Today we'd decided to head to the northwest and visit the Bridge on the River Kwai on a special tourist train that runs on weekends and holidays. Selected holidays, as it turns out. But not the New Year's Eve (or New Year's Day, for that matter) holiday.
Thwarted in our chance to see the iconic bridge but still wanting to salvage our 5:00 am wake up call, we caught the 90 minute train to Ayutthaya, the one-time capital of the kingdom of Siam. Our Thai is almost as bad as the English of most train station employees so we weren't exactly sure what sort of ticket we were buying but we jumped on the train leaving from platform 11 and off we went. After a brief flirtation with comfort in the padded seat 2nd class section, we were shunted back to 3rd class. By this time, of course, all of the bench seats were full and it was SRO.
After 90 minutes or so we reached our destination and, after an ice cream for the kids and an iced coffee for us, we took in a few sites - the ruins of an ancient temple, an elephant park, and a faux floating village (that fit the "not original" description shared with us by the ice cream shop owner). We noted that the floating village seemed to be a holiday destination for many Thais as there were far more locals in the village than there were tourists. All in all, the trip was underwhelming.
After a looooong tuk tuk ride back to the train station we boarded the 1:30 pm train for Bangkok, took the taxi home (turns out the taxis are more economical than the BTS [SkyTrain, the same model as we have in Vancouver, in fact]/bus combination.
While the city of Ayuttha wasn't all that interesting, the trip was not a total loss. We did learn that we certainly DID NOT want to take the train to the Cambodian border and that we'd be well served to make our travel arrangements in advance and and in person. This info would serve us well in the future, as it turned out.
- LH
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