Segment 4: Ayutthaya to Vientiane

The next day, my friend and his wife planned a day trip to Ayutthaya and I got to tag along. Although I had been to Thailand quite a number of times, it's my first time visiting it too.
Ayutthaya was the former capital of the Ayutthaya Kingdom which existed between 14th and 18th century. It was destroyed by the Burmese invaders in 1767 and the centre of power has since shifted to Bangkok, which remains the capital of the Thai state until now.

Our first stop was Wat Chaiwatthanaram, located just outside the UNESCO heritage site of Ayutthaya Historic City. The visitors were mostly Thai tourists who rented traditional attire from the nearby shops for photo-taking.







While the sky seemed cloudy, the temperature was quite high and decided to cool off with some drinks at the cafe of the insta-friendly Sala Ayutthaya.



The curved walls are popular with Instagrammers.





Lunch was at a nearby Thai restaurant where we ordered some of the local favourites.





Ayutthaya is famous for river prawns.



We resumed the temple-hopping after lunch - this should be Wat Mahatat.



This should be Wat Ratchaburana.



We took a break from the historic ruins and visited the working temple of Wihan Phra Mongkhon Bophit. It is famous for the massive glided status of sitting Buddha.




Our final historical site was Wat Phra Si Sanphet, which apparently used to be the grandest temple in Ayutthaya.
By this time, the ruins all looked the same to me and we reckoned that it wasn't a bad idea to cool off with some desserts at a cafe.





We only got back out on the streets when the night market was about to open.



This particular stall got our attention and the queue was enough to attract my friend's wife to buy some fried fish cakes from them.





My friend picked out a local restaurant for dinner and we had some authentic Thai food. The dishes were mostly good and we totally forgot to take any pictures of the food.



After dinner, my friend dropped me off at Ayutthaya Station well ahead of time.



All north-bound and northeast-bound SRT trains passed through here and I didn't need to backtrack to Bangkok to continue my journey to the Thai border town of Nong Khai.



Looking south for trains coming from Bangkok.



I realised that we did cover quite a bit of the city during our day there.



In the direction of Chiang Mai / Nong Khai / Ubon Ratchatani:-



I was reminded everywhere about Queen's birthday.



Beside passenger traffic, State Railway of Thailand also transport cargo. For those who don't want to ride their motorcycles all the way to their destinations, the trains provide a good alternative.


The train arrived at Ayutthaya at 9.42pm and my carriage was quite full. My bunk was already converted into bed mode.



I made myself comfortable after the crew came to verify my train ticket on the dticket app.



It appeared that we might be a bit late arriving into Nong Khai.



I slept through the night and woke up when we were reaching Udon Thani. The crew soon went around to convert the beds back to seats.



Is this construction for the new high-speed rail to Bangkok?



It seemed that the earliest that the high-speed train service be in operation will be 2028 onwards, connecting Thailand to China's train network via Laos. While the travel time between Bangkok and Nong Khai could be as fast as within three hours (based on top speed of 250 km/h), I hope that overnight trains will continue to run.

We arrived at Nong Khai station just 10 minutes after the scheduled arrival time of 6.25am. There used to be a daily train which connected Nong Khai to Thanaleng across the Mekong in Laos but like the other cross-border train service between Padang Besar and Hat Yai, it was suspended due to COVID-19.





Outside of the station, plenty of tuktuk drivers were offering shared rides to the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge; I was charged 50 THB (~1.43 USD) for the short 2km ride.





Beside the train passengers, there was a big group of Thai cyclists whose idea of fun was to cycle to another country on a drizzly Sunday morning.



I managed to get stamped out from Thailand by 6.50am and bought the shuttle bus ticket (30 THB + extra 5 THB for out-of-office hours) from the counter.



The shuttle bus was an old Thailand-registered bus and it would take five minutes to cross the Mekong River which separates Thailand from Laos. While on the bridge, the bus would drive on the left as in Thailand and only cross over to the other side when it was approaching the Lao immigration building.





On the fifth day, I entered Laos, my fourth and final country of the trip.

I was among the first to fill up the arrival form and was done with Lao immigration by 7.20am. The only snag that I encountered was the lack of physical copy for my vaccination certificate; the immigration officer eventually stamped me in after looking at the PDF copy on my phone and just reminded me to print it out the next time.



There were several moneychangers and tuktuk drivers offering their services and even though I rejected their offers, they were friendly enough to point me to where the bus stop was (roughly 1 o'clock direction).

The local bus 14 operated by Vientiane City 2 Bus Service was already waiting at the bus stop then. It would travel from Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge to Vientiane's Central Bus Station, a place which I would become familiar with over the next few days.

It was nice to get the newer BYD C8 electric bus. The bus conductor would come around to collect the 10,000 LAK (~0.70 USD) fare. As I didn't have any Lao Kip with me yet, she accepted my 100 THB note, and gave me 25,000 LAK change. Based on the official THB:LAK exchange rate then, my fare worked out to be 15,000 LAK.



One of the things that we noticed on the ~20km ride was that there were long queues outside petrol stations. I would later learn that Laos was facing a big crisis with plummeting exchange rates and fuel shortages, causing extraordinary hardship for ordinary Lao citizens.



After around 30 minutes, the bus arrived at Vientiane's Central Bus Station and it meant that I needed to start thinking hard about my next few days in Laos.



Distance travelled so far: ~ 2,579km