Thailand - Wats, wats and more wats

What's a wat? A temple, ruined or not, its still a wat. My first place was Ayuthaya, 80km north of Bangkok. Walked to the ruins of Mahathat the first day, and 2nd day hired a bicycle with French girl I met as more comfortable. Both of us constantly had sweat pouring off our faces, very ungainly. And this isn't even the hot season! Ayuthaya is actually an island created by the confluence of two rivers, so for one wat we had to cross the river on "ferry" e.g. a wooden boat with abut 10 motorbikes and us two bicycles crowded on. V. fun, and no one fell in! Bonus! But we couldn't find the temple we'd come to see. Some guy on a motorbike said he would take us for "5" Baht each (I've learnt to check by writing down prices, as e.g 5, 15 and 50 - and maybe 500 too, are all conveniently interchangable) so we piled on, (he did have an official-looking green and illuminous yellow jacket on)...then he took us on a huge huge tour, which we thought was him trying to stretch the 5 into 500 Baht, or maybe so he'd run out of petrol and make us fill up, and he stopped at some Portuguese settlement wth a load of skeletons, so we were getting worried that he wan't going to take us to the wat. Anyway, eventually he did, and finally, we realised we'd taken a different ferry crossing to the one we'd thought, and so were further away from the wat than we'd thought. So he wasn't conning us - just us being overly paranoid...but I guess at least we were on our guard. Sad but apparently necessary. OOoh, and it was so worth it, as during our extended tour through the back roads, we drove past the hugest lizard thing by the side of the road - must've been about 5 foot long - v. exciting, and I get excited just seeing the little geckoes on the walls! The wat was very impressive too, with lots of people offering flowers and incense to the buddhas and sticking gold leaf on the buddhas - very busy. I liked the one with the A/C best! We just sat in there pretending to be worshipful and just being happy that we were out of the sweltering heat for a bit!

Lopburi, a bit further north of Ayuthaya - boring - well, nothing special, except for monkeys taking over a couple of the wats and stealing my ice tea from me (sticks to beat them off with included in the entrance fee! - in fact, today, with my bottle of Pepsi, glass with ice, and bottle opener I was given a slingshot! to save myself from famished monkeys when my food arrived - luckily didn't have to use it, but the monkeys did start getting perilously close by the time I'd finished...

So much nice food everywhere! I've just been eating from the places set up by the side of the road, as they're so much cheaper, and more fun than being in a restaurant. Had unripe mango with a hot sugar/salt mixture sprinkled on top, lots of fried eggs and mussels on raw beansprouts, lots of "coke in a bag with ice" (screw the no ice rule, its too hot!), tried a little bit of the raw egg-yoke sweets, but didn't like and didn't want salmonella either, and just taken a photo of the crispy fried insects and assorted larvae!