain a bit of weight on this trip, how'd you guess?) The markets are a mix of festival, resteraunt and mall. You can haggle with merchants for just about anything.