Our next stop was Thailand, we flew into Bangkok and then made our way by taxi about an hour North to Hidden Holiday House near Nakhom Chaisri. We were the guests of Chris and Areeya who treated us like family friends and we stayed in a lovely raft house on the river which afforded beautiful views all through the day. Sunrise being a real treat as the sun rose up over the opposite bank and slowly flooded into our room.
Of course we were always beaten to rise by our neighbours who were out fishing and tending the morning glory crop by the time we stirred
With a lovely flat landscape we took advantage of the bikes for hire and toured the local area where there were many temples and things to see, the temple dedicated to all the darkness in life was one I liked with all the offerings being black and all the statues as well
The ornate temples and roofs were as usual a sight to behold even though we were told that many of them are built just for the sake of it even if they never get used. It appears that they just have too much money and the way they use up the excess is to just keep building
At least the monks keep smiling and to get one lawn mowing stood me in good stead for mine and Louise's continuing game of monk bingo
On one of the days we joined our host Chris and an American couple, Heidi + Pete to go to the local floating market where the sellers drive their long tail boats into a specially constructed platform to sell their wares, a throwback to the days before roads (something our hostess Areeya remembers).
One of the highlights for the kids was feeding little waffles to the catfish that surrounded the plat forms waiting for scraps
On my birthday we hired bikes and rode to the provincial capital of Nakhom Pathom which has a truly enormous buddhist chedi which we spent quite a bit of time in as it was a long and hot ride to get there. As always there were lots of statues all plastered in the gold leaf offerings
Louise's favourites the temple guards were well represented as usual with some particularly fearsome looking ones keeping an eye on you as you made your way round
On one of the evenings a nephew of the family bought Louise his pet hedgehog to see, so very cute
Like I said, we enjoyed great views all through the day, this was taken at about 10:30pm on my birthday, tripod + long exposure
So that was the Hidden Holiday House, a really lovely stay with lovely people. So much so that we took Chris up on his sideline business which is running cycling tours through Lao and Cambodia. We are booked to 8 days down the Mekong in Lao to the border of Cambodia with him in the midle of April. So with that to look forward to we left and headed North
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