18. Koh Kred, Thailand Jan '99

Our organising rule for this blog is a bit random. We made lots of day trips and weekends all over Thailand while we were living in Bangkok, but only a few seem to have made it into the photo albums. I thought the idea was that if it were an overnight trip, we'd put it in the book, but day trips were out. But Koh Kred is definitely a day trip, and is still in, so the new rule will be that we'll put it in the blog if we feel like it.

Koh Kred is just up the river from Bangkok, in fact in the river since it's a tiny island in the middle of the Chao Phrya. We spent the day there with our good friend Molly. A nice way to spend a day, but definitely not a must see sight. You walk through the waterside village, where everyone is selling ceramic pots, identical, very heavy ceramic pots, which is what they're known for. There's also a couple of temples, but just your standard variety that you can see in every village in Thailand. I remember this one stood out for the particularly diseased nature of the dogs there. Buddhist temples tend to attract animals since the monks take care of them, and some temples are famous for the hordes of monkeys or snakes at the temple. This one just had really sick looking dogs.

7. Ayudhaya, May '98

Back in Thailand, as you can tell from the washed out colour of the pics due to the hellacious sun. April-May is the hottest time for Thailand, and Ayudhaya is one of the hottest trips you can take, but a definite must-see. It's the second capital of the old Siamese kingdom (as opposed to the Lanna kingdom I'm sure you remember from the Chiang Mai posts). Ayudhaya was the capital for several hundred years before being completely destroyed by the Burmese in the 18th century, whereupon the capital was moved to Bangkok. There are two basic ways to go, first on your own, as it's less than two hours drive from Bangkok. This gives you much more time to see the ruins of Ayudhaya, which are really atmospheric and photogenic. But the drive up is a bore, as central Thailand is pancake flat and the highway you'd drive on is lined with factories and housing developments pretty much the whole way. If you do drive, though, make sure you stop for lunch at one of the seafood restaurants on the outskirts of town. It's just a makeshift shack on stilts in a lake, but locals from Bangkok are always driving up here for the food. A definitely more scenic way to go is by boat, up the Chao Phrya River. The most famous cruise is run by the Oriental Hotel and leaves from the hotel very early in the morning. Taking the boat past the famous temples and palaces of Bangkok is great, and then as the city disappears, its replaced by scenes like in this picture, villages built on the river banks, usually by Muslim communities. (you can generally tell a Muslim town in Thailand from the bright colors they use to paint their houses). The trip is long, I think about 4 hours, but very peaceful and pretty, and there's a good Thai buffet thrown in for lunch as well.