Ayutthaya railway station

Bangkok again

The next morning we took a tuk-tuk to Ayutthaya station, which seemed a bit run-down. The third class train to Bangkok was only 15 baht - about 50c - and while hardly luxurious was perfectly fine for a couple of hours.

We had coffee and lunch at the main train station, then it was back to the Grand Hitech Tower by MRT and canal boat. Going out again, we visited the City Pillar Shrine, then went back to the river and, since the private tours were expensive, just took a ferry down the river again.

Back at Thong Lo I had the same meal I'd had on my first night in Thailand: roast duck with egg noodle and wonton in soup. And I got another massage, trying the traditional Thai instead of the Cambodian-style foot massage.

In the morning we took a taxi to the Airport line station, since I didn't want to risk getting foul canal water all over me just before a 12 hour flight.

I had very expensive coffee and lunch in the airport and said good-bye to Richard. The airport wifi is free, but one has to go to a counter to get a new password every fifteen minutes.

I had great views on the flight to London — of Burma, then the Sundarbans (passing just north of Kolkata) and the north Indian plain, including Varanasi and Lahore. Going over the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan (we flew right over Kabul) the mix of snow and shadow produced an almost abstract, sharply delineated white/black/brown pattern. I wish now I'd gone to the trouble of getting my camera out of the overhead storage so I could take photos.

Flight reading (using my Kindle) included read chunks of Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands and Tony Judt's Postwar, with leavening from Jospehine Tey's The Man in the Queue, Donna Leon's A Question of Belief and Lawrence Block's The Burglar Who Like to Quote Kipling.

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