Places visited: Lampang, Sukhothai, Phitsanulok, Lopburi, Ayutthaya, Bangkok, Tokyo, Detroit, Ottawa.
Costs of things: Beer ($1.25 - Damn we're back in the West), Meals ($1 - Crazy Western Prices), hotel ($12 - $32)
The ride from Chiang Mai to Bangkok was supposed to be an 8 day affair, but after spending as much time as we did in the North, we had to take a bus, a train and ride for four days. We contemplated riding even less and heading to a different part of Thailand before the end of our trip (like a beach or to see the actual bridge over the river Kwai), but stuck to the plan and saw some very interesting places.
Lampang: The approximately 100km ride from Chiang Mai to Lampang, the third largest city in northern Thailand, was not very interesting and had us pining for the mountains of northern Vietnam and Laos. A couple of interesting tidbits about Lampang include it's use of the horse drawn carriage as transportation within the town and the fact that the chicken is the symbol of the city. The carriages are mainly used for tourists these days and we didn't see many chickens around, save for ones on our plates. We spent the evening enjoying the eclectic night market.Sukhothai: We took the bus about 240km from Lampang to Sukhothai('Rising of Happiness'),
Thailand's first capital, whose reign lasted from 1238 until 1438, before
which it was part of the Khmer empire. Considered the 'golden age'of Thai civilisation, the Sukhothai style of art and architecture is thought to be the most 'classic' of Thai styles. 'Sukhothai' style Buddha statues, for example, are the ones most commonly recognisable as 'Thai' and are generally the ones you see on the tourist brochures. We spent an extra day here, touring the amazing ruins and splashing about in a rather nice public swimming pool. Oh yeah, by this point in the trip, the hot season had started (it actually began when we returned to Chiang Mai for our wedding) and it was getting really hot in the afternoons, so we were doing our best to have any real riding done by noon.Phitsanulok: About a 60km ride from Sukhothai, Phitsanulok, one of the oldest cities in Thailand,
founded over 600 years ago. It is probably best known as the
birthplace of King Naresuan, who freed the country from Burmese domination in the late 16th Century, and his brother and successor King Ekathosarot (Sanpet III). We didn't spend much time here, but the best part of the town was seeing the flying vegetable restaurant. They have a crazy ritual where the stir fry some morning glory (water spinach; we loved it stir fried) then have a customer go up on a platform wearing a crazy outfit while a band plays tribal music. After cooking the morning the glory in a huge ball of flame, they fling the vegetable from their wok up to the patron on the platform, who has to catch it in a garbage can lid. I kid you not. We also managed to scam some free use of a pool at a really nice hotel.
Lopburi: 
From Phitsanulok we hopped on a train to go about 300km to Lopburi. Unfortunately, we had to put our bikes on a different train, arriving two hours after us, so we were quite concerned, but luckily they arrived as scheduled. Originally known as Lavo about 1000 years ago, the city was incorporated into the Khmer empire, who destroyed all the former buildings, so the oldest standing ruins are Khmer temples. It was made a second capital of the Thai kingdom with the rise of Ayutthaya reign in the mid-17th century. Today it is known as the home to hundreds of
monkeys (macaques), who hang out mainly around a couple of the temples and like to jump people 
and take their stuff. We climbed up a rather old looking part of one temple and were surrounded by hordes of monkeys. It felt like being in a zombie movie, except it was monkeys, not zombies. As we decided to make a break for it, because if they were zombies, they would have been close to getting some fresh brains, one of the monkeys jumped on Michelle's back! I was not so heroic in my rescue attempt and also did not succeed in getting a picture of the offending primate on her back.
At another temple, which was populated by pregnant and nursing females, we were given a long stick by the attendant. The stick was supposed to be used to fend off any overly-curious monkeys, instead one of them stole the stick right out of Michelle's hand. When I went to take it back, it threatened me with the stick. Little buggers. Apparently I did not gain any monkey karma from the grooming I had received in Laos. There was also this hilarious old guy working in one of the temples where people come to pray. He used a big slingshot to fend off monkeys he got too close to the altar and the offerings. We didn't find a pool in Lopburi.Ayutthaya: We took a bit of a scenic route on our bikes from Lopburi to Ayutthaya, adding about
15km extra for an approximate 95km ride. Ayutthaya was
founded in 1350 by King U-Thong as the capital of his kindom. It was sacked by the Burmese army in 1767 and the old part of the city is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site (as was the historical park in Sukhothai). It is estimated that nearly 1000000 people lived there in 1700, making it one of the world's largest cities at the time. We were kind of ruin-ed out by this point, so found a pool and relaxed there for the afternoon. However we decided to ride around the town after dinner and saw some impressive ruins. We even snuck into one site and were in awe at the immensity of it.Bangkok: After an 80km ride on a major highway, at some points 8-10 lanes wide, complete with
overpasses and often very narrow shoulders near on and off
ramps, we arrived back in Bangkok. We attempted to take smaller roads, but kept getting rerouted back to the main highway. Basically imagine riding on the 401 and then taking the Don Valley Parkway into downtown Toronto, multiply the size and intensity by about 5.7 times and that's where we riding. Well, we arrived safe and sound and quickly remember how much more expensive Bangkok is than the rest of the country. I won't go 
into any major details about Bangkok, as I'm sure we did in our first blog, so I'll just mention a few interesting things we did this
time around. We went to see some Muay Thai (Thai kickboxing), but not at the standard tourist oriented place. We found out about a place that only locals go and found our way there. Man, the crowd was intense and the fights were pretty impressive to see. After being told all about the red-light district we decided to check that out. It was an interesting mix of family-oriented street market and standard red-light district fare. One day we did some shopping at the huge MBK mall again went to see a movie in a VIP theatre. We were treated to complimentary drinks in the VIP lounge before the movie, then went to our seats, which were 
comfy recliners, complete with pillow and blanket. Other than that, we spent our last few days preparing for our departure as well as contemplating staying an extra two months, which we almost did, but in the end we decided to stick with the original plan.On March 25th, 2008 at 5:30am, we boarded our first flight bound of Tokyo, prior to another stop in Detroit for 6 hours until we reached our final destination of Ottawa. We volunteered to be bumped in Detroit in order to get another free flight anywhere in North America, but unfortunately, they put us on the plane at the last minute (they did however forget to put our bikes back on the plane, but we got them a couple of days later). We finally left baggage claim about midnight and were greeted by my brother and Michelle's Mother and niece. That adventure had come to a close, but we're already planning the next one.....
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