We checked out of our hotel after a good breakfast, and took a taxi back to Mandalay airport. Here we went through the usual rigmarole of bag scanning, confusing queues, getting our boarding passes, passing through immigration, and being scanned just before entering the gate area. We had departure cards, as we had been given these on arrival to the country. We'd all completed our departure cards prior to entering immigration. For whatever reason, Jayna’s departure card had been taken at check in, so she had to annoyingly fill out another departure card in front of the impatient military man at immigration. We sat and had a coffee in a café in departures before being scanned into our gate, at which point they did not confiscate our remaining water. A nice lady told us that we could in fact buy water in departures and take it through the scanner. The rules regarding water just seemed to change randomly, which we found bewildering. Ken went back out into departures and wasn’t even scanned or patted down by security on re-entering the gate.

The flight was smooth going, and within two hours we were back in Bangkok! We adjusted our watches by half an hour, passed smoothly through immigration, collected our bags, and took a taxi into the city centre . We headed for Soi Rambuttri. Jack and El were looking for a little luxury for their last two days and nights, and went to stay in a place with a swimming pool. Which sounded lush, but was out of our price range. Instead we stayed a couple of doors down in Sawasdee Hotel, and had a very nice and comfortable room. It was narrow and dimly lit but otherwise great. The best yet in Bangkok.

In the evening, we all went out for a dinner at our favourite vegetarian restaurant. Ken was feeling better but still struggled to eat. We went out to Rambuttri road for drinks and wound up in a variety of establishments, including a reggae bar where there were people playing didgeridoos, and a couple of bars with live bands doing covers. We had fallen into the Bangkok party trap again, and, like last time, didn’t get to bed until 2am.

Also like last time, we planned to go to Ayutthaya the following day for some more time in temples, on an island . This time, we were determined to make it. On Tuesday 19th, we woke up early having had little sleep, and eventually made it out of the hotel, after breakfast and coffee. We’d decided to take a minibus to Ayutthaya, which was 80km north of the city. The minibus was meant to be the fastest and cheapest option. We had to take a taxi to Victory Monument, to get to the bus stop. Though this was only 6km away, it took a long time to get there because of the bad Bangkok traffic. The taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong bus stop, so we walked around the concourse to reach the correct stop. When we got there, we realised we were at a true local’s service, with nothing written in English. Eventually, after asking some people and getting pointed all over the place, we found a sign reading 'Ayutthaya’ and purchased a ticket. Then, when we asked where to go to get the bus, we received the same lacklustre general pointing which didn’t actually tell us where to go. At this point, we remembered that we were in Thailand, and not Myanmar anymore. Had we been in Myanmar, people would have led us to where we needed to go to get the bus, produced a chair from nowhere, and probably a cup of tea, whilst hanging around to make sure we were okay. Ahhh, Myanmar.

Anyway, we found the bus but it was full . It left after a few minutes of faff, and we waited for another one. Periodically we would check with someone that we were in the right place as this was all taking a very long time. We’d get a lacklustre point in response, and we triangulated these to the right place. After half an hour of waiting, another bus turned up! Hooray! And then we proceeded to wait for another half an hour for it to leave.

The journey was not scenic, on concrete roads and through slow traffic jams. The most exciting thing was a massive downpouring of rain, which made us worry that we were going to have a very short and wet time at Ayutthaya. The bus ended up taking two hours to reach Ayutthaya, despite promises that it would take one hour. Before we arrived, we were subjected to a common scam, where the bus driver told us to get off the bus because we were ‘in’ Ayutthaya, when we were actually two kilometres away. This was a scam because we weren’t going to the place we’d paid to go to, and the waiting tuk-tuk drivers were also trying to persuade us off the bus and into their waiting, extortionate, rides. We refused to get off the bus. After all this, we had little time in Ayutthaya, after spending four hours getting there.

