Ayutthaya

We settled into our guesthouse in time to do a late afternoon/evening boat tour around old Ayutthaya (which is an island because of a canal joining the Chao Phraya and Lopburi rivers). This was quite atmospheric. We got to see a huge round red ball sun going down behind Wat Chaiwatthanaram (I forgot to take the telephoto lens along, so the photo doesn't do it justice).

After that we had dinner in a riverside market/eatery, along with one of our fellow boaters, a Polish student living in the UK (who had done masters at the University of East Anglia on children's media in the Soviet Union, but wanted to move into social anthropology).

There was a huge street fair for Chinese New Year a block from our guesthouse, which looked like it was going to be on for a week.

On the next morning we wandered around the ruins of old Ayutthaya, finishing with an elephant ride. In the afternoon Richard went back to the hotel to nap, but I hired a bicycle and rode around some more temple ruins and museums. And for dinner we strolled through the street fair, sampling lots of different dishes from the stalls.