Hey guys! My last post was a couple of days ago from Phimai, the home of the oldest Angkor ruins in Thailand.

Here I am hanging out and enjoying my lat couple of hours in Phimai at our bungalow before heading to the bus stop.

From Phimai we headed to Ayuthaya which is a six-hour-long bus-journey which includes a change of busses in Nakhon Ratchasima (also known as Khorat).

Well, we thought we would take a minivan from Phimai to Khorat but when we got to the small station in Phimai we learned that minivans didn’t come through there and instead we would have to take a large non-air-conditioned bus. So we waited until it came.

We hopped the bus and the attendant helped us put our bags underneath in the luggage hold. About ten minutes later while on the road we heard a HUGE pop – it sounded like a gun shot and all of the passengers looked concerned. It actually turned out to be a flat tire. Luckily our bus had double rear tires so the driver just kept driving until we pulled into a repair depot.

Mom told me later that the sound took her back to the time in 1994 when she and dad were on a bus when they lived in southern Thailand. While riding in a bus on a highway a sharp piece of metal got caught the axle and just went sawing up the entire floor like a chainsaw. Luckily nobody lost a toe!

When we arrived at the bus station in Khorat we looked for a mini-bus to Ayuthaya, of which there were none according to some people who were going to Bangkok and would stop at ANOTHER station, have us get onto ANOTHER bus, all for ANOTHER payment. But we had done our research and knew that there was a mini-bus heading to Ayuthaya – we just had to find it. We did find it eventually and ended up saving money and getting there quicker. It took like four hours. The lesson here is that you cannot just listen to what people tell you, you have to do your own research as well and be confident in what you know.

Once in Ayuthaya we went to see some ruins of Wats. Our first stop was at Wat Mahathat, one of the main Wats of what used to be the Ayuthayan empire (which which ruled from the 1300s to the 1700s and once ruled so much land that it covered more than France and England combined)!

The layout of the Wat was actually made up of many smaller temples, which consisted of hundreds of Buddha statues.

There was also a Buddha head that had a tree growing around it and is stuck!

Some of the Stupas were falling over, so I helped them out.

Can you see the Thai flag in the background of this photo?

Then, for fun and information, we, well, visited, the, well, the Visitors Center. There was a cool art studio and a little museum.

My favorite part about the art studio was the little, intricate clay sculptures that depicted things such as a breakfast buffet, street food stalls, and a mountain with little elephants on it.

The museum had lots of cool information in it stretching from the history of Ayuthaya, which was actually very international with Portuguese, English, Malaysian and Indian traders and ambassadors, to modern day long-boat racing.

Ayuthaya is known for its lotus flowers which are very pulchritudinous (if they were people)!

Also, we got to see a Reclining Buddha it was old… and gigantic.

Ayuthaya is also known for its wacky tuk-tuks!

Then we went to the Grand Palace that had a very dangerous barbed wire fence (that people were stepping over so they could mow the lawns of the ⬆️GINORMOUS⬆️ Wat) and a very small and almost unnoticeable entrance. So much so we weren’t able to get into it!

As we were looking for supper that night, we saw a bunch of people playing pétanque, or bocce. It was cool and it reminded me of Italy.

We eventually found a riverside restaurant with delicious fried rice and tom ‘yum’ goong✌️👍!

Riverboats full of tourists often passed by. I tried to get some of these waves:👋, but I only got these waves:🌊!

Then, I guess someone in the Heavens was sad, because teardrops started falling from the clouds. It made me sad, too.

We arrived in Bangkok from Ayuthaya yesterday. This time it was easy to find a minivan!