29.01 Day 14 Ayutthaya to Bangkok
Day 14 - Mon 29th Jan - Ayutthaya to Bangkok
We’ve got an extra day until our next base in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, so rather than force more temples on the kids, we decide to head back to Bangkok to allow the kids to revisit the Butterfly Garden and Children’s Discovery Museum that they so enjoyed at the start of our trip.
For breakfast, Seb and I buy a collection of unknown food items from street sellers near our hostel, Seb again getting admiring glances from the locals, at one point flexing his biceps to make them chuckle.
We check out from Baan Are Gong after an extended goodbye to the cat and wheel our bags up to the station. The 10:30am train to Don Meuang, northern Bangkok is a measly 11 / 6 baht for adults / children (50c / 30c) for the 50 minute journey. The smartly dressed train and platform attendants wave their flags and blow their whistles and we’re on our way.
An easy journey back to the metropolis and we tackle the 25 minute walk from the station, with a pit stop for bubble tea, to our fly by stay at B Your Home. 3 six storey buildings set just back from a frantic street - the venue chosen primarily for its proximity to the station - where we’ll be catching our overnight train from tomorrow evening - and because it had a swimming pool on the roof.
It was agreed an afternoon in the pool was worth the fact we’d have to get 2 rooms for the first time this trip rather than a larger family room. Thankfully the two rooms we’re assigned are not just next to each other but even have a connecting door. The luxury of two bathrooms. The interconnecting door is almost as exciting as the larger than life superheroes inexplicably outside the hotel.
After grabbing lunch close by - garlic pork and rice fast becoming a go-to for Kate and the kids, we have a dip in the pool. The water isn’t on though for the small slides, so we take a break and a snack (and allow the other pool users some peace and quiet) and Sienna & I pop out to forage in the form of popcorn, apples, doughnuts and passion fruits.
Back in the pool, the novelty of the 5 metre slide does not wear off after the 10th / 20th / 30th use. For $30 a night, the entertainment of the pool is paying for itself. We explore a little for dinner options, but seem to find ourselves in this dead-zone, where some places have closed for the day at 4pm, whilst others don’t open until 7pm. In the end we head back to our lunch cafe. Like a lot of meals, our plates tend to come in at 50-80 baht and with 3 plates often enough to fill 4 of us, $10 covers most of our meals.
As we’re only here for one night we encourage the kids to not empty every bag, putting their clothes in cupboards and that helps our improving routine of unpacking and repacking. Our luggage consists of two 15kg roller bags, 2 adult rucksacks of 6kg and two kids rucksacks of 4kg. That’s 50kg all up for all four of us. Our choices seem to be working, though so far we’ve only had to deal with hot weather and very hot weather.