We got off the minibus with a lovely chap from Germany, called Chris. A waiting tuk-tuk driver offered us a rate and we agreed to it, and climbed on board with Chris, our new companion . Jayna had done some online research and reading in the Lonely Planet about which temples were recommended, so we already had a shortlist of suggestions. We set off for the first temple, called Wat Yai Chai Mang Khou. This had a tall chedi (otherwise known as a stupa, pagoda or paya) which we climbed, and inside was a monk selling gold leaf sheets. These were being applied to the Buddha statues inside. Inside the darkened chedi, the gold shone eerily. We took in some older, ruined chedis around, and a large reclining Buddha in nirvana. We noticed that some of the gold leaf had made it outside of the main chedi, and some was being applied to the reclining Buddha.

We didn’t have masses of time, so headed off to our next stop, Wat Phra Mahathat, on the Ayutthaya island. This temple houses the very famous Buddha-head-in-tree-roots, an iconic image of Thailand. We were excited to see it. Ken had, in fact, previously been to Ayutthaya, and was still excited to see it. We took a walk around the large temple complex, which was mostly in ruins. It was full of headless Buddha statues, as apparently the Burmese, many years ago, had attacked the temple and decapitated the statues. This gave a slightly disturbing atmosphere to the ruins. We made our way around to the Buddha head, captured in the tree roots of what looked to be a banyan tree. It was much smaller than Jayna had imagined and it made for some good pictures .

The next stop was Phra Mongkhon Bophit, a working temple with a huge bronze Buddha inside. We took a wander around and admired the monks in their robes. We peered over the wall to our next potential stop, Wat Phra Si Sanphet, which had several tall chedis. Because we could see it quite well and we were short on time, we didn’t go in. It looked pretty and, with more time, we definitely would have gone for an explore. We negotiated for some more time with our tuk-tuk driver, and headed off again.

Our final stop was off the Ayutthaya island, to the south west. Called Wat Chaiwattanarm, it was another temple in a state of disrepair. This temple was extremely photogenic, and the central tower very much reminded us of a miniature Angkor Wat. We took in the sights in a long walk around the temple complex, peered into the towers, admired the brickwork and the angle of the sun later in the day. It was quiet and very picturesque .

Our tuk-tuk driver took us back to the bus stop, for minibuses back to Bangkok. There was one waiting for passengers, which was good, but it took another 20 minutes for the bus to fill up. In the meantime, we bought water and snacks – we hadn’t had lunch because of the long travel time – and unsuccessfully looked for a toilet. The journey back to Bangkok took a mere one hour and 45 minutes. On arrival, we swapped contact details with Chris and invited him out for drinks that evening. We tried two different places to flag down a taxi by Victory Monument, without much luck. Finally we got one at the third attempt, but this had taken another 25 minutes, and we were going to be late to meet Jack and El at our previously arranged place and time.

The taxi driver pulled no punches and got to Soi Rambuttri quickly, despite the traffic. We were five minutes late to meet Jack and El, but quickly discovered that we weren’t late after all, as El had gone to have a tattoo done, and was in fact being tattoed at that time! We arranged to meet later in the evening instead .

Ken had a work conference call to listen to, which meant we didn’t have long to get dinner. We went to the nearest vegetarian friendly place, where we asked twice to make an order and no one came. We abandoned and went to Subway, on the other end of Khao San Road. Unfortunately for us, in the four weeks since we’d been in Bangkok, Subway had turned into another hotel establishment. The final plan was takeaway pizza, and we were successful at that.

Ken made it for the conference call, we ate the pizza, then we met Jack and El and admired El’s beautiful tattoo, with it’s intricate design and mandala theme. After some congratulatory drinks, we were sad to say goodbye as it was Jack and El’s last day of their holidays. We had an emotional farewell when El went to bed, and had another drink with Jack. Chris appeared and we chatted and had some more drinks. Then the bar we were in closed around us, our queue to finally go to bed (2am, again), and we said fond farewells to our travel companions.

We had an amazing time with Jack and El as our travelling companions and El's planning for our trip to Myanmar was outstanding! It was emotional saying goodbye and we were definitely going to miss those guys as we continued on to Chiang Mai the next day. Much love to both of you!