Best thing about solo travel... not having to stick to your original plans

I love Thailand so much for the simple fact that it's cheap. I have managed to keep myself on budget at around $25-$30 per day. It's funny how your perspective of everything changes once your on the road and dealing with different currencies. A friend and I made our way from Bangkok to Ayutthaya for 60 baht a person, which translates to a little over $1.50... yes, you read that correctly. We got a minibus from a city an hour or so away for less than $2! Upon arriving, the tuk tuk driver wanted to charge us 150 baht to drive 15 minutes. It was hard justifying taking that short trip for that much, but when I started thinking about it, it really isn't that much. That trip was all of $5 for the two of us.

Food is also extremely cheap here. Before I left Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai, we stumbled upon this little cafe. For 50 ($1.50 ish) baht, we each had a decent meal and a drink. The food stall across from my current hostel charges 15 baht ($.50) for a full plate of scrambled eggs and steamed rice with some mystery drink out of a container. And the food is good! It has flavor, is hot and fresh (most of the time) and it's not totally unhealthy for you either. Their sanitary standards are no where near ours back home, but that's ok. I'm still alive, I haven't gotten food poisoning.

So anyways, done with the rambling. I had this whole plan of hopping my way from one city to the next after leaving Bangkok until I made my way to Chiang Mai. The more I thought about it, the less enticing that sounded. I have never enjoyed fast travel on my own. It's draining, stressful and usually uncomfortable and expensive. I had enjoyed some small talk with one of the guys staying in my room. He happened to be from the U.S on a travel hiatus and we had swapped some stories. We got on the subject of how I was going to Ayutthaya and he'd heard good things. Previously finding out he had no plans the next few days, I invited him to come along with me. Surprisingly, he said yes and the next day we found ourselves overwhelmed by the awesomeness that was Ayutthaya. We ended missing a huge portion of the city we went by because we were so in awe over everything that was right in front of our eyes.

Ayutthaya was founded in around 1350 and became the second capital of Siam. Over the centuries, the city grew and became one of the largest cities in the world around 1700. Ayutthaya was explained as one of the finest cities of it's time but unfortunately, it all came to an end when the Burmese invaded Ayutthaya and burnt everything to the ground around the late 1760's. The only buildings to survive had been the temples and some palaces because they were built using stone.

Matt and I wandered around for hours, from temple to temple, wondering about the histories of such places and the extravagances that once were. There weren't many historical plaques explaining about the temples. Most of what I've discovered are from pamphlets and google. At the end of the day, we were both exhausted and all I could think about was how much I really wasn't ready to leave the city. I had already taken out Lopburi from my plans, which means I missed some ancient ruins over run by the infamous thief monkeys. Did I really want to miss out on another ancient city, Sukhothai? So I procrastinated throughout the morning deciding on what I wanted to do. As I was gathering my things to leave, Matt woke up and we decided to go for breakfast.

It's funny how one event can change the course of your trip. I found a pamphlet down in the lobby of the hostel and began thumbing through it. I couldn't believe how much we had missed the day prior! Matt was astounded as well and just told me I should stay. So I did. And I didn't regret my decision. We ended up spending a few hours looking for a new place to stay since our other place was sold out but once settled in to our new hostel, we hit the road once again. We had a plan and a layout of exactly what we wanted to do. Except it didn't go quite as planned. Ayutthaya is like a maze of wonder. You are lead to one impressive ruin and as you're leaving, you see another across the street and then you run into a street market with things you've never seen or tasted before. Then several hours have passed and you wonder how you got where you ended up.

We did end our day getting to see everything we had planned on seeing plus more. Ayutthaya was full of known and unknown gems and I am so happy to have been able to take the time to enjoy the ruins and making a new friend. Travel is all about the experiences you have and the people you meet. Going to Lopburi and Sukhothai would have probably been fun, but I would have been stressed the whole time about getting from point A to point B the most efficiently so I could utilize my time wisely. But instead, I took advantage of the city I was in.

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