July 2016 - after visiting Sukhothai we took the night bus to Ayutthaya. The bus driver kicked us out at 5:30 in the morning at the motorway and we still had about 4 km to walk to the temples. A french couple who was also in the bus joined us and we made a morning walk. When we arrived at the temples, the entry was still closed, and the sun just appeared at the horizon. Since we were exhausted and hungry, we jumped the fence and made us comfortable at the first temple for breakfast with the remaining food we had in our luggage. A few strolling dogs enjoyed our company and made themselve comfortable next to us. That was definitely the highlight. Us, the dogs, dawn at the temples. A few hours later, tourists and day visitors from Bangkok inhabited the temple area, elephant riding was offered as an attraction and souvenir shops popped up in the park.

In comparison to Sukhothai, the overall experience was rather lame, but the ruins are from a different era of Siam Kingdom, thus we were happy to have visited. After few hours in the park, we continued our journey and took another nightbus to Krabi, to also enjoy the southern part of Thailand.