After five days in busy Bangkok it was time to get out of the capital, so we rented a car and drove north to Ayutthaya, the former capital of the Siam kingdom. The center of Ayutthaya is one big archeological site with numerous palaces, Buddhist temples, and statues. Unfortunately, the city has been partially destroyed by the Burmese in 1767, so what we got to see were more or less well-preserved ruins. Nevertheless, it was very interesting walking through all the parks and visit temple after temple, and because all the sites were so wide-spread, the tourist masses also distributed themselves over the sites.

After having visited 4-5 temples, we got a feeling of saturation so we did not visit every single historic building, and because we already had booked a flight that evening up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, we returned after lunch to the airport with our rental car.